Would you travel in an aircraft that is fully automated? Or do you prefer the feeling that a human being is in control?
If you prefer the latter, you are not alone. But is this an irrational feeling? Let’s take a look at the world of autonomous aircraft of the present and future.
Why are planes not autonomous?
In short, they already are to a certain degree. But, before we answer this directly, it might be useful to take a look at the history of autonomous functions in aircraft.
In the very early days of aircraft, the pilot was required to be on high alert at all times.
His or her attention was constantly focused on flying, controlling, and monitoring the situation in and around the aircraft to ensure no impending danger was looming. Such activities often left pilots with little time to actually do anything else and kept them physically and mentally occupied for the entirety of the flight.
While this was not necessarily a huge problem for short flights of a few hours or so, as aircraft become larger, faster, and gained increasingly longer ranges, flight times became longer and longer. With all the best will in the world, it is very tiring for a human being to be subjected to high levels of awareness and concentration for long periods of time.
This is not only exhausting for the pilot but is also potentially very dangerous. A tired person can, and often will, make lapses of judgment that could end in disaster.
For this reason, autopilot functions were developed, and surprisingly early on in the history of flight. Believe it or not, but one of the first aircraft to ever be fitted with an autopilot system, albeit rudimentary by modern standards, was built by the Sperry Corporation in the early-1910s.
This system involved the connection of a gyroscopic heading indicator and attitude indicator to hydraulically operated elevators and rudder. The basic setup enabled the aircraft to fly straight and level on a preset compass bearing for extended periods of time without the pilot’s full attention. Such a simple device saved pilots a great deal of workload, as you can imagine.
Autopilot systems became ever more sophisticated over time, with the Royal Aircraft Establishment in the UK developing a more advanced system in the 1930s. Called the “pilot’s assistor”, this autopilot system used pneumatically-spun gyroscopes to actually operate the flight controls to a certain degree.
Further developments were made throughout the next few decades, with improved control algorithms, servomechanisms and even radio-navigation aids added, making it possible for aircraft to fly autonomously at night or in bad weather. Such systems became so sophisticated in fact, that as early as 1947, a U.S. Air Force C-53 was able to take off, cross the Atlantic, and land, all completely under autopilot control.
In more modern times, larger aircraft, and those with more than 20 passengers, are generally required, by law, to have some form of automation built-in. The level of automation does vary, but most provide what is called three-axis control for the pitch, roll, and yaw of the craft.
In most cases, modern autopilot systems are computerized and are able to make split-second changes or decisions from a large amount of data input from sensors and other monitoring equipment placed strategically around the aircraft. This will include data such as the plane’s current position, heading, altitude, speed, etc., and automatically adjust the “trim” of the aircraft accordingly when needed.
These autopilot systems will also be more than capable of climbing the aircraft after takeoff, maintaining cruise control and level flight, and handling descent, approach, and increasingly, the final landing phases of a flight. Taxiing before takeoff, the actual landing, and taxiing after landing are still usually the preserve of the human pilots.
Autopilot systems will also generally disengage during periods of extreme turbulence, when the pilot(s) are expected to manually take control.
The same is usually also true for taking off. At least for now.
Airbus announced back in 2020 that it has successfully designed and tested a completely autonomous takeoff system. Forming part of its highly ambitious Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off, and Landing (ATTOL) project, this news was groundbreaking for the industry.
The technology employed differs from existing Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) that are common on modern airliners, and used image recognition technology to keep the craft on the runways center line, adjust trim and speed, and finally lift the Airbus test aircraft into the air.
This is an important step towards making aircraft fully autonomous in the not too distant future.
When will pilots be made redundant, if ever?
So, with the high level of sophistication of modern autopilots, you might be forgiven for thinking that pilots seem to be something of an indulgence in the cockpit. If a plane can, in theory, fly itself, what need do we actually have for pilots?
As it turns out, while much of the actual heavy lifting, so to speak, of flying, can be delegated to a plane’s autopilot, a human presence is still extremely valuable. In fact, this is highly unlikely to change anytime soon.
One of the main reasons, for better or worse, is the general mood of the public, and of the passengers of the aircraft. Whether you admit it or not, there is something very reassuring knowing that a living, breathing person is in control of something like an aircraft (or at least at present). Most people are reluctant to give full control of something that could, theoretically, kill them, entirely over to a machine.
Would you, in your heart of hearts, actually trust your life to a computer? For most the answer is no, and understandably. After all, what if something went wrong with the autopilot and there was no one to fly the plane? What if it were hacked? What if the plane needs to make an emergency landing in an unplanned location, such as on the Hudson River?
