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Toward Autonomous Unmanned Aircraft Technology

Posted by kdawson on from the fly-by-wire-only-there-is-no-wire dept.

coondoggie writes with a NetworkWorld piece that begins, "Researchers at Purdue will soon experiment with an unmanned aircraft that pretty much flies itself with little human intervention. The aircraft will use a combination of global-positioning system technology and a guidance system called AttoPilot ... to guide the aerial vehicle to predetermined points. Researchers can be stationed off-site to monitor the aircraft and control its movements remotely. AttoPilot was installed in the aircraft early this year, and testing will begin in the spring, researchers said."

137 comments

  1. Niche operation perhaps... by BWJones · · Score: 3, Informative

    Migration to UAVs is an obligate journey. My last visit to Creech AFB showed just how inevitable this is, yet I wonder if the move towards autonomous vehicles will really expand beyond a limited niche. Autonomous vehicles have a definite role, but one that is limited to very specialized circumstances akin to interplanetary probes. Platforms that gather data on say climate change or sea conditions are appropriate. However, in the absence of a complete revolution in the way data is gathered through sensors, large event surveillance, crowd and traffic control and hostage situations or crimes (or military applications) will almost always have to have at least a semi-autonomous component to them. I will say that efforts are already underway in certain combat situations to provide for single pilot control over multiple UAV platforms through semi-automated solutions, but those solutions still have an operator actively monitoring the platform.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    1. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by malkir · · Score: 0

      I will say that efforts are already underway in certain combat situations to provide for single pilot control over multiple UAV platforms through semi-automated solutions, but those solutions still have an operator actively monitoring the platform.

      So how do I go about getting a job playing the BEST VIDEO GAME EVER? It's like a real RTS, just you operate the eyes and you have commanders making the decisions - ultimately all the information is through you... shit, I'd play all day. Whens beta?!

    2. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by pnevin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I dunno. One of the things I quite like about playing video games is that nobody actually dies.

    3. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by jander · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I believe that it would be more than niche applications. There are many areas in aviation where UAV's would be a boon.

      For example, UAV's could be used for fire suppression applications - Whenever there are forest fires (or even the threat of), UAV's could be prepositioned and in the air in a matter of minutes.
      Crop Dusting - UAV's could perform this function with better precision, for longer hours.
      Post/Parcel delivery
      Search and Rescue

      All these applications are prone to pilot fatigue and are dangerous commercial applications - I am sure there are many, many more applications where UAV's would make more sense and improve aviation safety.

      --
      An ounce of perception is worth a pound of obscure
    4. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      I can see use beyond military applications.

      But we need to do something besides crop dusting. Look at the deadzone in the Gulf of Mexico if you have any doubt.

      Postal/parcel delivery of perhaps the most important things, like organ transplants or something. Otherwise the use is over the top.

      Search and rescue, maybe. Would Steve Fossett have been found any sooner?

      I know that from a defense standpoint, these things have to be developed. On the other hand, one less military weapon would do the world some good.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    5. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't think the Air Force wants autonomous UAVs. They are just now starting a UAV pilot program, which has publicly announced last fall.

      http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/10/airforce_uav_volunteers_100708w/

      Do you really think they are going to scrap their new UAV pilot program in its infancy to be replaced by robots? I don't think so.

      This really will only have commercial applications, for non-living cargo. People are already scared enough of flying, let alone with Skynet in the cockpit.

    6. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Funny

      One of the things I quite like about playing video games is that nobody actually dies.

      They do if you force-quit the application before they have a chance to respawn, like I do.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    7. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by jander · · Score: 1

      But we need to do something besides crop dusting. Look at the deadzone in the Gulf of Mexico if you have any doubt.

      Because of high concentrations of pesticides - If you could spray more frequently, you would not need the high concentrations, therefore less run off... A UAV could be as cheap to operate as any other farm implement without needing specialized training to operate.

      Postal/parcel delivery of perhaps the most important things, like organ transplants or something. Otherwise the use is over the top.

      Have you ever tried to get next-day delivery to a rural area? There are many parts of the country still that are over 200-300 miles from any major airport. Private pilots are often contracted by the USPS to ferry mail back and forth to these areas.

      Search and rescue, maybe. Would Steve Fossett have been found any sooner?

      Quite possibly - Pilots are limited to how long they can fly per day. Because there is a shortage of qualified pilots, it limits the time and increases the expense of search and rescue operations.

      --
      An ounce of perception is worth a pound of obscure
    8. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by rogeroger · · Score: 1

      Flying into Los Angeles Bringing in a couple of keys Don't touch my bags if you please Mr customs man (Arlo Guthrie)

    9. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by tylerni7 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I hate to hijack the first comment like this, but I just want to point out, for anyone interested there is a pretty large community here dedicated to providing information on building UAVs.

      While it certainly isn't the easiest thing in the world to do, with processing speed and efficiency increasing, as well as things like modern GPS and other sensors, UAVs really are easy enough for your average electronics/computer geek to build, given around $1000 and some free time.

    10. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by Moofie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      An autonomous vehicle doesn't need to do absolutely everything autonomously. It simply CAN fly its mission autonomously.

      That means, you can have it signal you when it thinks something interesting is happening, or when it's in an interesting area, and you can start paying attention to it.

      I don't think that makes these vehicles any less "autonomous".

      --
      Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
    11. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by Moofie · · Score: 1

      The US Air Force has autonomous UAVs so your point kinda falls flat.

      Global Hawk can fly to Afghanistan, perform its mission, fly home, and freakin' parallel park itself after the operator pushes the "Go take pictures of Afghanistan" button.

      --
      Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
    12. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      This really will only have commercial applications, for non-living cargo.

      The USAF flies an assload of non-combat aircraft. Cargo and tankers.
      Cargo: Take this load of stuff from here to there.
      Tankers: Fly a predetermined racetrack in this area, and come home.

      Yes, there are times when those missions need to deviate. But that might happen on any mission...fighter, cargo, tanker, or otherwise.
      An AI that can take a Global Hawk from Edwards, CA to Oz can fly a typical tanker mission. (until things go weird, anyway)

    13. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1

      but one that is limited to very specialized circumstances akin to interplanetary probes.

      You want to take a kilo from here to there? Perfect.

      --
      Deleted
    14. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by D-Cypell · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Global Hawk can fly to Afghanistan, perform its mission, fly home, and freakin' parallel park itself after the operator pushes the "Go take pictures of Afghanistan" button.

