This sentence was a bit cute: "Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at San Francisco International Airport." Yeah, that kind of pilot.
I really had to read through it twice to make sure they were just talking about car taxis picking up travelers, rather than some kind of prototype pilotless commuter helicopter or something.
danielvaughn · 1h ago
That was my first interpretation, and I was very surprised and kind of afraid. Glad to know they aren't trying for autonomous flight yet.
bdcravens · 1h ago
I have zero expertise for my claim, but I feel like autonomous flight is easier than autonomous driving.
jerf · 54m ago
The hard part of automated driving is dealing with all the ground clutter that planes serenely fly over. If pedestrians could charge out in front of a 777 going 650 mph at 34,000 feet... well... we'd be living in pretty different world! And in that world, flying would be much more difficult. Not just for computers but for humans too.
Flying is obviously much harder than driving, but it's a sort of harder that is generally more amenable to automation, though I still think pilots are a good idea because when it goes wrong it goes wrong much worse.
bluGill · 27m ago
Flying is almost always easier than flying. landing is hard. Bad weather is hard. But just flying - human pilots have napped many times over the years and it only rarely is an issue. Airplanes with primitive autopilot are very good.
0_____0 · 1h ago
In the abstract yes but in practice the economic (ratio of cost of pilot to pax miles) and safety context of aviation mean fully autonomous flying has to be extremely robust before it has actual utility in industry.
rkomorn · 56m ago
In practice, you're also currently very reliant on infrastructure that is definitely not as solid as you want (eg: ILS and GPS can be interfered with quite nastily).
ILS being under maintenance and unavailable for certain runways is also far from unusual.
dcrazy · 1h ago
On the happy path, yes. Though I don’t think takeoff is automated yet.
Currently we rely very much on the problem solving abilities of human pilots to deal with troublesome situations. Autopilot will disengage in many scenarios.
seanmcdirmid · 58m ago
I'm pretty sure drones can already take off on their own. Taking off is a lot easier than landing, and planes have auto-landing tech already.
nradov · 13m ago
Drones (both autonomous and remote piloted) have much higher mishap rates than crewed aircraft. Taking off is "easy" until something goes wrong, like a mechanical failure or runway incursion. It's impossible to anticipate and explicitly code for every possible failure mode, so developing autonomous flight control systems that would be safe enough for commercial passenger flights is extremely challenging.
Category IIIC ILS (full auto-land) does exist but requires special equipment for both the aircraft and airport. Human pilots have to actively monitor the system and take back control if anything goes wrong (which does happen).
Garmin also has the Autonomí auto-land system for certain general aviation aircraft which can attempt to land at the closest suitable airport. But this is only used for single pilot operation in case the pilot becomes incapacitated. It isn't suitable for regular flights.
dcrazy · 52m ago
Takeoff at a commercial airport is a very challenging and potentially dangerous situation. There’s way more margin to abort a landing than a takeoff.
prmoustache · 18m ago
OTOH takeoff and landing could in theory be operated by people on the ground, flying simulator style.
I still believe that having an actual pilot inside the plane that care for his own life is not a bad idea vs someone remote feeling a bit disconnected with the reality of a crash.
xyzelement · 5m ago
I am not sure why you were down voted. The original meaning of the word pilot is someone who comes aboard a ship for "the last mile" - getting in and out of the harbor and what you are talking about is kinda like that - a person associated with the airport rather than airplane to guide the planes in and out - perhaps using more reliable local communication technology vs what is used to control drones half way around the world.
I have no idea if that works but I thought you were making a good contribution to the conversation by proposing a potential solution to the exact problem everyone is talking about.
nradov · 10m ago
Remote piloting is how the military operates certain drones like the MQ-1 Predator. The mishap rate is very high relative to crewed aircraft due to network lag and sensor issues. The military is willing to accept some level of equipment loss in order to accomplish their mission but this would never be allowed for commercial airliners.
csours · 32m ago
It's kind of funny how you can both be right.
lawlessone · 47m ago
It's the failed takeoffs that lead more often to jets leaving the run way and crashing into buildings or trees.
snickerdoodle14 · 1h ago
I also feel like the demand is way, way lower. A pilot can't be that large a % of the cost of a flight. Maybe if we lived in the jetsons era.
rkomorn · 59m ago
Depends on the size of the plane, really. One of the reasons a few companies were investing in fully autonomous air taxis is because the math on a small piloted aircraft wasn't realistic for a low enough price point to be competitive.
seanmcdirmid · 55m ago
The problem is actually safety. As automated systems get better, the pilot is left with not much to do, and has to maintain vigilance while being really really bored. It is almost better to have fewer automated systems and give the pilot more things to do during the flight so it is easier to keep them paying attention, or all automated with no human pilot to mess things up.
efavdb · 1h ago
Don’t have a ref but heard that it’s been safe for quite a while but they keep the pilots around due to consumer fear rather than actual improved performance. Curious if anyone can confirm.
csours · 19m ago
If you can design the product and environment to fit automation, then automation can be quick and effective.
