This article is from WeChat official account:Love Faner (ID: ifanr), author: Lee extraordinary , from the title figure: vision China

In the past few years, many technology companies and auto manufacturers have invested in autonomous driving. Waymo’s unmanned taxis can already be hit in Phoenix in the United States, but there is still a long way to go for autonomous vehicles on the road on a large scale. .

Although self-driving cars have not yet become popular, fully self-driving passenger planes are already in the sky. Airbus recently announced that it has successfully achieved autonomous taxiing, take-off and landing on an A350-1000 commercial airliner.

This means that passenger aircraft can already achieve fully automatic driving without human intervention. In the past, although autopilots were equipped on aircraft, they were generally able to take over when they were cruising in the air.

A fully autonomous passenger plane is coming. The next question is, do you dare to ride?

First, the pilot let go, the airliner takes off and land on its own

In a video shown by Airbus, after an A350-1000 passenger plane started taxiing on the runway, the two pilots in the cockpit did not perform any operations. The captain put his hands on his lap, and the plane took off smoothly. .

This is a test conducted by Airbus at the Louz-Blagnac Airport in France in December last year. It is also the first time in the history of aviation that a passenger plane has realized fully automatic takeoff based on image recognition.

At that time, Airbus completed 8 takeoffs in four and a half hours. The pilot of the test flight, Yann Beaufils, said that the performance of this test exceeded expectations.

We moved the throttle stick to the take-off position and monitored the aircraft. It began to roll out and accelerated automatically, keeping the runway center line at the precise speed input by the system. Then, the aircraft’s nose began to lift automatically to achieve the expected take-off pitch value, and a few seconds later began to land again.

After completing the fully automatic take-off, Airbus has completed autonomous landing and taxiing based on image recognition in the past six months, becoming the world’s first airline to complete the autonomous taxiing, take-off and landing of passenger aircraft.

These tests are actually part of the Airbus ATTOL project, the full name is “Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off and Landing” means autonomous taxiing and take-off and landing. The goal is to develop a set of visual learning algorithms through airborne cameras and lidar(LiDAR)Wait for the sensor to complete the takeoff and landing autonomously.

To put it simply, ATTOL is to put a pair of eyes on the aircraft so that it can understand the various markings on the runway by itself, and thereby determine the position of the runway centerline.

In the past 2 years, Airbus has conducted about 500 test flight tests, 450 of which were used to collect video data to improve the algorithm, and completed 30 autonomous takeoffs, landings and taxis in 6 sets of flights .

In addition to civilian airliners, Airbus has also applied autonomous driving technology to the military field. In April of this year, Airbus’ A330 MRTT successfully carried out automated aerial refueling for Portuguese fighter jets, also based on visual recognition technology.

Sebastien Giuliano, ATTOL project leader, emphasized that in fact, many aircraft can automatically land, but they need to rely on the instrument landing system (ILS) and GPS Such as external facilities, and ATTOL’s breakthrough lies in that it can be achieved only by relying on airborne image recognition sensors, which can not only improve efficiency but also reduce costs.

Instrument Landing System mentioned by Sebastien Giuliano(ILS), also known as the “blind landing system”, provides precise guidance for the aircraft through radio signals and high-intensity light arrays to ensure that the aircraft can land accurately in low-visibility weather conditions, but the price is more expensive .

Airbus has always advocated reducing the number of pilots on board and reducing human-induced accidents through more automated technologies. Airbus Chief Technology Officer Paul Eremenko said in an interview with Bloomberg:

(Reduce the cost of airlines) The more disruptive way is to reduce the crew, and we are going to retain only one pilot As a goal, if the future technology matures, it will not rule out completely unmanned driving.

If you have watched aviation-themed movies like “Captain China”, you will find that on some high-altitude routes, there are usually three-person crews. In addition to the pilot and deputy captain, there will also be a reserve captain. Airbus’s The A300 is the first wide-body aircraft that only requires two pilots to fly.

Although Airbus has been working towards fewer pilots and has proven the feasibility of fully automated flight, this technology is not yet commercially available. This kind of technology that relies on visual recognition cannot cope with unexpected situations in low visibility environments. The recognition of different airport runways also requires more data to feed.

Airbus also emphasized that the pilot is still the core of aircraft loaded with this kind of autopilot technology, but this technology can reduce the workload of pilots and focus more on decision-making and tasks.Management to improve the safety of the aircraft.