      If you listen really carefully, you can hear the sound of Jeff Bezos rubbing his hands together!

    15. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody usually gets paid either.

    16. Re:Niche operation perhaps... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am a graduate student at a major public university. I just got back today from a three-day mission in which we flew a fixed-wing autonomous aerial vehicle equipped with a high-resolution dSLR camera and an integrated INS/GPS navigation system for georeferenced mapping. The mission was conducted in collaboration with a government agency to monitor the effectiveness of vegetation control. The plane flew 6 flights for over 10 square kilometers of continuous ground coverage without failure or intervention using a commercially available autopilot. Hand launching was conducted both from ground and boat, and both water and ground landings were used. Fully autonomous takeoffs and landings have also been conducted. I'm not sure how this article is news... fully autonomous flight is operationally routine (albeit cutting edge) as far as I am concerned. In fact, it sounds a bit like a press release from a university department struggling for some attention.

  2. obligatory by Dyinobal · · Score: 2, Funny

    I for one welcome our new unmanned robotic aircraft overlords!

    1. Re:obligatory by Sybert42 · · Score: 1

      Why is this obligatory? Besides, any AI-type system wouldn't want to deal with a language as ambiguous as English.

    2. Re:obligatory by Daengbo · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      When I read the summary, all I could think of was the blow-up pilot from Airplane. I think his name was Otto.

      --
      Put identity in the browser.
    3. Re:obligatory by mpeskett · · Score: 1

      I was thinking of that thing too... thought his name was just 'Autopilot'.

      But "Attopilot"? They missed an opportunity for something much funnier...

    4. Re:obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      function()
      {
      torobot.stream.open("welcome")
      }


      Anon delivers.

    5. Re:obligatory by Daengbo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I checked. It's Otto.

      Not to mention, the real star of the film, the kinky and studly Otto the auto pilot. Who is a blow up doll who in order to give him air, you need to blow on his, well you know.

      http://www.matchflick.com/movie-review/7482-899

      --
      Put identity in the browser.
    6. Re:obligatory by wilkinc · · Score: 1

      But "Attopilot"? They missed an opportunity for something much funnier...

      No, he's just a really, really, really tiny pilot!

    7. Re:obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This should be modded funny.

  3. Hasn't this been done before? by Plazmid · · Score: 2, Informative

    Aren't current UAVs capable of flying from waypoint to waypoint with little human intervention. Call me back when they're capable of landing in a crowded urban area autonomously, then taking off again.

    1. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Call me when they are capable of flying through a tunnel and blowing up a few SUV's on the way to the whitehouse

    2. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has had these projects going on for a few years. Pretty badass planes, too - all carbon-fiber.

      Plug a few waypoints in, recognize a few targets and snap pictures. There have been competitions for these for a while. What's new with Purdue?

    3. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let us know how quickly the Secret Service agents make it to your house. I've been wondering if they know any good routes around the traffic in your area ;)

    4. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I imagine your phone's ringing right about now.

    5. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Aren't current UAVs capable of flying from waypoint to waypoint with little human intervention.

      That's probably what keeps the pilots sane. Imagine playing Flight Sim for 12 hour shifts?

    6. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by reset_button · · Score: 1

      Not quite there yet, but I saw a nice Israeli UAV on Futureweapons. You launch by hand, can select a location to "hover" over, and then press "return home". It flies back on its own, points itself in the direction of the wind, and glides down.

    7. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by Mikkeles · · Score: 1

      Just make sure you select the correct home!

      --
      Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
    8. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by kabocox · · Score: 1

      Aren't current UAVs capable of flying from waypoint to waypoint with little human intervention. Call me back when they're capable of landing in a crowded urban area autonomously, then taking off again.

      Um, that's not in the mission profile of any UAV that I've seen. 90% of the mission profiles for UAVs are take off from this airport/base point, fly to x location, and then cycle/wait for y event or until fuel runs low. When fuel runs low, it comes to base and parks exactly in its spot to be refueled. (Some of the really long range planning stuff uses solar cells and stuff to basically stay over location for months at a time or until something else goes wrong with it.) Now, your monitoring missions could be anything. It could be take still pictures, record video, retransmit that video, or have any number of environmental probes. (Think IR, UV, or other stuff.)

      Very few of theses UAVs are for going to X, and dropping a package to Y or trying to shoot Y. In video game land, you might have your UPS UAV land directly by the player, deliver the power up item, and then fly off after it was signed for. In real life, the UPS UAV would be loaded at airport A, fly to airport B, and then be unloaded. The rest of the UPS chain is responsible for getting the package to you.

      I could envision UPS UAVs homing into your GPS cell phone to air bomb your package to you. Do we really want that? I'd rather have R2D2 or such unloading the UPS truck onto our doorstep rather than UAV dropping a package or landing to by me to be unloaded and then to have area to take off again. Come on, be realistic about what to expect.

    9. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I saw that crappy movie - it had that Shy-uh La-Buff dude. Whoa, did that sucker blow.

  4. Quick! by Jeian · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Everyone start making excessive Skynet jokes!

    1. Re:Quick! by psychodave · · Score: 1

      Can any one say HK?

    2. Re:Quick! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

      Everyone start making excessive Skynet jokes!

      I like how this is 'off-topic' but 'skynet' is one of the tags.

      I wouldn't mind but Terminator wasn't even a cautionary tale. Mentioning it when anything is automated IS NOT FUNNY.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    3. Re:Quick! by putch · · Score: 1

      the terminator seems like a cautionary tale to me. i know to steer clear of time travel cyborgs.

      --
      just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
    4. Re:Quick! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the terminator seems like a cautionary tale to me. i know to steer clear of time travel cyborgs.

      One step closer to "Sarah Connor?"

  5. This is already widely done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe the article is really simplifying the whole story, but autonomous flight of small UAVs via programmed waypoints has been done for years. I hope there's more to their research than what was stated, otherwise these guys are really reinventing the wheel.

  6. Ring Ring! by gillbates · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All large commercial aircraft come equipped with automatic pilots which can land the plane in an emergency. Taking off again is largely just an exercise in FAA regulations and the proper engineering. (IOW, because there's little demand for the feature, and the FAA doesn't require it, Boeing, et al, have not implemented it.

    --
    The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
    1. Re:Ring Ring! by Shipud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, but can they land it in the Hudson?

