Airbus Plans to Expand Cockpit Automation 355
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Airbus plans computerized systems that could automatically maneuver jetliners to avoid midair collisions, without pilot input, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'For the first time, flight crews of Airbus planes will be instructed and trained to rely on autopilots in most cases to escape an impending crash with another airborne aircraft. Currently, all commercial pilots are required to instantly disconnect the autopilot when they get an alert of such an emergency, and manually put their plane into a climb or descent to avoid the other aircraft. The change, which hasn't been announced yet, comes after lengthy internal Airbus debates and despite skepticism from pilot groups and even some aircraft-equipment suppliers.'"
If it stops accidents... (Score:4, Insightful)
Poor pilots (Score:3, Insightful)
I was always under the impression that pilots were trained pretty much entirely for these once-in-a-lifetime events, such as mid-air collision and having one jet fail. I guess they are only going to be useful for take-off and landing now?
Maybe they're trying to phase out pilots all together? Sure would put an end to the whole pension-deficit issue that airlines are facing (well, once all the current pilots die of old age).
trust the machines. (Score:5, Insightful)
Machines and electronics are less subject to stress... pilots will have to share their responsabilities with electronics, it's inevitable.
Still, we should first have a good quality check procedures on those programmers and engineers work, as a programmer myself I wouldn't trust my own code to keep me alive
I hope they know that... (Score:1, Insightful)
Unspoken implication (Score:4, Insightful)
Airbus vs Boeing design philosphy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If it stops accidents... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If it stops accidents... (Score:2, Insightful)
Two planes (one loaded with children going on vacation, going from aformer Soviet republic) were on a collion course somewhere near Switzerland. The traffic controller saw the problem very late; the autopilots on the planes reacted correctly, pointing one plane up and one down. However, the controller instructed the plane going up to go down instead. The pilot asked "are you sure?" and the controller repeated the instructions.
More details on BBC [bbc.co.uk] (I may have got some facts wrong, I didn't re-read it now)
There is a more obvious, simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
How about implementing international standards for collision avoidance similar to what exists in the marine world, e.g., if one aircraft is overtaking another, the one overtaking vectors starboard (that's right), the one being overtaken vectors port (that's left). If approaching head-on, both vector starboard, if approaching at right/oblique angles, the one to starboard descends (if altitude and terrain allows) and the one to port ascends. Seems simple to me.
Of course, the ideal solution is to stick to your flight plan when flying IFR, keeping your eyes open when flying VFR and when flying VFR stay within VFR conditions, keeping your eyes open all the while, and fly conservatively. But no, that would be too sensible and would not earn lawyers (no legislation required) and avionics manufacturers enough money (no having to retrofit needless systems into aircraft and recertify them).
Almost Automatic Anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). It intercepts
other aircrafts' transponder position signals, and, in case of
intersecting traffic, actually communicates with the other aircraft's
TCAS system, and they both agree on which of them will ascend or
descend. This decision is then communicated to the pilots via audio.
Therefore, if both aircraft have TCAS installed, they are guaranteed
to receive opposite instruction (i.e., one to ascend, one to descend).
In the mid-air collision over Germany a few years back, both aircraft
had TCAS, and they both worked perfectly, and their instruction would
have avoided the crash. However, at the same time that the TCAS alarm
sounded, the traffic controller advised the one aircraft to sink,
in disagreement of the TCAS instruction. Unfortunately, the pilot
decided to ignore the TCAS, and followed the traffic controller's
instruction, driving right into the path of the other aircraft,
which was following TCAS advice to sink.
Since then, pilots have been trained to always follow TCAS
instruction. When pilots must follow TCAS instruction, it is
logical to automate that decision. With the appropriate controls
to override the autopilot, of course.
Re:If it stops accidents... (Score:5, Insightful)
And this new system will not solve that problem, because it would require all aircraft to be equipped with it to work, not just Airbus.
If the new system commands the airplane to dive, and the other pilot follows instructions from controllers on his manually-controlled plane to also dive, then you're still looking at an accident. This solves nothing, really.
Relying on ATC in this situation is, in any case, about the worst thing you can do - and it's the reason why standard procedure in the west is not to. Only the pilots of the airplanes, by virtue of their accident avoidance systems, have the situational awareness required to take appropriate action in time to avoid an accident. And these accident avoidance systems will never give conflicting instructions - if the system in one plane says to pull up, the system in the other will say dive.
Anyway, there are good reasons why airline pilots dislike having control taken away from them, especially in critical situations - because software in airliners, just like software in home computers, is prone to bugs. If you could see the software service advisories for the 747-400 flight management computer alone over the life of that airplane, you would probably never want to fly one again. Some of the lesser bugs have still never been patched; the manual simply contains workarounds for them. (These manuals are available to the public, despite the government's security concerns - you can buy one online, legally, if you'd like to see for yourself.) Obviously, anything safety-related would be patched as soon as it was found, but what if the first time a bug is discovered is after it causes an accident?
