flightglobal.com 22 August-4 September 2017 | Flight International | 33
AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
Do we need two pilots or one – or none?Avitation Images/REX/Shutterstockair taxi prototypes in the next couple of years,
with service readiness dates of 2023-2025. But
his prediction of a 10-year wait for approval sug-
gests regulators see such timetables as optimis-
tic. Airbus, for its part, says it will flight-test an
early concept this year and thinks it “could” mar-
ket “self-piloted” electric air taxis “in as little as
10 years” – but notes that no reliable sense-and-
avoid technology currently exists.
UNACCEPTABLE LOSSES
Meanwhile unmanned air vehicles, whether mili-
tary or civil, are increasingly a fact of life, particu-
larly as small drones become ubiquitous.
Obviously, the technology to operate simple
pilotless aircraft already exists, but using the
same relatively unsophisticated technology for
commercial air transport in the same airspace
that airlines use is unthinkable. The non-combat
UAV attrition rate, even of sophisticated military
drones, at up to 30% makes that clear.
Fourth-generation airliners are highly auto-
mated, and already fly almost all the flight profile
from take-off to landing without pilot interven-
tion. Yet US studies show that less than 10% of
flights are performed exactly as flight-planned,
for reasons that include factors as diverse as
weather changes, air traffic control and traffic
considerations, technical malfunctions and
emergencies on the ground or in the aircraft.
With present flight management systems,
one circumstance guaranteed to make them go
off line is failure or malfunction of some of their
sensors. If they cannot get information, or if data
inputs conflict because of malfunction, the sys-
tem is programmed to recognise that it cannot
function usefully, and to disconnect, handing the
aircraft back to the pilots.
Vital basic functions still performed by the pilots
include simple acts such as selecting the landing
gear down or up, and likewise the flaps. These
activations would be simple to automate, but the
recognition of when they should be carried out- and when they should not – is more complex.
AI will have to learn to cope with “Black
Swan” occurrences, Morier observes. This is the
industry expression used to describe combina-
tions of circumstances that were not foreseen
and for which there is no procedure. And since,
by definition, Black Swan events may not ever
have occurred before in precisely the same way,
and may never happen again, the opportunities
for AI to “learn” about them is compromised.
This would include combinations of failed or
conflicting data inputs.
Even pilots cannot be guaranteed to manage
Black Swan events well, but those who do tend
to cope by prioritising the essentials according
to the traditional mantra: aviate, navigate, com-
municate. It would surely not be beyond the wit
of engineers to programme similar priorities
into an avionics system, but the problem might
be to get it to recognise what to ignore when
reverting to basics, because in the cacophony
of failures that can follow an emergency such
as an uncontained engine failure that also
damages the airframe, the computer’s reaction
might not be predictable.In a different era, but not long ago, it took
decades to prove to the regulators that engines
were becoming sufficiently reliable that just two
could be accepted to power commercial flights
over the North Pole, northern Siberia and the
big oceans. More recently, it took from 1992 to
2014 for Europe to agree conditions for permit-
ting commercial passenger operations in single-
turbine aircraft in instrument meteorological
conditions and at night.
But they are accepted now. Morier says a
different mindset is required by regulators to-
day, because technology is moving so fast. ■US Federal Aviation Administration allows
certain airlines to fly up to 10 passengers with
a single crew member. One example is US re-
gional carrier Cape Air, which operates nine-
seat Cessna 402s with a single pilot.
RELATIVE RISK
“We as a society are willing to accept the risk
- given the size of the airplane, the number
of people on board and the weight of the air-
plane – that it can be operated by a single
pilot,” Sinnett says. “As a society you can
ask the question: if it’s okay for a single pilot
to fly 10 passengers in a certain airplane
type, why would it not be okay for a single
pilot to fly a freighter with no passengers on
board, and right now that is not allowed.
That is also potentially one of the steps along
the way.”
Of course, the step beyond single-pilot is
no pilot. As Boeing considers the path for in-
troducing higher levels of automation, the
company still is not sure whether this should
be the last step or the first. In the latter exam-
ple, the industry would bypass the step-by-
step process and leap as quickly as possible to
a pilotless cockpit.
“What isn’t clear yet to anyone in the in-
dustry – ourselves included – is whether it’s a
single step from what we have today to full
autonomy, or whether it happens in step-wise
improvements over time – each of which re-
tains the same level of safety integrity that we
have today. We don’t know the answer to that
question,” Sinnett says.“You can imagine if you took those suc-
cessive steps it might take a lot longer to go
from where we are today to all the way. You
can imagine six steps to autonomy – each of
which would be very, very difficult, each of
which would be a battle in its own right. So
maybe taking each step isn’t the right an-
swer, and that’s part of what we’re trying to
figure out.”
The critical challenge is meeting the indus-
try’s standards for safety. Driverless cars are
quickly becoming a reality, but the US auto-
motive industry faces a different bar for safe-
ty. In 2016, for example, more than 40,000
Americans died on roads, but none died on
airlines in US airspace.
“So that drives a very different way of
thinking about the problem,” Sinnett says.
“We have to have the same level of integrity
that we have today.”
Aircraft already possess multiple automat-
ed functions, which Sinnett lists: autopilot,
auto-land, auto-thrust management, auto-nav-
igation, aircraft health monitoring and report-
ing. These systems are automatic but not au-
tonomous. At least two pilots are on board
and assigned to monitor each function and
intervene if anything goes wrong.
For example, the autopilot fails in veryFourth-generation airliners
are highly automated. Yet
less than 10% of flights are
performed as flight-planned❯❯