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Silicon Valley Takes a (Careful) Step Toward Autonomous Flying (nytimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the another-crack-at-it dept.

Last week, at a tiny airport in the dusty flatlands east of San Francisco, a red-and-white helicopter lifted gently into the air, hovering a few feet over the tarmac. It looked like any other helicopter, except for the small black cube attached to its nose. From a report: Local officials spent the week testing this aircraft for a new emergency service, due for launch in January, that will respond to 911 calls via the air. But as this helicopter moves police officers and medical workers over the San Joaquin Valley, it will feed a more ambitious project. That black cube is part of a growing effort to build small passenger aircraft that can fly on their own. Today, the helicopter is flown by seasoned pilots. But the new emergency service will be operated by SkyRyse, a Silicon Valley start-up that intends to augment small helicopters and other passenger aircraft with hardware and software that allow for autonomous flight, leaning on many of the same technologies that power driverless cars. These include the 360-degree cameras and radar sensors built into the nose of the aircraft.

"There are many things that must come to fruition before autonomous aircraft start flying people," said Mark Groden, a co-founder and the chief executive of SkyRyse. "But we are developing the technology that can take us there." Sikorsky, a subsidiary of the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, and Xwing, another Silicon Valley start-up, are fashioning similar technology. Others, including Aurora, a company now owned by Boeing, are exploring autonomous flight as they build a new kind of electrical aircraft for "flying taxi services." The initial business plan for Uber's air taxi service, which it hopes to start in five to 10 years, said it would eventually remove pilots from the aircraft.

21 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. wtf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Intel can't make CPUs, all software has bugs, with an endless litany of them undiscovered yet.

    Google's cars can't turn left (buggy), no self driving car has yet realistically proven itself in 'all conditions', yet people want FLYING tonnes of steel to be zooming around with hackable, unproven self-flying routines.

    These aren't even planes, which STILL have pilots... and multiple computers. Those beasts have heavy maintenance schedules, but when this stuff gets "out" there, is there going to be maintenance checks, visual ones, daily? Weekly? Yearly?

    Bah.

    Madness.

    1. Re:wtf by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      Madness.

      Madness? This is the Valley!

      --
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    2. Re:wtf by Halueth · · Score: 1

      To me, autonomous flying is a lot easier than driving. You have no pedestrians, traffic lights and signs, lines on the road indicating A, B and C. In the air you only have to monitor the ground (static) and other objects in the air, which are a magnitude less in numbers than on the road. So this might be a lot more viable than autonomous driving.

    3. Re:wtf by thej1nx · · Score: 2

      Minor nitpick. Be fair. Turning left is a "buggy" issue even for human drivers. As per statistics, accidents happening due to left turns are 10 times more than accidents happening while turning right.

      http://www.driverless-future.c...

    4. Re:wtf by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

      Flying tons of steel?

      My airplane weighs ~1900lbs empty and seats 6 people... and has a gross weight of 3400lbs. That's about half of what your average 6-passenger SUV weighs. (My 4-passenger pickup truck is 6500lbs EMPTY).

      I feel much safer in the air than I do on the ground, owing to the high degree of situational awareness and control over air traffic. Driving on the road is just mayhem to me.

    5. Re:wtf by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      My 4-passenger pickup truck is 6500lbs EMPTY

      Unless you're rolling around in an extended-cab 3/4-ton diesel, I'm guessing you're getting GVWR confused with curb weight.

    6. Re:wtf by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

      Nope, I am not.

      Curb weight is 6651. GVWR is 8800. (According to the FMVSS label). It's a 1/2 ton Diesel.

  2. Aircraft cost vs pilot cost by monkeyxpress · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They are focusing on the wrong problem. Chartering a helicopter with pilot costs around $400-600 (depends a lot on location and type of helicopter). Yet if you search for helicopter pilot wages, it comes out at about $40-60 per hour. So even if their expensive autonomous box completely replaces the need for a pilot it would only reduce the cost of helicopter travel by around 10%. I doubt that is going to cause a sudden explosion in helicopter travel.