      --
      /sdrawkcab si gis siht
    2. Re:Ring Ring! by pnevin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Even a flock of geese can put a plane in the Hudson, how hard would it be for a computer?

    3. Re:Ring Ring! by Plazmid · · Score: 1

      Here's the challenge though, the human can't choose a landing spot or the human can give a low-res picture of the landing spot from google maps. Oh and not to mention the UAV has to land in when it's windy, sunny, snowy, or while high-rise construction is happening in the area.

    4. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      What you're referring to is Category III autolanding, which in CAT III C has no decision height but instead the aircraft can land completely on its own (30 m in CAT III A and 15 m in B, IIRC). More landings are done that way than not - and all landings if the weather is bad since autopilots do a much better job than humans. Now it is obviously necessary that the airport is equipped with that capability so saying that it is for emergency use is a bit of a stretch since in an emergency you might have to land wherever you can (such as on a river...) - or maybe improvise to get it to the runway despite some techincal malfunction (who needs hydraulics when you can vary thrust?). However, Airbus have begun investigating the possibilities to create a "hijack button", which pilots could press in case of a hijacking and then the aircraft would automagically set its transpoder appropriately, notify ATC and land at the nearest CAT III C runway regardless of what is done with the flight controls since then ("sorry Mr. Terrorist, it's out of our hands now"). AFAIK no aircraft currently in service could, however, be equipped with that without some substantial changes (well, perhaps the A380 could, since it's not only FBW but also power-by-wire).

    5. Re:Ring Ring! by nine-times · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One question that comes to my mind: could advanced autopilot tech lead to more ubiquitous personal aircraft?

      I don't really know anything about it, but I've always assumed that one of the big hurdles preventing us from having "flying cars" (by which I don't necessarily mean an actual car, but something lots of individuals could buy and fly under casual circumstances) is the difficulty of learning to fly safely. If you could program a destination and have the entire trip flown by an autopilot, from takeoff to landing, would that help the situation?

    6. Re:Ring Ring! by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      Hijack buttons get pushed by accident even now. It is hard to imagine that being done without a way to call the landing off.

      And since we are talking about UAVs I should note that autoland assumes that somebody can make sure the runway is clear, either the pilot or the tower controller. If you want your UAV to land on a footpath or road then you have a different problem.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    7. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Planes are also frequently diverted due to a cranky passenger. Any means of calling the landing off would make such a system useless since the hijackers would kill passengers until it was implemented.

    8. Re:Ring Ring! by AmericanInKiev · · Score: 1

      curious...

      You think Category III autopilot can land a plan without power?

    9. Re:Ring Ring! by DaveAtFraud · · Score: 1

      Count the number of disabled cars you see along the road during your typical commute. If they were flying when whatever it was went wrong, just pulling over to the side of the road wouldn't be sufficient. It is sufficient if existing cars just have a few nines of reliability. Once you start flying you need a lot more nines or "Oops, I forgot to buy gas." could be fatal.

      One other big difference that further aggravates the above is the duty cycle required of engines and such once you start flying. A typical car is only rarely accelerated and run at full power. Cruising down the highway only requires about 30% of the power the engine is capable of. Aviation engines run at full power at every takeoff and even cruising takes a substantial amount of the power the engine is capable of. Running things at a higher duty cycle requires a much more robust design. Air and Space magazine had a really good article on this subject a few years back.

      Cheers,
      Dave

      --
      They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
      Ben
    10. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good lord no.

      I used to be a professional pilot... autopilots are outstanding tools, but once the path exceeds 3 degrees plus some change, they are useless.

    11. Re:Ring Ring! by timeOday · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Agreed - the Hudson River ditching killed some of my belief in UAVs.

      The crux wasn't landing in the river, it was deciding to land in the river. Even if remote pilots were on standby to "jump in" and take over in emergencies, there was no time to gain situational awareness.

      Granted, in the long run, computers might have more general intelligence than people and be more trustworthy in making these multi-faceted decisions, but I think that will be a long time coming.

    12. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Spot on. If you think about the size of the support crew for an aircraft, you'll find that it's much more than just the pilot and a mechanic. You have a very strict check regimen, etc etc, all things that are much more critical but harder to do than with a car. People already skimp on oil changes, burned out lightbulbs, etc -- they won't understand why a bent pitot tube is a big deal.

    13. Re:Ring Ring! by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Here is a pilot complaining about the 'modern airplanes almost fly themselves' myth. (You'll need to wait for some ads before the page loads.) And here he talks about the sort of training which produces people able to land a crippled plane on a river instead of a skyscraper.

      The military have autonomous planes, but this isn't really relevant to airliners. The military will (if it has to) accept a crash every thousand flights. The airline industry won't accept a crash every million.

      --
      Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
    14. Re:Ring Ring! by mcrbids · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't really know anything about it, but I've always assumed that one of the big hurdles preventing us from having "flying cars" (by which I don't necessarily mean an actual car, but something lots of individuals could buy and fly under casual circumstances) is the difficulty of learning to fly safely. If you could program a destination and have the entire trip flown by an autopilot, from takeoff to landing, would that help the situation?

      Possibly. Private aviation is, in many ways, a hopelessly archaic niche caused by the combination of limited applicability, high maintenance cost, hungry lawyers eager to make aircraft owners out to be "fat cats" (class warfare) and comprehensive government regulation.

      Cessna tried to make aircraft ownership approachable to the "average Joe" by making the airplanes seem like cars, with yokes that look like steering wheels, and so on. And while Cessna has done (and still does) well as a company, they didn't quite get to the average Joe.

      Personal aircraft are quite neat - they make medium-range trips (up to around 500 miles) into day trips. Just today, I flew 3.9 hours in a Cessna Skyhawk to replace some 10 hours of driving! No traffic, the flight is much more relaxing, and much more fun to boot! You go when you want to. You land at a small, local airport rather than get sheep-herded through endless checkpoints taking your shoes off. And you can take your ratchet screwdriver or coffee cup with you - no questions asked!

      Heck, you can drive your car right out to the plane to throw your luggage into the back!

      But there are some basic disadvantages to aircraft:

      1) You'd never take one down to the local Starbux.

      2) They use a special fuel that's usually more expensive than normal car gas.

