Comments on: No-Pilot Aircraft Go Vertical & Hover

By: abith hussain

abith hussain — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:49:42 +0000

can passenger aeroplane be controlled without pilot in emergency situation

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:09:36 +0000

My words telling of today’s accomplishments of unmanned aerial vehicles and systems—and their possible future applications—are not the cheerleader’s chants of assured victory. Rather they are the feeble warnings of a coalmine canary who senses the end of sustaining breaths embodied as meaningful work for aviators.

As a species, we humans are woefully shortsighted, a condition that has only gotten worse as the industrial revolution has evolved into one of technology. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should, at least not without comprehensive forward thinking. Replacing human effort with machines has its place, but the important question is whether it benefits the many—or a select few.

As our population grows ever larger, what is the point of replacing skilled human effort with that of machines, other than to make more money for corporate czars and bottom-line bean counters, and the shareholders they work for? Will the day of reckoning come with the realization that the under and unemployed masses can no long afford the revolution’s rewards?

By: Norman

Norman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:12:48 +0000

You love this one don’t you Scott.

Hot and High ops with helos are a great example of where UAV technology will prove valuable. Hearing that rotor droop warning whilst sitting with a heavy underslung load inside the dead man’s bubble is chilling isn’t it?

Working in from the periphery is how the unmanned thing will almost certainly progress. Earth resources, comms links, surveillance and perhaps freighting are tasks well suited to UAVs. The tide has to come in a long way for transport aircraft to carry humans around in any number though, a long way…

I ain’t King Canute but enthusiasm was never a sufficiently powerful motivation to advance a technology, it takes vested interests and a bottom line result to do that. The cash resources required to launch full scale automated passenger carriers will be colossal. I think it might even be a step comparable to supersonic flight – It’s possible, BUT… the payback still isn’t quite visible on the horizon.

Just another opinion.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:54:41 +0000

When the datalink is down, and the $#!^ hits the fan (e.g., double hydraulic failure), you’re going to miss me being there.
I wonder how well the remote pilot will be able to deal with the non-programmable items like weather deviations based on looking out the window and feeling the bumps, “see and avoid”, feeling unusual vibrations and sounds, etc.
Will there be robotic flight attendants as well? :-)
We should keep an eye on the remote surgery advances being made in the medical field for clues as to what will work and what won’t.

By: Al

Al — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:36:54 +0000

Airplane hijackers would be sorely disappointed if the “pilot” was unable to listen to their demands. Can’t you just see them beating on the cabin door and trying to talk in machine language to a black box that has no intention or ability to even understand? Of course they can always threaten the poor guy in the office that is controlling the plane, until we get rid of him as well.

Now let’s get on with making our cars drive themselves to get the drunk out of the loop.