
FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics - apsec112
https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/money/industries/logistics/2020/08/28/fedex-plane-autonomous-flight-reliable-robotics/5655258002/
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whiddershins
If FedEx and Amazon set up private airports dedicated to these machines, only
put cargo in them, and make their flight routes distinct from other aircraft,
I imagine this could be up and running faster than people think.

Edge cases shouldn’t result in loss of life, so getting through regulations
and insuring should be much easier than other situations.

~~~
CommieBobDole
If the system is designed right, they could be even safer than piloted planes
in the case of an emergency. Currently, if a pilot is flying and, say, the
engines stop and can't be restarted, they're going to be thinking about trying
to survive and get to a place where they can land or at least ditch the plane
survivably.

An autonomous system doesn't have to do that - if it decides that the
situation is unrecoverable, it can spend its remaining time in the air finding
and navigating to the most sparsely populated point of impact within its
range. Something like "Engines out and won't restart? Find the nearest/largest
body of water and ditch into it".

~~~
ayyyolo
This is a great take.

The more we reduce the human survival instinct around these jobs, the better
we'll all be.

Humans do dumb shit when we're flooded with chemicals, both internal and
external.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Computers do some pretty "dumb shit" when they're flooded with data and
running bad algorithms. I mean 737MAX didn't need a pilot error in order to do
something critically bad.

~~~
lawlessone
To be fair.. the computer in the 737max was being used to patch over the
737max being bad at flying.

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bobbriody
We're hiring!

[https://reliable.co/careers/](https://reliable.co/careers/)

We built avionics, software, mechanisms and a comm system that enables
automated operation of the plane from a remote command station. The remote
operator has a GUI where they can command the aircraft.

This article goes into a bit more detail about how it works:
[https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/with-tesla-and-
space...](https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/with-tesla-and-spacex-
credentials-start-up-flies-pilotless-caravan/139905.article)

~~~
azinman2
What I haven't seen is any mention of what happens to all the pilots out
there. Between COVID and now this, it seems like the path of a great
middle/upper middle class job that's lasted for decades is doomed. For
UPS/Fedex, I would also guess that the salary of the pilot is effectively a
rounding error on all of the total costs of transporting objects around the
world.

What are your thoughts on this?

~~~
scoopertrooper
I think it's unfair to ask a technology startup to answer a public policy
question. Economic forces will drive automation of these sorts of tasks one
way or another, which will shift income away from labour and towards capital.

It's up to governments to ensure the winners compensate the losers. In the
long term, this may be an UBI, but for now it should take the form of
retraining and economic adjustment packages (similar to what might occur when
tariffs are repealed). This should be funded by a super-profits tax on heavily
automated industries.

~~~
azinman2
We all are responsible for our actions on the world. The government doesn’t
set policy that says pilots should be automated, and I wouldn’t necessarily
assume this is inevitable at all. Government can only be reactionary, and
these things are happening without a larger societal conversation that says
yes we want this. So I do believe this is a fair question to ask. It would be
unethical to not consider ones actions.

~~~
zamadatix
One must also consider the ethics of wasting human life and skill on something
that can be efficiently automated while other tasks lie undone.

Either way I agree with the parent comment, this is a public policy question
about how to make sure people are able to maintain lucrative lives (education
policy, monetary policy, social policy) not a question for the business making
an existing task more efficient and expecting them to answer what society
wants to do with the freed time.

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alfalfasprout
Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I
expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a
computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem...

Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the
day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results.
When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and stop lights to
get to your destination safely. In an airplane there’s constant communication
and things change frequently based on weather, traffic, emergencies, etc. I
can’t count the number of times ATC has repeated back an incorrect call sign.
As a human we know it was probably meant for us and call back to confirm.
Would a computer do that? Even if we used datalink communications then ATC
would now have a much higher burden. Also human pilots would lose the
situational awareness of hearing instructions for other aircraft on frequency.

Then there’s the question of— in an emergency situation is the computer going
to be able to make the right judgement calls? What if its sensors are iced
over/inop?

All in all, while technologically I feel this could have been pulled off
yesterday, I doubt we will see fully autonomous aircraft operating long routes
in controlled airspace anytime soon.

