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Toward Autonomous Unmanned Aircraft Technology
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."
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.
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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).