      3) Perception: although they have a safety record that's roughly on par with automobiles for traveling, people tend to have strange pictures about what happens when a plane engine dies. "We're going down" is the usual picture, along with a plunging descent that's pretty much guaranteed to kill everybody on board - virtually nothing could be further from the truth. True, when your motor goes kaput, you are going to have to land pretty soon. But it's a controlled landing, as your plane is now a glider. And about 9/10 "forced landings" result in no fatalities or serious injuries whatsoever. Try explaining that to somebody, sometime.

      4) They are generally too bulky to store conveniently, especially in your garage.

      Could it help? Probably. It might make aviation appeal more to the "average Joe", or to at least more people. But doing so would detract from the immersive quality of flying - that feeling of freedom where you can go left, or right, or whatever, because you want to... if your GPS based solution were implemented, I'd sure want the ability to turn it OFF every now and then..

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    15. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      You think a human pilot can land a plane without power?

      All modern aircraft have RATs - i.e. ram air turbines, which deploy automatically in case of a power loss and generate power from the airstream (in the brief period of time the deployment takes, batteries are used).

    16. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good lord no.

      I used to be a professional pilot... autopilots are outstanding tools, but once the path exceeds 3 degrees plus some change, they are useless.

      Yes and I used to be a three-headed monkey with four asses. I won't compliment you by calling your statement a lie since then you would believe you had said something that actually made sense. It seems to me that you have some knowledge of such a thing as a glideslope and believe that you can call it a path. However, a glideslope or an aircrafts deviation from it "exceeds 3 degrees plus some change" has no meaning whatsoever since it makes no sense to express deviation from a glideslope in degrees without specifying distance (and even then it's stupid). Furthermore it's ridiculous to claim that an autopilot cannot make sufficient corrections when an autopilot can intercept the glideslope on its own.

      And as has already been said, autopilots outperform pilots by a margin.

    17. Re:Ring Ring! by Bearhouse · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Indeed, but whilst the such accidents are extremely rare, CFIT (the pilot flies a perfectly-working airplane into the ground) ones not. In fact, they are one of the most common causes of serious accidents & loss of life.

      http://www.flightsafety.org/cfit1.html

      Presumably, UAVs would not have this problem...well, maybe not...

    18. Re:Ring Ring! by D-Cypell · · Score: 1

      Any means of calling the landing off would make such a system useless since the hijackers would kill passengers until it was implemented.

      The passengers are dead regardless (or at least would be put into a position of having to overpower the terrorists), I very much doubt that a bunch of Jihadists, when confronted with the news that the aircraft was on uninterpretable auto-pilot, would just resign to their fate, sit back, eat some peanuts and watch the latest infidel movie from Hollywood.

      At this point (as much as this might leave a bitter taste), the passengers have basically been written off, the goal becomes preventing damage and loss of life on the ground.

    19. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "All large commercial aircraft come equipped with automatic pilots which can land the plane in an emergency"

      Absolute bullshit. It has never successfully been executed, I'd like a citation for this spurious pile of steaming horsehit.

    20. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To avoid it getting press by mistake they can make it a key sequence - how about Ctrl-Alt-Del :)

      While they are at it might as well fill the
      cabin with sleeping gas.

    21. Re:Ring Ring! by Starker_Kull · · Score: 1

      What you're referring to is Category III autolanding, which in CAT III C has no decision height but instead the aircraft can land completely on its own (30 m in CAT III A and 15 m in B, IIRC). More landings are done that way than not - and all landings if the weather is bad since autopilots do a much better job than humans.

      These statements are not quite correct, and reflect a lack of actual experience with such approaches. Generally, there are both visibility and ceiling requirements set for such approaches. The typical visibilty minima for Cat IIIA is 600 feet/175 m RVR and the typical decision height [DH] is 50 feet above touchdown zone height. Cat IIIC is typically 'zero-zero' - no ceiling or visibility minimums are estabilished. Interestingly, the ability to do Cat IIIC landings revolves around rollout control systems. Most autopilots steer via the ailerons, not the rudder, so once the main gear are on the ground and wings level, the autopilot can no longer steer via ailerons, and a human has to take over via rudder and ground steering. For a human to take over, he/she has to be able to see a little bit! Hence, the need for the autopilot to have a rollout control system if you want truly 'blind' landings....

      However, to say, 'more landings are done that way than not' is completely inaccurate. The vast majority of landings by commerical aircraft are done by hand. You forget that in order to even be authorized to autoland, the ILS critical area on the ground must be cleared, a step most control towers are loathe to do unless necessary, as these critical areas frequently encompass heavily used ground areas. This critical area clearence is one of the reasons the maximum arrival rate for most commerical airports drops precipitiously when low IFR conditions exist.

      Also, to say the autopilot does a better job than humans at landing is inaccurate - it does a different job than a human. In conditions of low/unusual visibility, with a poor transition between instrument and visual flying, the autopilot generally performs better, since it relies on radio signals and not visual cues. This is only one, somewhat uncommon, landing profile. Autopilots generally do worse at dealing with windshear and other rapid changes in windspeed. This fact is typically encoded into aircraft flight manuals in the limitations section, where autolands are prohibited when the surface winds exceed fairly low parameters, far lower than the aircraft is capable of (and frequently does) operating in. On the 737 at my airline, the max headwind/x-wind/tailwind components allowed for autoland are 25/15/10 knots, respectively - limits that are exceeded by actual conditions quite frequently.

      Also, many commerical airports do not have Cat III approaches, and are unlikely to get them any time soon...

      I guess my point is that, while the technology exists, and is used, it's also quite limited and impractical for common day-to-day ops as it currently stands... I have no doubt it will happen someday, but 'someday' is decades away presently.

      Besides, there is something even harder than flying an airplane - taxiing it! ;-)

    22. Re:Ring Ring! by Starker_Kull · · Score: 1

      One question that comes to my mind: could advanced autopilot tech lead to more ubiquitous personal aircraft? I don't really know anything about it, but I've always assumed that one of the big hurdles preventing us from having "flying cars" (by which I don't necessarily mean an actual car, but something lots of individuals could buy and fly under casual circumstances) is the difficulty of learning to fly safely. If you could program a destination and have the entire trip flown by an autopilot, from takeoff to landing, would that help the situation?

      A little, but not much. The main difficulty in learning to fly safely has less to do with physical skill and far more to do with good judgement. Airplanes still are rather marginal beasts, in the sense that they can easily be flown into situations that are rather hard to get out of. Let's assume that we have invented and installed a magical autopilot system that does what you described. What situations will it help with, and which ones will it not help with?