    The real cost is in the helicopter, which is an expensive machine to start with that has to be regularly maintained and inspected to ensure it doesn't decide to fall out of the sky.

    At least electric helicopter startups offer some ideas on how they might reduce maintenance costs (by having fewer moving parts) but even then, I think these people just do not understand how much extra cost and effort separates the buggy, cobbled together PHP code they used in their last insta cat book website startup, and safety critical software/hardware that cannot be allowed to kill people.

    1. Re:Aircraft cost vs pilot cost by imgod2u · · Score: 1

      Wage is not the actual cost of a person though. Typical overhead can be 1.5-2.5x. Not to mention something as variable as on-demand pilots probably make that overhead north of 3x.

      So now we're talking 150-200$ out of 400-600$. A sizable chunk.

      Also, the pilot adds extra weight. An autonomous passenger drone can be much smaller and lighter, reducing fuel and manufacturing costs. You might eventually squeeze a 1 hour ride down to ~200$ just with current technology (plus autonomous flight).

  3. The future is coming by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    So firetrucks will also be hit from above instead from behind?

  4. Re:Crawl before you walk by thej1nx · · Score: 1

    Humans have problems turning left too. The chances of having an accident while turning left are ten times higher than turning right, in US.
    Try not to make this a Google car "thing"

    http://www.driverless-future.c...

  5. Autonomous by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    "Today, the helicopter is flown by seasoned pilots"

    I've noticed this about the self-driving cars and other vehicles: they sure have a lot of drivers in them.

  6. Our ATC System isn't designed for this by bkmoore · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I'm a professional pilot. If we want autonomous flight, we really need to be looking at the way we manage airspace and control air traffic. In principle it's been done much the same way since the 1960s. ATC uses radar or their eyeballs in the tower to see aircraft, then they give aircraft voice instructions on radio. How do you talk to a drone? The drone people say that's easy, you just tell the drone operator what to do. But then you're back to having a human "pilot" in the loop and you have to pay this human drone operator a meaningful salary. To completely remove the human, you would have to revise the way we control air traffic, especially around our major airports. How much time and money are these startups investing in solving the ATC problem? It's the same problem autonomous vehicles have driving on old fashioned roads, only far more complex because the computer cannot simply stop and put on the warning lights.

    On an unrelated note, I had the auto-pilot go out at 37,000 feet the other week. The air data computer had a malfunction and the autopilot could not figure out the airspeed and altitude. The passengers in the back didn't notice because we had two human pilots who took over manually and continued to fly the aircraft safely to the destination. We've been working on automation since Sperry put a gyroscope in a primitive biplane back in 1912. After 106 years of constant refinement, contrary to popular opinion, airplanes do not fly themselves reliably and we still need humans up front for safe operation. While I am sure drones are useful for things such as aerial photography, banner towing, etc. I do not see drones carrying people within my lifetime. If they did, it would be more of an aerial stunt than a viable, safe method of transporting people. I've seen automation fail too many times, and would not trust one enough to put my family on it. You shouldn't either.

    1. Re:Our ATC System isn't designed for this by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

      I'm a professional pilot. If we want autonomous flight, we really need to be looking at the way we manage airspace and control air traffic. In principle it's been done much the same way since the 1960s. ATC uses radar or their eyeballs in the tower to see aircraft, then they give aircraft voice instructions on radio. How do you talk to a drone? The drone people say that's easy, you just tell the drone operator what to do. But then you're back to having a human "pilot" in the loop and you have to pay this human drone operator a meaningful salary. To completely remove the human, you would have to revise the way we control air traffic, especially around our major airports. How much time and money are these startups investing in solving the ATC problem? It's the same problem autonomous vehicles have driving on old fashioned roads, only far more complex because the computer cannot simply stop and put on the warning lights.

