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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."

25 of 137 comments (clear)

  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 pnevin · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    2. 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
    3. 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.

    4. 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.
    5. 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.

    6. 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!
    7. 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!

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

    I for one welcome our new unmanned robotic aircraft overlords!

  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: 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?

  4. 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 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).

    4. 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?

    5. 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.

    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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...

  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. 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.
  8. 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.

  9. 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.