Autonomous Fly-By-Wire?

Klaus M said:
A little about me. I flew a Cessna 172RG with the Chelton Synthetic Vision EFIS and Moving Map display in the summer of 2003. With the demonstration pilot onboard we flew approaches using the Highway-In-The-Sky (HITS) feature. I didn't remove the hood from takeoff until 25 feet AGL over the center line of the runway. These flights overwhelmed me and I've been chasing the latest and greatest ever since.
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I was flying Cat3C approaches with auto land functions, which have been around for decades. I fail to see what's so overwhelming.
 
Klaus M said:
The pilots and mechanics that participated 20 years ago in bringing Glass Panels into everyday aviation.
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Actually it was NASA's AGATE program from the early 90s that gave those pilots/mechanics the glass panels along with ADS-B, Synthetic Vision, and the Cirrus SR20. And those who were around during AGATE's time actually thought those innovations would have been mainstream much earlier, however, there was no viable target market until much later. So it's not that much "faster" then you thought it would, but actually much slower than was thought by the people who were around back then.

Klaus M said:
These flights overwhelmed me and I've been chasing the latest and greatest ever since.
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Good on you. So when do you plan to install Autoland and Synthetic Vision on your aircraft?
 
Doc Holliday said:
I was flying Cat3C approaches with auto land functions, which have been around for decades. I fail to see what's so overwhelming.
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That's totally cool, you guys one-upped me :cool:

All the commercial planes in this 2004 picture have Synthetic Vision. I'm not sure I would want an Auto-Land in a Seaplane.
dhc-202.jpg


Yes, AGATE was the program that led to the Alaskan Capstone Program and I was part of the Phase II implementation:

Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Capstone Program - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Klaus M said:
That's totally cool, you guys one-upped me :cool:
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No, I was pointing out the technology that just overwhelmed you has been in use for years, and on a large scale.

So far all you've produced is some AI generated pictures from a Chinese company on a technology that's still unproven. And being that it's Chinese, take with a huge grain of salt.
 
Klaus M said:
Yes, AGATE was the program that led to the Alaskan Capstone Program and I was part of the Phase II implementation:
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So what exactly did you do on the Phase II implementation? Was was your position and title?
 
Are those cat 3 c approaches hand flown? I know cat 3 a can be hand flown to 50 ft, but I thought cat 3 b and c were autopilot to touchdown.
 
Mikey52 said:
Are those cat 3 c approaches hand flown? I know cat 3 a can be hand flown to 50 ft, but I thought cat 3 b and c were autopilot to touchdown.
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Notice I said "Cat3C approaches with auto land functions".
 
Just to toss some levity into this, my next door neighbor growing up working on fully autonomous fly by wire aircraft with synthetic vision in the 80's. Jet powered, needed no GPS. The landing mechanism could be described as "rough". No AI was involved. Hugely successful project, although from what I understand the first several had a habit of flying into the ground. We flew a bunch of them into Iraq during the first gulf war. Funny enough, it was a Boeing project.

These days, as goofy as people are and as expendable as some think people are, those things could probably be modified to carry a passenger and sold as a new extreme sport.
 
Klaus M said:
These flights overwhelmed me and I've been chasing the latest and greatest ever since.
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FYI: here's an example of something that truly is the "latest and greatest" and not just a reimaged version of something with a 30+ year operational history. Perhaps use it as a benchmark for future posts.
While blade folding technology, both manual and powered, is nothing new, folding blades "in-flight" after a vertical take-off for the purpose to go faster, is new. And to keep in the spirit of the thread topic, I'm pretty sure the end result will be programmed to automatically fold in-flight at the appropriate airspeeds.;)

 
Another Autonomous news release.
www.avweb.com

Autonomous KC-135s On The Horizon - AVweb

Autonomous flight pioneer Merlin has signed a deal with the Air Force that could eventually lead to its aircraft being refueled by autonomously flown KC-135 tankers. Merlin announced that the deal involves a stepped process of gradually integrating its technology into the 60-year-old airframes...
www.avweb.com www.avweb.com
 
At least they didn't use CGI to make this video. That's a big leap in itself. :happydance:


World's first inter-city Air-taxi flight

autoflight.com autoflight.com
AutoFlight’s five-seater Prosperity eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft completed a significant milestone by autonomously flying the 50km (31 miles) route from Shenzhen to Zhuhai. The flight from Shenzhen to Zhuhai across the Pearl River Delta took just 20 minutes, a journey that would require three hours by car. This achievement marks the world’s first public flight of an eVTOL aircraft on a cross-sea and inter-city route, spanning across the bay where the Pearl River meets the sea, connecting the two southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai.
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I've heard some pretty loud hair dryers.
 
Klaus M said:
Another Autonomous news release.
www.avweb.com

Autonomous KC-135s On The Horizon - AVweb

Autonomous flight pioneer Merlin has signed a deal with the Air Force that could eventually lead to its aircraft being refueled by autonomously flown KC-135 tankers. Merlin announced that the deal involves a stepped process of gradually integrating its technology into the 60-year-old airframes...
www.avweb.com www.avweb.com
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Absolutely no way this is going to happen.
 
I don't know if I could see the risk people ok'ing an autonomous aircraft with 200,000lbs of fuel in it flying over the US, but over the Pacific Ocean? Sure, why not. Send it out, let if fly in an orbit.
 
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