      IT WILL HELP WHEN...

      - A pilot gets lost. Hopefully this problem will go away.

      - A pilot flies into unexpected IFR (instrument) flying conditions. Press the button, and the airplane magically keeps itself upright and lands them somewhere safe. This is probably the biggest gain in safety right here.

      - A pilot 'loses it' - gets airsick, incapacitated, etc.

      IT WON'T HELP WHEN...

      - The pilot doesn't put enough fuel on for the flying they want to do. This is, sadly, more common than you would think.

      - The pilot flies into thunderstorms, freezing rain, etc. Bad weather that can knock a plane from the sky has always existed, and pilots keep flying into it. Our abilities to automatically predict and avoid such weather is still very, very limited.

      - The pilot doesn't maintain the aircraft or magic autopilot system, and something breaks at an inoppurtune time.

      - The pilot overloads the aircraft with too much stuff, or balances it badly. The predictable (but unknown to the autopilot) lack of performance that will result could be deadly.

      - And, of course, engine failures requiring off-airport landings. The recent USAir landing in the Hudson illustrates where a skilled human is most valuable.

      Food for thought.

    23. Re:Ring Ring! by nine-times · · Score: 1

      The pilot doesn't put enough fuel on for the flying they want to do....The pilot flies into thunderstorms, freezing rain, etc....The pilot doesn't maintain the aircraft or magic autopilot system...

      I guess I was imagining that a sufficiently intelligent system might be able to account for some thing. For example, when you set the destination in your autopilot, it calculates a flight plan, calculates the needed fuel (plus some extra for safety), and checks weather reports for possible problems. Perhaps it also checks some self-diagnostics and has records of a maintenance schedule and won't fly unless the right conditions are met.

      And, of course, engine failures requiring off-airport landings. The recent USAir landing in the Hudson illustrates where a skilled human is most valuable.

      Perhaps in those cases you could still have the autopilot guide the plane to a decent outcome? But even if we imagined that those circumstances were always going to be fatal, it still might result in fewer fatalities than car traffic.

      To be clear, I'm not trying to say your wrong, and I'm not predicting that we'll all have flying cars in the next 5 years. You raise some helpful objections. I just find the prospect slightly interesting, because I think we (as a society) will have to reevaluate many of our transportation choices in the coming decades.

    24. Re:Ring Ring! by Starker_Kull · · Score: 1

      It IS interesting... and there are many areas of progress where a little applied automation can go quite far. I'm just trying to point out that the actual mechanical acts of taking off from an arbitrary airport, climbing, crusing, approaching, and landing at an arbitrary airport, are NOT the hardest problems - they are pretty close to solved today, in the sense that we know how to build and deploy a system that would do these things...

      The harder problem is of the kind that bedevils game designers and other programmers who are trying to implement AI. We still don't have a good handle on how to give computers 'good judgement', or handle risk analysis for previously unknown, or highly complex situations. To date, the most successful UAV's have human pilots to make the judgement calls.

      I'm actually more interested in seeing fully automated driving than flying. When someone deploys a car where you can get in, punch in a destination, and have it safely transport you there, I'll know flying is about to go the same way....

      Of course, this doesn't even touch upon when it will be cost-effective to go that way!

    25. Re:Ring Ring! by nine-times · · Score: 1

      We still don't have a good handle on how to give computers 'good judgement',

      I guess part of my point is that some of the problems you mention might be simpler than real AI problems. Weather, for example, might be a variable that could be handled by having a human look at a weather report and designate a risk level for a given span of airspace. The AI could connect to the service, download a map, read that the route it's about to calculate runs straight through a weather advisory, and tell you, "Nope. We can't go today. Maybe if you wait a few hours, we'll see if the weather improves."

      Or if you have sufficient wireless communication, the autopilot could even connect to the weather advisory service mid-flight, say, "Oops, we're headed towards a weather system that's worse than we thought when we took off. I'm going to reroute to the closest airport and we'll wait this out."

      Not that the whole thing is quite that easy, but if the actual take-off/flying/landing part is all taken care of, then I think you could probably tackle the rest in order to come up with a set of flying conditions that allow you to label a situation "safe" for the AI to handle the whole flight.

      I'm actually more interested in seeing fully automated driving than flying.

      That problem actually seems like it'd be much harder, since there are so many moving and untracked solid object here on the ground.

    26. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hijack buttons get pushed by accident even now.

      Give me one example. A single one. Do you even know what "hijack buttons" exist in airliners today? Evidently you don't, if you believe that it's even possible to press it by accident - the only signal apart from (voice) radio communication by pilots is to set the transponder to 7500.

    27. Re:Ring Ring! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not sure how correct the parent (to your post) is but I do wonder about a couple of things:

      Most autopilots steer via the ailerons, not the rudder,

      Do autopilots not perform coordinated turns then?

      On the 737 at my airline, the max headwind/x-wind/tailwind components allowed for autoland are 25/15/10 knots, respectively - limits that are exceeded by actual conditions quite frequently.

      Aren't Airbus (and the 777) with all their fancy FBW controls an order of magnitude more advanced than the 737 (and other Boeings)?

  7. This was a triumph. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Huge success.

  8. This isn't so awesome, I could do it. by t0qer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hi because I go to a university so I can buy any off the shelf RC aircraft autopilot, throw it in a prebuilt airplane, throw it in the air and get school credits!

    Here's another brand of autopilot.
    http://www.u-nav.com/

    Here's a ton of videos of it being used in
    http://www.u-nav.com/gallery.html

    I'm a high school dropout who is perfectly capable of doing this. Yawwwn. Try doing something I can't do, like contributing code to an OSS autopilot package.

    http://autopilot.sourceforge.net/

    I'm sorry mods, slash... I just felt this story was too stupid for myself, therefore it must have been too stupid for the general /./pub Please do not mistake my cynical writing as flames. This story should be modded as

    -1 unimpressive

  9. Why is this new? by jackb_guppy · · Score: 1

    This is called a cruise-missile.

    The fore runner of a cruise-missile was Kamikaze of WWII. 9/11 planes were the largest. Then again a suicide-boomer is a walking form.

    Now we are making planes smart, to duplicate the ability of cruise-missile.

    So when will it get a warhead?

    1. Re:Why is this new? by Plazmid · · Score: 1

      Probably by Thursday. Unfortunately this technology has just become unregulatable, given high-availability of cheap microcontrollers, RC-planes, and GPS units.

