> As I flew, a licensed pilot sat beside me. He talked me through the flight and generally kept me in check. At one point, I turned east and twisted the joystick with a little too much confidence. He reached over, grabbed the joystick and corrected my attitude.
Sounds like the author just took a normal flying lesson but didn't call it that so they could write it up as a marketing piece for an app. Why the NYTimes ran it is beyond m… oh right money.
In my case, "with ZERO flight experience, I walked into a busy airport and within minutes I was at the controls of a full-sized airplane hurtling toward the White House!!" Translation: I signed up for a flight lesson during which my instructor let me turn the two-seater single propeller plane 360°. Both statements about that same event are technically true; one is so misleading it's basically a lie. (BTW it's called a "discovery flight" and it's super fun—highly recommend!)
As I was reading it I thought, gee, this sounds like a run-of-the-mill discovery flight, offered by every flight school out there, but this time with some iPads mounted in the cabin, and a stereotypical "30 under 30" CEO making a nebulous technology tie-in.
Everyone's first flight is with zero experience. Somehow you can get flight experience without flying the first time?
In 2007 I landed a small plane with zero flight experience! I mean, that was actually the point of the exercise, but that's how it goes. Maybe if I marketed myself better I could have had an article in the new york times.
> Why the NYTimes ran it is beyond m… oh right money.
It seems almost every article is just another form of advertisement. Someone pays in some way and then the article has an agenda with implied call to action, or what I call, "call to thought".
I think it makes sense because we've been in with the Internet and Web 2.0 for a long time now and we don't need centralized curated content anymore, so these editorials have to now make money from selling their influence and promotional powers more so than just information.
Discovery flights are awesome - my first time in a small plane I did everything but the actual landing (and my instructor would have had me do that too if it hadn’t been for a moderate crosswind).
I’m having trouble digging into their tech stack and can mostly just find advertising copy, but from what I can tell they must be integrating software (run on an iPad) into the flight controls. Which makes this a fancy skin on an automatic flight control system, something that most larger helicopters have to varying degrees. I’m not really sure what the actual product that Skyryse has developed. If they are including the requisite servos to manipulate flight controls into their hardware stack then their business proposition is going to run into the problem of any modifications to the flight control system (both digital and mechanical) to that level will necessitate a new type certificate from the FAA. That makes this system far less modular and turn key then they seem to be selling.
The reason you don’t see small helicopters or fixed wing aircraft with complex autopilot systems coupled to the flight controls is that it’s expensive for a lot of the reasons you want it to be - the reliability, airworthiness and usability requirements that make it safe are also expensive to implement. At that price point it’s usually easier to have a human do all that work, especially for the types of missions those aircraft do. The technology has been there for decades, and there’s probably a reason why it hasn’t trickled down to these sorts of small aircraft yet.
Also, do you really want your flight control system to be entirely reliant on ensuring that the latest update to iOS doesn’t inadvertently brick the app that lets you control your aircraft? Let alone the possibility of someone exploiting a vulnerability in iOS to degrade your flight performance. There’s a reason that flight software is not trivially updated.
Helicopters don’t generally have autopilots but for fixed wing, most autopilots have a serial service port that can fly the device.
It’s not a stretch to go from there to a Bluetooth -> serial adapter. I remember years ago one android app even went to the extent of documenting how to do so.
Most helicopter 135 operators self-limit to VFR only, perhaps this is something like a VFR only autopilot they have in mind?
> “You still need someone with training in communications protocols, what speed and elevation to fly and where the system is unsafe to operate,”
The use of the word "protocols" underlines that it's kind of weird that we're still handling these comms through scratchy, staticy analog radio with humans at both ends. ATC uses computers to track flights and assign flight paths, why is it so difficult to have their computers talk directly with the aircraft? And I don't even mean remotely controlled flight, just "here's what ATC is asking you to do, press button to ack".
That's mostly a rhetorical question, mind you, since modernizing ATC is a notoriously difficult problem and FAA's NextGen has been under construction since 2007, with vague hopes of getting something usable by 2025. But still.
