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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."

6 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

    --
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    1. 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?

    2. 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..

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    3. 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...

  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. 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.