uninterruptible autopilot system

[friendly_jacek]

Originally Posted By: Cujet

Quite simply, from the instant an airplane starts rolling, there are any number of scenario's that can happen. From driving it into another plane, building to crashing it on take off. No amount of automation will prevent disaster. Consider how simple it would be for a pilot to simply push the nose down or roll the aircraft shortly after rotation. Or, for that matter, select flaps up while doing so. Or, or, or....


or turning off the only working engine (TransAsia)
or turning off the only working computer (AsiaAir)

lets hope those were just accidents.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Originally Posted By: Astro14

All it can do is crash the airplane somewhere else....and add more points of failure and potential compromise...so....how is that better?


the only advantage i see is white house occupants sleeping better at night worrying less about airliners falling down on them.

supposedly it will have the auto-land capability, just like the newer drones.

not sure when boeing will (or did ?) start equipping their planes with this.


Airliners already have auto land.

Done by the autopilots, coupled to an approach facility. Pilots tune, identify, monitor and configure the airplane.

What this system can't do:
Extend landing gear
Extend flaps
Tune radios to the approach facility.
Arm spoilers.
Set autobrakes.

These are all manually done.

So, our uninterruptible autopilot flies the airplane into the ground, gear up, flaps up (spoilers and autobrakes won't be needed to slow the airplane, the crash will take care of that) at 250 + knots near an airport. Maybe on a runway, maybe into the terminal full of passengers, maybe into the elementary school nearby, since it can navigate only crudely, with no precision in the location because the airplane wasn't coupled to the approach.

You could take it to a remote area and crash it there, far away from fire/rescue, but lower risk to the folks on the ground. Kind of like crashing it into the Alps.

So, we take it away from the pilot who wants to crash it, and crash it from the ground. Only difference I see is the choice in crash site, plus the obvious ability to hack the system and crash airliners remotely, without the pilots being able to take the airplane back in the event of a system glitch, or deliberate takeover.

That's better?

 

[fredfactory]

Originally Posted By: Astro14

What this system can't do:
Extend landing gear
Extend flaps
Tune radios to the approach facility.
Arm spoilers.
Set autobrakes.

These are all manually done.


All these things COULD be done through a standby automated system, since everything you mentioned (CatIIIC) is actuated by a solenoid or switch somewhere. (ILS frequencies are in a database digital module for an airport, so this system is expensive and elaborate to be sure.) Of course they have to design against inadvertent activation of this emergency override stuff too. I haven't read their patent though. Too expensive/complicated.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: fredfactory
Originally Posted By: Astro14

What this system can't do:
Extend landing gear
Extend flaps
Tune radios to the approach facility.
Arm spoilers.
Set autobrakes.

These are all manually done.



All these things COULD be done through a standby automated system, since everything you mentioned (CatIIIC) is actuated by a solenoid or switch somewhere. (ILS frequencies are in a database digital module for an airport, so this system is expensive and elaborate to be sure.) Of course they have to design against inadvertent activation of this emergency override stuff too. I haven't read their patent though. Too expensive/complicated.


Nope. Not exactly. Doesn't work that way.

The preponderance of airliners have big, manual levers for all these things.

Kind of like the gear selector on a pickup truck with a manual.

Your remote pilot will have to have big actuators to do this stuff...back to the billions of dollars to enable the system.

The frequencies are already in the FMCS. But you've got to data link control them too, to get the radios tuned (on some airplanes) but in others, you've got to manually tune the radios...how do you propose to do that?

Flying is about a hundred times more complex than operating a car, that has no altitude to worry about, and no configuration changes to consider.

This autopilot is harder to implement than you guys imagine.

The patent is for an idea.

An idea that has to be designed, engineered, tested, and installed.

Get over the idea that it can be done easily. It can't.

Get over the idea that it's already installed. It isn't.

Drones crash all the time. So get over the idea that "it works for drones". Sure, if you don't mind crashes, it works, for simple, slow moving drones that had it built in from the design of the airplane. Drones that fly with fixed gear, by the way.

For the one in a hundred million chance of deliberate crashes by a pilot, billions of dollars on a complex system that would crash the airplane.

How about spending the money on things that would improve safety?

 

[fredfactory]

Good discussion. I was a systems engineer on the MD-11 Cat3b system, and also some HUD airliner Cat3a software/systems.
My comments simply said it COULD be done. Landing gear is hydraulic or electric driven, so there is a servo-valve and or switch to flip on, which is done with relays. Radios can be tuned over the bus digitally, with the right equipment. .... I never said it would be cheap!!! This is a lot of add-on equipment.

 

[Astro14]

Fair enough Fred, you understand how much is involved in moving all the surfaces to get the airplane configured, and yeah, it's a ton of add-on equipment, that would have to be developed for each aircraft type.

To what end?

To make the terrorist job easier?

No more airport security to take away their box cutters. Just storm the airline operations center (or FAA TRACON, whoever has the ability to implement the uninterruptible autopilot) with guns, put a weapon to the head of the first person that can assume remote control. When they refuse, splatter their brains in front of everyone else, and move on to the next person who can assume control. Repeat until cooperation is gained. Hold off police/SWAT until all autopilot commands are input. When you're willing to kill without mercy, and die yourself,,you can accomplish a lot...

Crash every airliner airborne into my targets of choice: Pentagon, White House, Capitol Hill, downtown NYC, Chicago, Boston, LA, San Francisco. I've got hundreds of remote controlled airliners that I can now use as weapons of mass destruction, inflicting casualties in the millions by the time the fires burn out in every major city in the US.

And we spent billions to give them that weapon.

No thanks. I'd rather give them nukes...

 

[fredfactory]

Originally Posted By: Astro14

To make the terrorist job easier?

No more airport security to take away their box cutters. Just storm the airline operations center (or FAA TRACON, whoever has the ability to implement the uninterruptible autopilot) with guns, put a weapon to the head of the first person that can assume remote control. When they refuse,


You're right, this guy did it in DieHard 2:

 

[Astro14]

LOL - I remember thinking "hogwash!" When I saw that movie....because, at the time, it was so technically inaccurate....

I'm a fan of the pilots being in control.

We're not crazy, despite the recent press...

 

[fredfactory]

Originally Posted By: Astro14
LOL - I remember thinking "hogwash!" When I saw that movie....because, at the time, it was so technically inaccurate....
I'm a fan of the pilots being in control.
We're not crazy, despite the recent press...


In DieHard2, the villain moved the Glideslope ILS beam to impact the ground short of the runway. Since the beam originates at a fixed position, the most you could maybe do is get a shallower or steeper glideslope, say from the typical 3 degrees to something else by physically tilting the transmitter. .... Conclusion, the movie was fake.

If the villain had his team in a van replicate an ILS glideslpe beam inside a mobile truck a quarter mile off the runway threshold in rough terrain and in foggy dark weather, THEN the movie would have made more sense.