There has been some effort to automate it via things like Pre-Departure Clearance (PDC) and Digital ATIS (D-ATIS) (https://foreflight.com/products/pdc/) that has improved things quite a bit at some larger airport. But you're right it is a very difficult problem, because of all legacy system (i.e. 60 year old airplanes flying around)
I'm trying to imagine any computer that would have coped with my IFR search and rescue flight last week. Non-standard requests and things that can't be seen by ATC affect things a lot. One other silly small example that feels complicated was requesting a visual approach but having to wait for a vector because there was one exactly-airport-shaped cloud in the way.
I think pilots get a lot of situational awareness as well from listening to the common frequency.
> I'm trying to imagine any computer that would have coped with my IFR search and rescue flight last week. Non-standard requests and things that can't be seen by ATC affect things a lot. One other silly small example that feels complicated was requesting a visual approach but having to wait for a vector because there was one exactly-airport-shaped cloud in the way.
I don't pretend to know much about aircraft control, but my understanding is that controllers generally are hopping between several planes in quick succession and they follow a strict subset of English when communicating with pilots. So, I'd be surprised if the task required advanced reasoning skills that would be impossible recreate in an algorithm.
> I think pilots get a lot of situational awareness as well from listening to the common frequency.
That seems like it could be solved in other ways though. For instance, the airport could publish the relevant information into a data stream and broadcast it to air traffic.
It could be displayed on a screen within the cockpit. The cockpit could also have a computer that read certain information aloud to the pilots to provide important information without them needing to look at the screen. Furthermore, airports could broadcast the same alerts on the old analogue radio channels to legacy aircraft.
And security is very important. Bugs in aircraft software can cost lives ( and if you insist on turning everything to money, faulty designs have bankrupted companies (or forced them to stop selling aircraft or to sell themselves to another company)).
Everyone who did all that human factors research at NASA back before glass cockpits were perfected must just see the picture of the two iPads and weep.
/rant The world has collectively decided to become completely deranged about UX and UI. The entire field was typified by terms such as human factors, haptics research, disambiguation and human-machine interface design, ergonomics, accessibility, etc. Then came the iPod age, somewhere between 2003-2007, we decided to chuck it all out. BAM! Web 2.0 has arrived. Engineers were given a cold shoulder as new UX/UI teams started assembling in corporations. All went loose. Internet was getting commercialized and extremely profitable (Gartner's plateau of productivity has arrived after the peak of delusion in 2001). Therein came glorified aestheticians with fancy titles imploring everyone to shift to open office plans. They got rid of borders and frames, negative space became the common driving force to appease the marketing targets for "Luxury" user experiences. You see, just how Louis Vuitton stores have lots of negative space and more people employed than necessary, designers decided that we outta fake the luxury appeal to our UX/UI patterns - here comes minimalism. The catch all do all luxurification technique for someone with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. The whole machine prints money like there is no tomorrow. Hordes and hordes of sheep-like humans consume extra large typography and hamburger menus, massive JS apps were hand crafted with animation libraries to woo the sheep. Touchscreens (for cost reasons) were used to brainwash the customers into thinking its cool while bean counters raked in their bonuses for reducing the COGS by 40%. Look! Get rid of all these knobs, buttons, sliders and encoders - replace it all with this magical touchscreens. Ship broken software and we'll just patch it later. The funny thing is there are many great designers out there, but the market has no place for them.
At this point, if we go to Mars, I'd like to be incharge and a gatekeeper for UX/UI. It is not possible to fix the world as it is here on Earth.
I see that picture and think how great it would be to have a more rugged connector to those two iPads. I can imagine that those connectors will need some ruggedizing.
> "I've come across a number of people over the years who think that modern airplanes, with all their technology and automation, can almost fly themselves. That's simply not true. Automation can lower the workload in some cases. But in other situations, using automation when it is not appropriate can increase one's workload. A pilot has to know how to use a level of automation that is appropriate... whether you're flying by hand or using technology to help, you're ultimately flying the airplane with your mind by developing and maintaining an accurate real-time mental model of your reality... how many different levels of technology do you want to place between your brain and the control surfaces?" -- Sully: My Search for What Really Matters (p. 188)
I have 15 hours as a trainee helicopter pilot (non-solo).