    2. Re:Why is this new? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no "just" about it. But why is that unfortunate?

    3. Re:Why is this new? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cruise missiles don't need to land. With all the intelligence in a cruise missile all you have is a 60 ton bomb filled with a few hundred people.

    4. Re:Why is this new? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      The fore runner of a cruise-missile was Kamikaze of WWII.

      The V-1 buzz bomb was a real WWII cruise missile.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    5. Re:Why is this new? by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Think "Terrorist".

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    6. Re:Why is this new? by couchslug · · Score: 1

      "The fore runner of a cruise-missile was Kamikaze of WWII."

      No, it was the German V-1.

      The Japanese Oka version used people because they were cheap and available.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    7. Re:Why is this new? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

      Now we are making planes smart, to duplicate the ability of cruise-missile.

      So when will it get a warhead?

      Who needs a warhead when the plane has nearly-full tanks of jet fuel and enough velocity and hot parts to light it off when it hits?

      The 9/11 crews proved this. You can see the second twin-towers plane bank at the last moment so the fuel-filled wings puncture, flood, and light several consecutive stories - and the holes show the first one did the same. This lit enough stories of fire (and provided air holes to keep it from suffocating) that they eventually heat-weakened enough of the cross-bracing structure to collapse the buildings.

      Think "rough equivalent of a planeload of napalm".

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    8. Re:Why is this new? by Hucko · · Score: 1

      I still don't see how the children are involved...

      --
      Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
    9. Re:Why is this new? by Bastard+of+Subhumani · · Score: 1

      The Japanese one is more similar to a cruise missile, in the sense that it had an onboead guidance syatem.

      --
      Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
  10. Let me sum this up for all of you. by Monoliath · · Score: 1

    It will never land by itself.

    Yeah, I said 'never'.

    1. Re:Let me sum this up for all of you. by sbeckstead · · Score: 1

      You are wrong! Yes I said Wrong

      --
      Why bother
    2. Re:Let me sum this up for all of you. by forceman130 · · Score: 2, Informative

      It will never land by itself. Yeah, I said 'never'.

      Why not? The Global Hawk already does.

      --
      Wow, a 7 digit ID - let that be a lesson in the perils of procrastination.
    3. Re:Let me sum this up for all of you. by Bastard+of+Subhumani · · Score: 1

      How's the ride in one of those? When I fly it tends to be an A320 or an MD-80.

      --
      Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
  11. OLD technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This technology has been around at least 10 years now. The only thing about AttoPilot is that is one small package that handles the servo control, positioning, and attitude sensing in one package, rather than the multiple packages that I have seen. Heck, my senior design project did exactly this, and that was done by undergraduates on the cheap.

    Just flying waypoints with aircraft has been done ad nauseum. New efforts (besides integration into the National Airspace) include having the aircraft autonomously set their own waypoints and routes in order to meet a certain goal, such as maintaining an optimal communication link, or surveying a specified area in a minimum of time.

    See the aircraft labs at University of Colorado at Boulder Aerospace Engineering Department, along with plenty of other universities (and no doubt military labs as well).

    I recall reading in Aviation Week (or DTI) that Boeing's UCAS demonstrator will be landing on an aircraft carrier this year, now THAT is an autopilot achievement that goes way beyond just flying waypoints.

  12. yawn by Dolphinzilla · · Score: 1

    this has been done so many times its not funny - the problem with wide fielding outside of the military context is getting the FAA to let autonomous vehicles fly in national controlled airspace - its unlikely to happen anytime soon until such a system can exhibit all the robustness necessary to prevent a robot airplane from auguring into someones house or a school or a church or....

    1. Re:yawn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean like that manned military jet in San Diego didn't not manage to do?

    2. Re:yawn by sbeckstead · · Score: 1

      Um yeah it didn't manage to not augur in to someone's house right!

      --
      Why bother
    3. Re:yawn by karlwilson · · Score: 1

      No he means like that manned aircraft that was able to successfully land in the Hudson.

    4. Re:yawn by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      You mean like that manned military jet in San Diego didn't not manage to do?

      When the aircraft is no longer flying...i.e. not enough thrust to maintain lift, or completely broken flight controls, it matters little who in theoretical control, a human or a silicon chip. At that point, Sir Isaac is flying the aircraft, and it WILL land where he wants.

      The pilot in San Diego was trying to nurse it enough to get to the canyon. Didn't make it. There was nothing more he could do. Could silicon have made a better choice?
      The pilot of the Hudson Airbus did have just enough speed/altitude to make the river landing. The bird strike a few seconds earlier would not have left him the option of the river.
      In any case, we are not at the point of being able to program that decision tree into the AI.

  13. A great addition for crowded airspace! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't wait for local law enforcement to use these things for crowd surveillance in my local crowded class-B airspace. It's going to be awesome to have non-pilots sharing critical airspace over urban areas. How about we have non-drivers deciding where robots should go in the middle of a big city?

  14. Humans like Human Pilots by mrsquid0 · · Score: 1

    The real question is, will people willingly get on an aeroplane that does not have a human pilot on board? I suspect that it will be hard to convince most people to do this.

    --
    Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
    1. Re:Humans like Human Pilots by spinlight · · Score: 1

      Bingo. Broad acceptance by the general populace is the largest obstacle to any autonomous solution; whether its automating a warehouse, a farm operation, or flying an airplane. Of course, an airplane, unlike the other ideas, involves putting your own life at risk. I'll take the train, thank you, and let someone else ride for the first few hundred flights or so.

      --
      "I do not avoid women, Mandrake . . . but I do deny them my essence." - Gen. Ripper
    2. Re:Humans like Human Pilots by Dupple · · Score: 1

      They do, but plenty use the DLR every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway

      --
      Watch those corners
    3. Re:Humans like Human Pilots by Shakrai · · Score: 1

      I can think of at least one good reason to like human pilots. Would you rather have a computer trying to pull that off or a human being?

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    4. Re:Humans like Human Pilots by durrr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ditching passenger aircrafts are not all too hard according to the statistics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing#Survival_rates_of_passenger_plane_water_ditchings

      I'm quite sure that a real autopilot would have enough emergency landing routines to pull it off quite good too.

    5. Re:Humans like Human Pilots by mysidia · · Score: 1

      A suitable computer could eventually execute such maneuvers more reliably.