~~~
liability
Along these lines, would an autopilot ever think of landing in the Hudson?
(Particularly if it hadn't been done before?)

~~~
hanniabu
Devil's advocate: Would a human pilot be skilled and lucky enough to pull this
off a second time?

~~~
sokoloff
IMO, the critical thing the human crew did in US1549 was the _decision_ to
take the Hudson; once they decided that, most crews could pull off the
execution of that decision. (Then the presence/absence of boat traffic comes
down to luck.)

~~~
outworlder
> once they decided that, most crews could pull off the execution of that
> decision

That's not correct. Ditching is very hard. Mess up your angle or sink rate or
roll even slightly and you'll be in pieces. Same if the water doesn't
cooperate.

One interesting thing is that it happened with an Airbus. The flight computers
actually modified Sully's inputs on pitch by about 2 degrees, which ensured a
softer splashdown than what Sully was commanding.

But that was a very subtle adjustment. Sully was an experienced pilot, with
Glider training too.

------
supernova87a
My understanding was that the autonomous part is not really the barrier at
this point. After all, military drones fly around the world already (for 10
years) and there are strong analogues in civilian flight/aircraft.

The problem is "airspace integration", i.e. how does an unmanned aircraft
communicate with other pilots, ground, etc. and what are the rules (right of
way, visual separation, etc) with planes in lower classes of airspace.

That problem has also been around for 10 years, and I would say nearly no
progress has been made on that front.

If there were progress on that (some kind of regulatory solution/certainty),
it would unlock a whole lot of activity here.

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java-man
It's only a matter of time.

However, how will the robotic plances integrate with existing voice-based air
traffic control? Would there be a new digital channel, or the planes would it
use an on-board voice recognition and synthesizer?

~~~
gpm
If I was doing this I would start with remotely "piloting" (sending
instructions to) them and having the remote pilot communicate with ATC via the
traditional radio channel.

~~~
java-man
Right, but that requires a fairly reliable radio link (that we don't have,
e.g. MH370).

Or perhaps a set of dedicated routes, with ATC actively routing other traffic
around the robots?

~~~
gpm
So get one. Partner with SpaceX or oneweb and plot courses only where you will
have continuous connectivity.

We pilot drones in warzones remotely, the technology exists to pilot then in
peace time.

~~~
jedberg
> We pilot drones in warzones remotely,

True but we also are ok with those drones getting destroyed.

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cbanek
Big congrats to my former SpaceX colleagues! Well done!

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wespiser_2018
Very cool! I wonder what the real economic benefit of removing a pilot from an
airplane is, and what the dominant factors are? Assuming that a human pilot is
better in some emergency scenarios, and might be able to save you from
catastrophic loss: these events are exceedingly rare nowadays, and the savings
from liability and scheduling constraints must be massive without a human in
the pilot seat.

~~~
journeymanblue
CEO of Xwing, the other company developing technology in this space here.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhkwHkBKWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhkwHkBKWo)

Feeder aircraft suffer from poor pilot / aircraft utilization. Once you go
with remote operators you can increase operator utilization significantly. A
computer can also fly the aircraft much more efficiently than a human can
allowing for significant fuel savings. Other benefits include lifting of crew
rest time requirements and improved dispatch rates. Some of this allows for
better asset utilization. Finally, you can also re-balance a fleet across
geographies more easily to address shifting demand.

~~~
wespiser_2018
Great answer, thank you very much :)

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dmix
Who do people think will have their jobs replaced first, cargo pilots or truck
drivers?

One big factor is it often comes down to which worker group has a stronger
union and likewise entrenched political interests at local levels, as we've
seen in technological progress elsewhere.

Second to that is probably the safety regulatory process. 'AI' or computer
automation has also been used heavily in airplanes for a long time so that
regulatory process is probably going to happen much more advanced than cars.

Finally, driving regulations often happen at a much more local level (cities
can ban AI drivers in their borders for ex) but flights are divided over much
wider geographical lines. And there are far fewer airline companies than truck
companies to deal with.