The key quote is this: "You still need someone with training in communications protocols, what speed and elevation to fly and where the system is unsafe to operate."
Flying a helicopter is, by its nature, unsafe to operate. At any moment, you could have an emergency. If you have someone at the controls who only knows joystick flight when any such emergency occurs, good luck to them.
Helicopters are not like airplanes; they are not a "set and forget" experience. You have to actually fly the helicopter from point A to point B. You have to be ready to make that helicopter drop at a moment's notice because if the engine dies, you need air blowing up through the rotor to keep it spinning. If it slows down enough, that is automatically "Game Over". (Search "rotor stall".) In the helicopter I flew, you had two seconds to get the collective down, and that was only the beginning.
Watch [1]. At 1:24, the engine dies, and you hear a horn almost immediately. That's the low rotor speed horn. The horn goes off after about a second; that's because the pilot slammed the collective full down.
Then the pilot turns left and crash lands. Why? Because there were wires in front of him. The wires could have flipped the helicopter. Would a bot have flown into those wires? Almost certainly, and everyone would be dead.
Oh, and did you notice that the low rotor speed horn was sounding a lot during the crash sequence? That's because during such an event, you have to maintain the rotor speed in balance while trying to pick a spot and bring the helicopter in. He had a full helicopter, so he actually couldn't force the rotor speed much higher. And yet he couldn't go full down either because that would not slow them down near the ground.
In other words, those guys are lucky that their pilot is awesome. And even though he was, they still landed hard.
On top of that, as dmitrygr says [2], flying the helicopter is a fraction of what you have to do.
I would never fly in a helicopter where the "pilot" was anything but.
And the same goes for airplanes. They may be able to fly themselves, but that is only true in non-emergencies. And even in some non-emergencies.
Pilots are expensive because they train for the worst, and most of the time, when it does happen, they handle it with aplomb.
Bots will not. When it comes down to it, bots will never replace humans where life-threatening emergencies can happen.
While I do understand where you're coming from I don't see it as an impossible problem to automate. An automated system can instantly set the collective to the perfect rpm for autorotation, and can do it much quicker (and better) than a human. Especially on something like an R22 or R44 with very low rotor inertia.
In a smaller aircraft, you're relying a lot more on your forward momentum (i.e. forward airspeed) to cushion your landing, whereas in a larger helicopter the rotor inertia has enough energy such that you can place it straight down on pretty much any flat surface the system can find. Garmin already has something called Smart Glide for fixed wing aircraft where it calculates engine out trajectories, and so I don't see this as something impossible with a helicopter. Especially coupled with a wire strike cut (basically just a sharp knife sticking out of the front of the helicopter that just cuts any cables you run into).
I'd think given the use cases for some helicopter flights (e.g. sightseeing tours) where you're typically in VFR weather there's certainly an opportunity to have automated flights. I agree we're not there yet, but I don't see it as impossible in the near future.
(I mainly fly fixed-wing, but I have about 50 hours in an R22)
I am aware of wire cutters on helicopters, and yes, wire strike prevention with cutters would be useful, but that only solves one problem.
You are correct that a lot can be automated, but if there is anything that cannot be, humans have to be in the cockpit. And if humans have to be in the cockpit, then we actually don't want as much automation as possible. [1] See also [2].
The biggest problem I see with automating helicopter flight is that the hardest part of an autorotation is picking a spot to land. I don't think that can be automated. You would either have to have super high resolution radar pointed at the ground or high resolution computer vision that can identify flat spots which are as varied as the human race. I don't think either is feasible anytime soon. And that's without even considering the higher power draw they would require, as a sibling comment mentions.
Then you have to consider what happens in the case of full power outage, including no battery. In that case, you have effectively doomed the people onboard if there is not a real pilot.