Interestingly though, some recent investigations might show that the general mood among the public is changing on this, at least where some vehicles are concerned. Some opinion polls taken back in 2019 revealed that seven out of ten consumers believe autonomous cars drive better than those operated by human drivers.
The survey was conducted by ANSYS and polled more than 22,000 people in Benelux, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the U.S. Granted this poll was primarily about driverless cars, but it seems people are getting more comfortable with the idea of trusting non-human operated transportation.
When it comes to some future theoretical pilotless aircraft, most respondents were not entirely resistant to the idea, but would rather wait until the technology is more mature.
“Although the public shares some safety concerns about both modes of transportation, many of those surveyed trust the technology that operates these vehicles. 71% of respondents believe that autonomous cars are better drivers than humans or will surpass human abilities within 10 years. 70% of consumers were comfortable with flying in an autonomous plane in their lifetime, the majority of which were not aware of the level of autonomy already involved in commercial flight,” wrote ANSYS in the report.
Another major reason that pilots will likely remain a feature of most flights, is that under certain circumstances, human beings are actually better decision-making machines than actual machines. For all the complexity of a computer, it still pales in comparison to the squishy and complex computer between your ears.
Your brain can take in enormous amounts of information at any one time, make quick decisions, and is able to improvise on the fly, so to speak. This kind of flexibility is incredibly difficult to replicate in a machine, if indeed it can ever be possible.
A human being also has access to some other sensors not available to a machine — senses. While less reliable than digital or mechanical sensors under certain circumstances, there are times when something that doesn’t sound or feel right to the pilot could indicate some issue that the onboard flight management system may not be able to detect. However, it is important to note that most pilots are trained to trust flight controls, readouts, etc. over their senses, as humans can also often reach false conclusions.
Modern flight management systems often, for example, rely on air pressure to calculate speed, angle of attack, etc. Should this system fail, for whatever reason, a professional pilot is trained and drilled to detect a potential fault and make manual corrections.
In some countries, or in some instances, GPS systems may be jammed for security reasons over sensitive parts of the country. Most modern aircraft rely heavily on GPS information for flight accuracy, and cutting an aircraft’s autopilot systems off in this manner makes a human pilot all the more important. Human beings do not need to rely on digital signals for navigation and are able to improvise or find other reliable means of navigation lost to the aircraft.
Not only that, but given the highly chaotic environment of flight, the unknown or very rare event can, and will, crop up from time to time. These are not situations in which a regulated and regimented machine is able to make decisions. This is especially true in a situation that has never been experienced before.
If you are still skeptical, a historic example might help convince you.
In 2010, a Qantas airliner jet with 450 passengers suffered a severe malfunction mid-flight. An uncontained engine rotor failure sent shrapnel throughout the plane, damaging several critical aircraft systems, including the aircraft’s landing gear. The onboard flight management system was overloaded with emergency errors and messages, which were impossible to deal with all at the same time. The pilots on station (as well as some off-duty pilots among the passengers) were able to improvise and successfully land the aircraft.
While it is conceivable an autopilot system may have found a way to do the same, it was the quick thinking and ability to improvise by the human crew that saved hundreds of lives that day.
Can planes be made fully autonomous?
As we have already stated, to a certain extent many modern aircraft are already partially autonomous. While normally only available, in a true sense, on large commercial aircraft, autonomous systems are also incredibly important in many modern military aircraft.
The F-16, for example, is one prime example. Aerodynamically speaking, is designed to be slightly unstable through a principle known as relaxed static stability (RSS). When disturbed in pitch or roll, an aircraft with RSS cannot continue to pitch or roll in the direction of the disturbance. Unlike the inverse, positive static stability, planes with RSS do not return to a straight and level flight if the pilot releases the controls.
This gives better cruise performance, reduced stick force to maintain a new speed without retrimming, and makes the plane more responsive mid-flight if the pilot needs to make dramatic changes to the aircraft’s position in 3D space, as less time is lost attempting to “override” an attempted correction by the airframe. However, this is obviously potentially pretty dangerous if the pilot is out of action for whatever reason.
For this reason, F-16’s, and some other planes with RSS, make use of something called a quadruplex, or four-channel, fly-by-wire flight control system to augment a pilot’s input from stick and rudder controls to produce the desired outcome in the position of the aircraft without inducing potential catastrophic loss of control due to the…