
A plane makes an autonomous landing - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/05/watch-a-plane-land-itself-truly-autonomously-for-the-first-time/
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code4tee
The article sort of disses traditional landing guidance systems but misses the
point of these. Specifically that such instrument approaches are used because
one can’t see the runway at all. Thus a system that relies on cameras to land
is academically interesting but not all that practical. Also with the advent
of GPS-WAAS based LPV approaches one doesn’t need equipment on the field and a
high precision 3D approach path can be created anywhere.

As for replacing pilots for “autonomous” aircraft a pilot friend of mine said
to ask actual pilots if they’d get on board a fully self flying aircraft and
you’d be hard pressed to find one. As he put it, the automation on planes is
amazing and a big help but it does mess up and when it does the automation can
crap out big time. For the foreseeable future there’s still no replacement for
a qualified pilot at the controls ready to take over.

Finally there’s a lot of debate in the aviation community that too much
automation actually decreases safety because pilots not flying enough manually
lose skills. See the SFO accident with the Asiana airliner that crashed for no
other reason than the ILS was down so they couldn’t fly with the autopilot.
They crashed short of the runway on a simply manual landing in perfect weather
because they couldn’t fly the plane properly!

The landing in the article was a really cool experiment though.

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sokoloff
I'd fly hundreds of domestic flights on an un-fixed 737 Max before I'd fly a
single flight on a pilot-less airplane at this point in the state of
technology.

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bdavis__
s/hundreds/thousands/

same for self driving cars. software quality is too low.

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Buttons840
They weren't suppose to take "move fast and break things" literally!

(It's really weird how "literally" has two literally opposite meanings.)

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ribasushi
Entertaining 1 minute on "literally"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ImRMJX68s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ImRMJX68s)

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sandworm101
Totally incorrect title by techcrunch. This is in no way the first, not by
three decades.

Russian SPACEplane makes autonomous landing in massive crosswind: (1988)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_\(spacecraft\))

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orbital-decay
Huh? Not really, Buran used instrument approach and landing, assisted by the
Vympel-N system on the ground, just like Shuttle or any other aircraft. The
only relatively innovative thing in the Buran EDL sequence was the fully
automated decision making procedure which enabled the divert maneuver. (you're
probably thinking of this when calling it autonomous)

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zackbloom
There are a lot of people in this thread putting down the idea of an
autonomous plane, but frankly, as a pilot it is a much easier environment to
automate than driving.

In the world of instrument flying there is very little to hit which isn't
clearly charted, you have an external navigator to keep you clear of most
other planes (Air Traffic Control), and the landing environment is kept very
normalized by the hard work of the FAA. This is orders of magnitude simpler to
pull off than self driving cars, and it might save the General Aviation
industry.

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p_l
The problem is handling failures. We could do automatic landings back when the
British introduced Autoland, and in fact any serious autonomous landing will
use ILS as the backbone. The problem is that we barely got to the point where
an autonomous plane was capable of reasoning enough to do a go-around, but I
have zero belief that it would handle failures in other ways than "crash in
unoccupied terrain" (if there's any).

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StephanWolkow
Here you can find the initial press releases and the demonstration videos

press releases: [https://magazin.tu-braunschweig.de/pi-post/sichere-
landungen...](https://magazin.tu-braunschweig.de/pi-post/sichere-landungen-
ohne-navigationshilfen-am-boden/) [https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-
tum/news/press-releases/detai...](https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-
tum/news/press-releases/details/35556/)

Demonstration videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPFC7Ki2JT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPFC7Ki2JT0)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAnzcNrenCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAnzcNrenCU)

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jacknews
"Now it would be natural to think that with the sophisticated autopilot
systems that we have today, a plane could land itself quite easily. And that’s
kind of true "

Indeed, I believe a substantial portion of commercial flights are actually
landed automatically (contrary to what the article claims).

Bravo for doing it autonomously though, it's obviously the next step.

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bronco21016
Contrary to popular belief, autoland systems are not used that frequently, at
least in the US. Typically the only time autoland is accomplished is when the
pilots or aircraft need a practice run for currency or weather conditions
actually dictate its use. Autoland is required for CAT II and III approaches
on the aircraft I operate. CAT II weather minimums are 100-200 ft decision
height and 1,800 RVR for many operators. CAT III is even lower. If the weather
is greater than that autoland typically is not going to be used.

This system is very interesting though for small aircraft. As the article
states, small aircraft often fly into small fields that may not have as much
precision landing equipment on the runway. I could see this system being an
excellent augmentation system or an additional input in the pilot’s planning
of the approach and landing.

[EDIT] clarity about CAT II and III

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jackfraser
> 50 ft decision height

What does that mean?

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detaro
The height at which the pilot has to abort the landing attempt if they can't
visually confirm that they're correctly set up for landing.

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jdavis703
I’m not sure how useful this is when the weather visibility is poor, there’s
an obstruction on the runway or it’s dark. But what could be useful is using
this to serve as an additional alert for when a pilot is performing a bad
landing. For example, could this have been helpful in the Asiana flight 214
crash at SFO?

~~~
bronco21016
Thermal imaging systems can typically get better visibility through the
moisture. I do agree, however, this certainly won’t be replacing an ILS any
time soon.

This system would be an excellent input to the pilot for managing glide path
when the ILS system is inoperative. The PAPI (precision approach path
indicator) light system also provides guidance but it’s not a very tight path.

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joshvm
How do modern HUDs overlay the runway? For example even the Shuttle displayed
a runway outline during landing [1]. Is it just really good position
determination or is it computer vision? I assume once you're on the localiser
the aircraft has a pretty good idea of the runway geometry.

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4cfIyNvts](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4cfIyNvts)

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souterrain
> A plane can land automatically using ILS and other systems, but it’s rare
> and, even when they do it, it isn’t truly autonomous — it’s more like the
> airport is flying the plane by wire.

This is a misunderstanding of ILS. ILS provides inputs to the pilot and the
instruments on board. It’s not like fly-by-wire at all.

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redis_mlc
Like usual, I don't even know where to start with the ill-informed HN comments
on aviation ...

This was a landing on a blue-sky day in a country, Germany, with almost no
airports compared to the USA.

So although handy for a "pinch-hitter" type emergency landing in broad
daylight with one airport and one runway in sight, otherwise it's of little
practical use.

Also, any landing attempt has 2 outcomes: a landing or a go-around. If the
tower says at 50' AGL, "there's a deer on the runway, go around." what would
this system do exactly?

Note that some biz jets do have synthetic vision now that can be used in IMC,
but not trainers.