      Once(if) autonomous flying aircraft reach a critical mass, would you really need ATC? If all the drones can network and communicate between themselves ATC isn't really necessary. Each drone would automatically know where all the others are, their flight paths/flight level, etc. Seems like an unnecessary middleman at that point.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    2. Re:Our ATC System isn't designed for this by conoviator · · Score: 1

      Hopefully, Silicon Valley's naivety about real-world complexity doesn't kill too many people before more mature leadership arrives, or the presently abundant investor money dries up. Pilot projects will quickly reveal how unprepared current technology is for handling corner cases where the system failure modes kill people, rather than just cause a BSD.

    3. Re:Our ATC System isn't designed for this by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      I'm a professional pilot. If we want autonomous flight, we really need to be looking at the way we manage airspace and control air traffic. In principle it's been done much the same way since the 1960s. ATC uses radar or their eyeballs in the tower to see aircraft, then they give aircraft voice instructions on radio. How do you talk to a drone? The drone people say that's easy, you just tell the drone operator what to do. But then you're back to having a human "pilot" in the loop and you have to pay this human drone operator a meaningful salary. To completely remove the human, you would have to revise the way we control air traffic, especially around our major airports. How much time and money are these startups investing in solving the ATC problem? It's the same problem autonomous vehicles have driving on old fashioned roads, only far more complex because the computer cannot simply stop and put on the warning lights.

      ATC is slowly being modernized. Perhaps you've heard of NextGen, or even the most critical part of it, ADS-B? It's gotten to the point where there actually is worldwide adoption of ADS-B (though it's not the same - the US has terrestrial ADS-B, many countries are opting for space-based ADS-B. The US is different only because there is so much air traffic that any space-based system would be overwhelmed).

      And right now, drones that need to interact have to be able to talk to ATC - granted it's just a transceiver link (the drone has to have a radio inside it that does VHF to ATC and uplinked to the control center), but drone based ADS-B is a thing. And aviation phraseology is very standardized - ATC trainers actually use voice recognition now for the simulated traffic.

      But I can also imagine a day when ATC issues digital commands alongside voice commands. Some airspace is too congested and it can make understanding ATC hard because they have to speak fast and there's almost no time for repetition. So being able to digital obtain clearances and acknowledge them is probably coming soon.

    4. Re:Our ATC System isn't designed for this by aberglas · · Score: 1

      Taxis gave up voice communication years ago. It is surprising that we still use VHF voice for aircraft. And security could hardly be worse -- anybody with a $100 VHF radio can pretend to be a pilot or ATC if they know the lingo.

      Once it goes digital, it can link to aircraft systems directly. So it can tell the pilot when they are doing something wrong. Or just program the autopilots directly.

      What could possibly go wrong?

  7. well an FAA level code audit can be a big pain by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    well an FAA level code audit can be a big pain with a lot of QA costs.

  8. Easier... in some ways [Re:wtf] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    To me, autonomous flying is a lot easier than driving.

    In some ways. However, several things make it harder.

    1. Any problem is likely to be a fatal problem. Airplanes don't have "fender benders."

    2. Three dimensions are a lot harder than two. (And cars actually only have one and a half directions of mobility-- you can't drive sideways).

    In addition, for airplanes (but not 'copters): you can't stop. In a car, if you're not sure what to do, you can just stop and wait for traffic to clear. Airplanes fall if they stop.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  9. A Pilot in Command should ALWAYS be on board by sycodon · · Score: 1

    You can have automated flight controls, stabilization, routing, emergency avoidance, and the rest of it. But there should always be a qualified person on board who is monitoring and can take control to stop, change directions, etc.

    It doesn't matter how many Mountain Dews and Cheese Pizza you feed your Dev Team, they cannot anticipate every possible situation.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  10. Cheap drones already do this by aberglas · · Score: 1

    Controlling a real helicopter at slow speed is quite difficult. But the quadcopters have a lot of smarts in their controllers, so that their operators just say up down left etc. and the machine does it. Years ago I talked to someone that was putting similar capability into some military helicopters.

    So this takes the technical skill out of flying them, so that anyone can do it. Converting musicians into disk jockeys.