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

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.

Comments

Aircraft cost vs pilot cost

[monkeyxpress]

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.

Our ATC System isn't designed for this

[bkmoore]

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.