      I'm more concerned about other possible problems and computers not doing what they ought to.

    6. Re:Humans like Human Pilots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stupidest comparison ever. Trains aren't planes, one of them was invented 100 years before the other. Care to guess why?

    7. Re:Humans like Human Pilots by ImWithBrilliant · · Score: 1

      I'm working a very fast cargo transport UAV for DoD that, after cargo delivery to the soldiers, has enough capacity to hold several people. It will have no pilot or joystick, rather flying blind like a cruise missile to its next waypoint.

      Now tell me that if you are combat wounded or reacting to a poisonous snake bite, you'd rather wait for medical treatment via the next piloted lift dispatched once/or if it's safe enough for them? I predict MASH-style evacuations will happen sooner than later.

      --

      Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?

    8. Re:Humans like Human Pilots by Starker_Kull · · Score: 1

      Ditching passenger aircrafts are not all too hard according to the statistics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing#Survival_rates_of_passenger_plane_water_ditchings [wikipedia.org] I'm quite sure that a real autopilot would have enough emergency landing routines to pull it off quite good too.

      Well, by that definition, there is not a 'real' autopilot in the world. Did you even bother to READ the wikipedia article you posted? Let me summarize the stats for you:

      15-Jan-2009: USAir 1549 - 0% fatal
      06-Aug-2005: Tuninter 1153 - 49% fatal
      16-Jan-2002: Guruda 421 - 2% fatal
      23-Nov-1996: Ethiopian 961 - 71% fatal
      02-May-1970: ALM 980 - 37% fatal
      21-Aug-1963: Aeroflot ??? - 0% fatal
      04-Oct-1960: Eastern 375 - 86% fatal
      ??-Oct-1956: PanAm 943 - 0% fatal
      ??-Apr-1956: Northwest 2 - 13% fatal
      19-Jun-1954: Swissair ??? - 25% fatal
      16-Apr-1952: ??? - 0% fatal

      All I can conclude from these numbers, spread over 50 years, from piston to turboprop to turbofan powered airplanes, ditched in winter, summer, rivers, oceans, bays, and every other concevable condition, is that a) Ditchings are very rare, and b) It's more likely than not some people are going to croak.

      In addition, the survival rates say NOTHING about how difficult it is to pull off a ditching, particularly for this theoretical 'real' autopilot that doesn't exist yet. Every ditching here was done by human pilots, not autopilots.

      Think of it this way. How do you program an autopilot to ditch? When is it a good idea, and when is it not? For instance, PanAm 943 lost two of its four engines. But rather than ditching immediately, it circled around the USCGC Pontchartrain until dawn, THEN ditched - plucking people out of the ocean in daylight is far easier than at night. Would you have been able to program an autopilot to make that decision?

      Another issue - river landings, which were 3 of the 11 ditchings listed above. There is usually very little margin for error landing on a narrow river. The 95% confidence radius of position (sometimes called ANP, for Actual Navigational Performance) most modern airliners is typically about .3 nautical miles in typical conditions. That is FAR too low to execute a river landing if the river is less than a mile wide! In addition, how do you avoid ships by autopilot?

      The realities of ditching are far more complex than you allow for.

  15. Global Hawk? by scotartt · · Score: 1

    ahhh ... Global Hawk anybody? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-4_Global_Hawk

    "The Global Hawk is the first UAV to be certified by the FAA to file its own flight plans and use civilian air corridors in the United States with no advance notice.[21] This potentially paves the way for a revolution in unmanned flight, including that of remotely piloted cargo or passenger airliners."

    and

    "On April 24, 2001 a Global Hawk flew non-stop from Edwards in the US to RAAF Base Edinburgh in Australia, making history by being the first pilotless aircraft to cross the Pacific Ocean. The flight took 22 hours, and set a world record for absolute distance flown by a UAV, 13,219.86 kilometers (8,214.44 mi).[27][28]"

    --
    -A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed-
  16. Palindromic Acronyms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just have to point out that the acronym for the title of this post is a palindrome.

    That is all.

    1. Re:Palindromic Acronyms by mindwanderer · · Score: 1

      And if it happened to be an unnamed chopper named TAUT, we'd have a recursive palindromic onomatopeic acronym.

      --
      :wq
    2. Re:Palindromic Acronyms by mindwanderer · · Score: 1

      Ugh, I should learn not to post at 3AM.

      --
      :wq
  17. AntiSAT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What if we fight an enemy with antisat tech?

  18. Cruise missile tech by slashdotmsiriv · · Score: 1

    The 80's called and want their GPS-guided cruise missile technology back or at least acknowledged

  19. Where have we seen this before? by sloomis · · Score: 1

    Man this sounds familiar, where have we seen this before?
    Oh yeah, here
    And we all know how that turned out. Err, maybe not no one in their right mind watched that movie

    1. Re:Where have we seen this before? by catalina · · Score: 1

      Science fiction, ca 1950? Watchbird?

  20. In unrelated news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... A six foot tall naked, muscular austrian man suddenly appeared at a biker bar. Wintessess commented that he was muttering about "getting to the chopper, now", it "not being a tumor", and "being a cop, you idiot".

    We'll have more news at 10:00 PM.

  21. Last time around, AttaPilot did not work so well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The last time anyone experimented with AttaPilot, he flew the plane straight into a building.

  22. What is in a name...? by corychristison · · Score: 1

    If I were the decision maker to choose the name, I would have named it Otto.

  23. Global Hawk just uses a keyboard by gnieboer · · Score: 2, Informative

    As was mentioned above (I tried to reply to that one but web page errors wouldn't allow) the RQ-4 does this and more.

    Unlike the well known Predator UAV, the Global Hawk control panel has no joystick or similar control. It's got a keyboard and mouse.
    If you want it to turn left, you type/click commands to alter it's course etc.

    What I think is particularly interesting is that it has a set of commands to follow if it loses communications with the humans. So if on the trip to Australia comms had been lost partway, it could have automatically diverted itself to another field etc.

    The biggest issue here that remains is not technical really, it's about airspace, and the FAA trying to figure out a way that a computer can fly an aircraft in the same airspace as manned aircraft. Manned aircraft after all follow FAA controller's directions, and a computer that loses comm will not be able to. FAA approvals for current RQ-4 operations have been very limited AFAIK. There are solutions (manned aircraft lose radios too), but I'm sure no one wants to be on the commercial airliner that's part of the airspace deconfliction beta test :), so they are taking their time to make sure it's done right/safely.