No thanks. Flight management systems have evolved to the point where I feel comfortable enough flying in airplanes that I know are on auto-pilot in nominal flying conditions (as most are from shortly after takeoff to shortly before landing, or even right through landing), but in critical situations, I want somebody with both learned skill and judgement flying that plane. The key word being "somebody".
Good point... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, humans have an incredible capacity for ignoring the facts that don't support what they want to believe. In this case, even if the computer makes the RIGHT decision and a collision is avoided, passengers will get pissed for minor injuries in a severe turn, the computer will be blamed and a massive investigations will be launched.
And, in some cases, very senior, experienced individuals will make better decisions, but these aren't the guys that will flying the planes most of the time. They're the guys that need to train the computer systems (like chess - you need really great chess players to 'teach' the computers and, at some point, the computer will outplay the master).
Re:Airbus doesn't have the best record on this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Poor pilots (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, "caring" is great, but it doesn't fly planes. If you or I found myself at the controls of an airliner, we'd care a great deal about not crashing it, but odds are we'd still end up making a big smoking hole in the ground. The idea that a flight computer (or an android, for that matter) will do a worse job than a human because it "doesn't care as much" is ridiculous.
Re:More noteworthy... (Score:3, Insightful)
While there are craft still in operation that were built pre-1989 (well, I assume so - those things were and still are expensive, and so built to last), seventeen years have passed since. Your 'major revisions' have come and gone and been replaced with new problems.
I can understand tracking down a newsgroup(?) post made 17 years ago to point out that history repeats itself and problems will mutate and resurface. But implying that the aircraft manufacturer does nothing against problems over that timescale? That's laughable. They'll have had scores of people working on the problem as soon as it came up, because any disaster like that makes stunning headlines and puts big dents in those companies' prides. Far more recently, Concorde had problems and was pulled rapidly; the entire line no longer exists. Granted, there were more and varied other factors added in - but your post here is utterly misleading. Air crashes happen, and make big news. Car crashes happen daily, often, expensive by wasting entire tailbacks worth of peoples' time; boat crashes are thankfully lower-speed and better balanced and tend to cause fewer problems unless something vast has too much momentum. The air transport industry sees the greatest safety margin requirements by far among transport types.
Re:More noteworthy... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, a number of overrides, including the disabling of the GPWS, were done to the computers on this plane in order to make the fly-by possible. It was a combination of those overrides that resulted in the engines being nearly powered down when they were needed to power the plane back up into the sky... with the result we know.
In actual service, an A320 in such a situation would have already at least sounded a number of alarms and probably would not have allowed the airspeed to drop so low without the flaps and gear to be in landing configuration.
Re:More noteworthy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Poor pilots (Score:3, Insightful)
FPSAT
AND FPSAT was a microcode instruction AND the CPU contained the AI of a perfect pilot AND it had no bugs AND it was not likely to be affected by power glitches or other external influences.
Re:More noteworthy... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not true... (Score:3, Insightful)
All this assumes... (Score:3, Insightful)
If a computer had been in charge, computers have no intelligence, no judgement, and no creativity. All dead is the inevitable result.
Re:More noteworthy... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what he's saying is that the computer looked at the current speed without taking into account that the speed was increasing and thus the plane would not have stalled, because by the time the nose was up, the speed would have been higher
Autopilots these days are good. They are really good. In a commercial flight, they do 99.999% of the flying. The problem really only occurs in situations which don't normally happen, as the ones being described by the grandparent. To deal with the tedious and well understood, computers generally do a better job than humans. To deal with the unexpected, a well trained human will always be better than computer programs (until the programs become sentient, at least). A collision situation would be "unexpected" except that how to avoid them really is pretty well understood these days. I didn't read the article (sue me), but the article description says that the pilots "will be instructed and trained to rely on autopilots in most cases." Sounds to me like if the pilot decides to override the system, he can still do it.
When an autopilot gets to override a pilot's best judgement, I think that's unsafe. If the autopilot takes action first but allows the pilot to assess the situation and take control if necessary, then that's saving valuable seconds in most cases, at the expense of wasting some time in the more rare cases. That's probably a fair trade-off.
Likley vs. Certain (Score:3, Insightful)
Well if you are certain you are about to go off the edge of a runway into a body of water, or into a woods at high speed then I'd take a "Likley" loss of a wing any day.
The problem is that pilots should have the ability to make that choice as needed, and not have an option removed because it offers some risk. Perhaps it takes some manual saftey overrides but it should at least be possible.
Re:More noteworthy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't that conceivably allow someone to hijack a plane without even boarding it? Just how do you secure that?
Planes could have flown themselves for years now, the main reason the overpaid passengers are there is to make the rest of the passengers feel warm and cozy.
My understanding is that these planes get their inputs from Satellite and ground based stations. Just to imagine one nightmare scenario, a solar flare knocks out the GPS satellites, and knocks out the power on the ground. Better shielding protects the aircraft from the flare. By some estimates, you have 60,000 people in the air at any time. I'd personally rather have the "Overpaid passenger" there than a computer attendant. Not saying the current solution is perfect by any means, but I don't share your enthusiasm to remove humans from the equation. Especially to save 10% on the cost of a ticket.
Re:More noteworthy... (Score:4, Insightful)