~~~
marcosdumay
The "cost of the pilot" / "cost of the operation" metric gives us this order:
urban transportation, inter-city ground transportation, air transportation,
water transportation.

The difficulty of automating it metric gives us this order: air
transportation, water transportation, inter-city ground transportation, urban
transportation.

So I'm personally expecting a mix: air transportation, inter-city ground
transportation, water transportation, urban transportation.

~~~
tintor
Why do you believe that water transportation would be harder to automate than
air transportation?

~~~
marcosdumay
There is more "noise" to deal with on the water than on the air. For a start,
there is the entire ocean floor, that is relevant on many places where ships
usually go into, and isn't as simple to map as a runway.

~~~
tintor
That problem can be avoided in the beginning. Ships could pilot themselves in
deep waters between ports and leave docking / undocking to local human port
pilots.

------
loceng
There needs to be a pollution (including noise) tax collected to counterweight
the inevitable of potentially non-stop swarm of buzzing that will be making
10,000s to 100,000s of deliveries in cities everyday.

~~~
ceejayoz
This is a cargo plane, not a buzzy quadcopter drone. They already fly these
routes; they just use human pilots to do so.

~~~
evanlivingston
And they're already loud. If they proliferate, whether human operated or
autonomous, the noise will increase.

+1 vote for heavily regulating noise pollution.

~~~
ceejayoz
Noise pollution from airports _is_ regulated. Many airports have departure
patterns that avoid areas sensitive to noise.

Drones are going to need similar regulation, I agree.

~~~
lozaning
Shout out SNA, which has a spectacular departure flight path to ensure
compliance with back bay NIMBYS who showed up after the airport was already
built.

------
unionemployee
As a mid-thirties airline pilot, these articles make me wonder if I should re-
skill now or ride it out.

~~~
jillesvangurp
It will take long for this to change the industry and there are a lot of
planes that will be flown manually for decades to come. But obviously it
doesn't hurt to have a plan B.

I actually expect that short term there will be an increased demand for pilots
as smaller electrical airplanes start becoming more popular. Most of these
will be single pilot operations doing short hops. If there are going to be
lots of them, there will be a need for lots of pilots too. This too will ramp
up over a few decades and eventually that whole business will be autonomous.
But not short term.

------
unionemployee
In response to such events, pilots often write confident yet misinformed
sounding articles such as this - [https://liveandletsfly.com/airline-
automation/](https://liveandletsfly.com/airline-automation/)

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ed25519FUUU
Autonomous flight is a great example of the 80/20 rule. We've basically had
"self flying" airplanes for decades, but to get them to 100% autonomous we
need to spend all of the extra engineering effort into covering the remaining
edge-cases + landing.

~~~
paulmd
this statement belies a lack of understanding of just how long autoland has
existed. Guess which decade autoland was invented... and what decade
commercial service flights began making fully autonomous landings...

(you're probably wrong)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland#Civil_aviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland#Civil_aviation)

It is not, on the whole, that difficult a problem to actually land an aircraft
autonomously. Now that planes can autonomously fly the rest of the route too,
it makes sense to just take the pilot out of the cockpit.

~~~
outworlder
> It is not, on the whole, that difficult a problem to actually land an
> aircraft autonomously.

Sure, if you have ILS and it's operational.

Large aircraft will not rely on GPS.

It's a far more difficult problem to integrate such aircraft among the
existing traffic. You are underestimating the effort of autonomous flight gate
to gate.

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jessriedel
Can anyone put this in context as a technical achievement? Hasn't pilotless
takeoff and landing been demonstrated before?

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mcculley
The future value of another career formerly recommended by high school
guidance counselors is eliminated.