  24. So how does it handle ... by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

    ... collision avoidance? And air traffic control interface?

    Taking off, flying GPS waypoints, and landing, are a lot easier if you're the only thing in the sky and can do anything you want.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    1. Re:So how does it handle ... by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 1

      Collision avoidance is handled by listening for another plane frame, then backing off for a random time before attempting to proceed.
      Oh, wait, sorry, that's Ethernet.

      --
      Not a sentence!
  25. Great! by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1

    Give the terminators wings. Then we'll be all ready for SkyNet.

    I for one welcome our new robotic (literally) overlords.

    --
    That is all.
  26. A more fitting name by AwintermuteI · · Score: 1

    I think a more 9/11-reminiscent name would be "AttaPilot".

  27. AttaPilot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Word is in the underground that through chinese industrial spies AlQuaeda allready have their hands on this technology. They've cracked it and rebranded it to AttaPilot and plan to use it on 911.v2... werd..

  28. Liability insurance? by jtgd · · Score: 1

    Gee I wonder what insurance company is handling the liability for when the GPS fails and it crashes into a house and kills someone.

    --
    J
    1. Re:Liability insurance? by CompMD · · Score: 1

      Let the GPS fail, the inertial navigation system will take over and navigate back to base. No big deal. Heck I did this years ago in school.

      But that would require knowing something about aircraft and UAVs and not screaming about how the sky is falling.

    2. Re:Liability insurance? by jtgd · · Score: 1

      Well I was referring to general failure of the system. When a plane fails, the pilot ususally steers the plane in a valiant attempt to avoid signs of humanity. That would be absent in this robotic system.

      --
      J
    3. Re:Liability insurance? by CompMD · · Score: 1

      General failure on a UAV that is big enough to crash into a house and kill people would require one of the following:

      1) Failure of redundant navigation systems (GPS/INS/photogrammetric navigation)
      2) Failure of redundant power supplied to aforementioned navigation systems
      3) Failure of redundant computers storing course data and mission planning

      Generally, if any one of these has occurred, its because the aircraft has been shot at and is falling to the ground in several pieces already. "When a plane fails" is an oversimplified statement; the window of failures that must occur for the plane to on the edge of loss of all flight critical systems is very, very small. Flight critical systems are usually triple redundant, mission critical systems are usually redundant. If something happens to an aircraft that defeats flight critical redundancy, something else Real Bad happened to that aircraft.

  29. sounds like a cheap way to advertise. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This sounds like a cheap way to advertise the ATTOPILOT system. (Lots of traffic by getting slash-dotted.) Someone submits a story about this awesome new technology that you can buy that allows you to install an auto-pilot like system into your RC plane. The only problem is THIS IS NOT NEW TECHNOLOGY! (Does anyone verify these stories for accuracy?) First, the military has had this for well over a decade now. Second, www.micropilot.com has had this same technology for as long as I can remember (8+ years). Someone please try and tell me I am wrong and I will tell you about my 4 years in the military (2001-2005) flying the RQ-7A (Shadow 200) that is just a point and click flight system like the RQ-4 (Global Hawk), just with a much shorter range.

  30. Home made UAVs by Xest · · Score: 1

    What's perhaps more interesting is that nowadays even hobbyists can build UAVs as an extension of the radio controlled aircraft hobby.

    Stuff like that in the article can be built by even hobbyists thanks to the few open source autopilot projects out there and the decreasing price and shrinking size and weight of digital cameras, wireless technology and other relevant components. I'm mostly interested in swarm robotics at the moment, but I must admit I'm somewhat tempted at having a go at building one myself, although I'm not sure what the legality is in the UK. Certainly in the US it seems to be legal at least if you stay within the altitude limits and such for RC aircraft.

    It's always interesting when the more cool military tech that is often seen as state of the art for the military can be developed both by mega-corps and also on a smaller scale by hobbyists.

    Perhaps someone should build a fleet of them and keep a constant monitor on Jacqui Smith streamed to the web to make a point of how surveillance is a bad thing. Right now she keeps implementing or pushing to implement surveillance laws simply because as an MP they don't effect her so she can't possibly know why people dislike them.

  31. Nothing new here... by thefekete · · Score: 1

    These guys have been at it for a long time and seem to have decent results already. Makes me wonder why they're testing a proprietary module, when they could hack an open source platform.

    --
    The cool things is to have windows that bounce up and down like a good tits.
  32. Re:Nice operation perhaps... by MRe_nl · · Score: 1

    Roger that.
    We have to find someone who can not only fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner.

    --
    "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
  33. We'll need a management system by blootooth · · Score: 1

    Autonomous UAVs. Excellent! If we could get multiple armed services and multiple domestic services all using AUAVs for various purposes we could build a system to manage their interactions in airspace. We could call it The Sky Network.

    --
    Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation
  34. Gumstix and UAV's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the advance in the shrinking of computing power, it's possibe to get a linux OS into a small airframe. Gumstix are quite capable of manipulating flight surfaces and reading sensor information.

    http://www.wildride.org.uk

  35. Small unmanned UAVs have been around for years by gbr · · Score: 1

    A Canadian company MicroPilot has been sending small unmanned aircraft into the skies for years. Attopilot is nothing new.

    1. Re:Small unmanned UAVs have been around for years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and we Americans invented the airplane..

      nothing new.

  36. bad choice of name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that's a little too close to 'AttaPilot' for me.

  37. 1 warhead away by Gyorg_Lavode · · Score: 1

    This is 1 warhead away from a cruise missile. We've had air vehicles who could fly themselves by GPS for years.

    --
    I do security
  38. Skynet? by Lord+Ikon · · Score: 1

    Someone is finally going to give Skynet some wings.

    --
    "I'll be whatever I wanna do!" - Philip J. Fry
  39. WORST.POSSIBLE.NAME by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too many people will confuse Atto with Atta.

  40. Uber-Drone Do-It-Yourself Projekt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone interested in building himself a swarm of uber-drones to destroy MS, conquer the world or just to pick up a Jolt at the store next door, have a look at this http://mikrokopter.de/en

    And yes, it can flow to programmable GPS waypoints (i.e. has a kind of autopilot)

  41. "Atto-Pilot"? by mencomenco · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one to read this as "Atta-Pilot"?

    Kinda scary if you ask me (of course, nobody did...)