Your comment about automating autorotations got me interested, and it appears that one UAV company has done a tech demo for it, at least from my cursory search. From what I can tell though the design space would be extraordinarily difficult to fully automate. Management of rotor RPM requires finesse, functioning flight controls and also quick decision making about where and how you are going to land. Usually the automatic flight control system would require either enough battery power to power your servo actuators after an engine failure or a system designed to run in AC power which is generated by your rotor system (which of course means it’s depleting rotor RPM at a time when rotor RPM is what is most important to manage). I think you’d have to design a lot of the aircraft systems with automation in mind, so it really would have to be a new aircraft in many regards, and you’d be unlikely to be able to retrofit an older airframe to do it. I think there’s just too many trade offs to make the system worthwhile in the low margin business of crop spraying, tour rides, or electronic news gathering. Medevac, oil rig transportation or military applications could make use of an automatic autorotation system, but those aircraft also tend to be medium to heavy twin engine aircraft which negates a lot of the need to focus as much on autos when you are designing the overall system.
I wonder if ForeFlight or something comparable is considering a LoB that offers an API to passenger UAS for filing and wx data stuff. Could be a one stop shop.
I am a pilot (for the last decade) and i've sat in self driving cars (multiple companies/types) as they "self-drive". My comment was so short because honestly i am shocked and terrified that someone could be serious about this. As soon as I regroup and get new underwear, i'll write more.
That's interesting! If you'd be willing to post something detailed that draws on your experience in this area, it would be a valuable contribution.
Incidentally, it's rather common for people with experience on a topic to post shallow dismissals. When a point is obvious from your experience, the only thing that really needs to be said (from your private perspective) is the obvious point. You already have access to your experience and don't need to write it all out.
But it's totally different from the reader's point of view. The rest of us don't have access to your experience, so we need you to fill in the details in order to reach the same conclusion as you. Otherwise the obvious (to you) point comes across as arbitrary and dismissive. It's indistinguishable from a low-value putdown by a commenter who actually doesn't have experience with the topic.
Of course, it takes more time to 'show your work' and walk the reader step by step to the conclusion. But that's what makes the difference between a valuable contribution and a negative one. Comments in the shallow format damage the forum because they encourage people who actually don't know anything to post in the same manner.
Flew a citation jet a few times and the TBM a few. But they are too expensive to buy. I own an SR22 for when I have somewhere to go and a C-150 for when I do not. Took a few lessons in a heli, but given the fun failure modes, I only get into one now while i wear a parachute, keep my hand on the reserve handle, and only if the door is off and i can jump out to safety quickly.
I don't blame you. I personally think that helicopters are inherently dangerous. The only reason I feel comfortable is because, until I will be able to handle one myself, I am flying with instructors who I trust completely.
This makes me think that pilots are going the way of cavalry officers. An exclusive club of people with skills that matter less and less. I wonder which activities, in the future, will require the Right Stuff...
TFA mentions that a real pilot was needed for ATC comms and airspaces. As any actual pilot will tell you, actually manipulating controls (what this company claims to simplify) is 2% of the job, at most. In fact, as you learn to fly, at just 10 hours of training you'll be allowed to solo fly (only near the airport and only alone). The hard part is emergency handling, airspaces, comms, weather, and planning. This company does none of that.
There are plenty of people piloting drones from trailers in New Mexico. They can take the blame. But they are not exactly pilots in the Chuck Yeager sense.
Sounds like the author just took a normal flying lesson but didn't call it that so they could write it up as a marketing piece for an app. Why the NYTimes ran it is beyond m… oh right money.
In my case, "with ZERO flight experience, I walked into a busy airport and within minutes I was at the controls of a full-sized airplane hurtling toward the White House!!" Translation: I signed up for a flight lesson during which my instructor let me turn the two-seater single propeller plane 360°. Both statements about that same event are technically true; one is so misleading it's basically a lie. (BTW it's called a "discovery flight" and it's super fun—highly recommend!)