Second, the aircraft autopilot has appeared more than 100 years ago, why can’t it be unmanned today?

In the cabins of many film and television works, you may have seen such a scene. The captain turned on the autopilot mode and drank coffee leisurely. The seemingly tall technology of autopilot actually appeared more than 100 years ago.

Lawrence Sperry invented the aircraft autopilot in 1912, and personally demonstrated it with a biplane in Paris, allowing the aircraft to automatically maintain three axes without touching the operating device.(pitch, roll, yaw) stable and normal flight.

Picture from: historynet

The autopilot widely used in airplanes is now improved on this basis. The airplane can fly automatically according to the set route, speed and altitude. If the airplane deviates from the original attitude, the system can also automatically Correction and even plan the best flight route autonomously.

Then the question is, since the aircraft autonomous driving technology has been developed for more than one hundred years, why not to mention that the aircraft cannot be unmanned, even the unmanned technology of cars has not been popularized yet?

Because the autonomous driving of airplanes and cars is not exactly the same thing, nor can they be directly compared.

Let’s take a look at the current aircraft autopilot to what extent. The main thing is to automatically cruise at high altitude to maintain stable flight. However, some more precise operations, such as take-off and landing, taxiing on the ground, collision avoidance, etc., require pilot intervention.

Picture from: The Australian

Because of the relatively long distance between the aircraft on different routes and the air traffic control on the ground, the pilot can have enough time to take over even if there is an unexpected situation, so the autopilot does not need to complete too complicated operations, and its intelligence The degree of transformation is actually not high.

But it’s different if it’s on the ground, and the road conditions that cars have to face are much more complicated. In order for an unmanned car to accurately identify road conditions and avoid obstacles, in addition to the positioning system, multiple sensors such as ranging sensors, ultrasonic sensors, and radar sensors need to work together.

Picture from: LiDAR-MoneyDJ

Even so, today’s self-driving cars still cannot cope with emergencies like humans, and the same is true for airplanes.

To make the aircraft fully unmanned, it is necessary to ensure that the aircraft can autonomously take off and land under various conditions, including forced landing in an environment with no runway, while also responding to sudden engine failures, avoiding obstacles, and unstable airflow. Happening.

Even though Airbus has realized the automatic take-off, landing and taxiing of passenger aircraft, it is still a long way from the above-mentioned standard.

3. Will we board an unmanned aircraft in the future?

UBS Group (UBS) issued a report in the past two years, stating that unmanned passenger planes may appear as early as 2025 On the airport runway, once the aviation industry is popularized, it can save 35 billion US dollars a year.

If the autopilot technology of future aircraft is mature enough, will we get on unmanned aircraft?

Not necessarily.

Only relying on algorithms and software for autonomous driving, the risk of aircraft will increase. For example, when it was hacked, someone successfully used radio waves to invade a Boeing 757 remotely last year.

Moreover, there is currently no certified single pilot or unmanned transport aircraft in the world, which will make it more difficult to insure the aircraft. How many airlines are willing to take this risk?

Picture from: cntraveler

Let’s not talk about unmanned driving, even if the autopilot has been used for more than 100 years, it has caused many accidents.

Last year, Ethiopian Airlines’ flight ET302 crashed, and the problem was the autopilot system of Boeing 737MAX. The automatic stall protection system, which was originally designed to prevent the pilot from raising the nose too high, ended up forcing the nose down during normal flight of the aircraft, which eventually caused an air disaster.

Picture from: TesfaNews

Coincidentally, China Airlines Flight 140, which crashed at Nagoya Airport in 1994, was also due to the deputy captain operating the autopilot during landing. In the end, 264 of the 271 people on board died unfortunately, making it the number one casualty in Japanese history. Two-to-many serious air crash.

Under such a background, even if the technology can realize unmanned passenger aircraft, how many passengers are willing to try to ride?

In the UBS report, 8,000 interviewees from around the world were selected and asked if they would like to take a drone. Only 17% of people are willing to take an unmanned aircraft, and more than half of the respondents said that even if the ticket is half cheaper, they would not take it.

Although some institutions have tested unmanned two-seater small airplanes in the past two years, it would be frightening to travel on these airplanes.

However, with the development of autonomous driving technology, it is not unforgettable to board an unmanned passenger plane in our lifetime. I hope that the level of technology by then will be enough to dispel our doubts.


This article is from WeChat official account:Love Faner (ID: ifanr) author: Lee extraordinary