The less you can change about the product and environment, then automation run slower and less effectively.
Air liner operations could be automated, but the minimum equipment list would be more stringent, the destination airport would not be able to take any equipment out of service for maintenance, visibility minimums would increase, takeoff and landing operations would require more slack time.
Besides all of that, the owner of the airplane would still want to have some crew on board.
In short, it's not worth it yet.
===
There is also the paradox of automation: Automation generally makes the hard parts harder and the easy parts easier.
rkomorn · 1h ago
No. Airliners can't even take off on their own yet, and are only allowed to auto-land with zero visibility at a few dozen airports when the pilots, plane, and runway are all current/recently checked.
Look up the Airbus ATTOL project's first automated takeoff a few years ago.
Also, there's virtually no automation when it comes to interacting with ATC.
SoftTalker · 20m ago
An airplane will take off when it is properly configured and it hits a certain speed. It's simple aerodynamics/physics. Pilots are there to react to failures and unexpected events.
rkomorn · 4m ago
Sure. It'll also land if you don't care about anyone surviving.
anonymars · 57m ago
In a pinch, a car can just put on its hazards and pull over
dcrazy · 46m ago
That “just” is doing some heavy lifting! The car still has to deal with all the normal hazards of the road while pulling over, plus the hazards it is itself creating by acting abnormally.
amelius · 1h ago
"Autopilot" already exists when it comes to flying.
bdcravens · 1h ago
Sure but it's not autonomous in the sense of Waymo (ie, driverless)
In fact, it's pretty routine. Don't have the source at hand, but somewhere around 1% of all landings (at airports with ILS) are autolands.
I think it was Boeing that even requires at least 1 autoland per plane every 30 days or so.
You can find videos of this on YouTube. Completely hands-off.
danielvaughn · 51m ago
Yes but it should have been obvious that in the context of Waymo + SFO, the implication was autonomous flying of commercial airlines.
seanmcdirmid · 58m ago
Yes, but autopilot usually just keeps the plane flying in a straight line at some specified altitude, which have been around since 1912. It isn't full self-flying (although we definitely have drones that can fly themselves already, so that tech already exists).
dawnerd · 52m ago
That's an oversimplification of autopilot systems. They can follow flight routes, avoid traffic (TCAS), even auto land to name a few.
seanmcdirmid · 50m ago
Auto-landers are not simply classified with autopilots. An autoland system is an advanced function that is part of a modern aircraft's overall autopilot capabilities. A basic autopilot can control an aircraft's attitude and heading, but an autoland system can automatically execute the full landing procedure.
Cause what this country needs is to automate away even the gig economy jobs that are out there. Let's keep making a few people rich and screw all the normal people out there.
darkamaul · 37m ago
As a European, I can’t help but feel a bit sad that we’re missing out on the driverless side of things. It seems like most of the meaningful deployments are happening in the US (Waymo, Cruise).
I’d really like to see either a Waymo competitor emerge in Europe, or even Waymo themselves operating here. The regulatory environment is obviously more complex, but it’d be great if we didn’t end up years behind on something this transformative.
arcticbull · 13m ago
Cars of any sort, self-driving or otherwise, do not solve traffic any more than Uber does because you need to have enough of them to get everyone to and from work at basically the same time. Trains are the only way to address traffic. Trains are self-driving. Europe already has the better self-driving system. It's just boring because self-driving is much easier when you build the road to support it instead of removing all constraints and adding GPUs, lidar sensors, cameras and an army of fall-back operators in overseas call centers.
durandal1 · 1m ago
Trains will fairly unreliably take you from one place that is not your home, to another place, which is not where you want to go, at a time that is probably not exactly when you wanted to arrive. Freedom of movement is incredibly important, and trains are very rigid in this aspect.
I really had to read through it twice to make sure they were just talking about car taxis picking up travelers, rather than some kind of prototype pilotless commuter helicopter or something.
Flying is obviously much harder than driving, but it's a sort of harder that is generally more amenable to automation, though I still think pilots are a good idea because when it goes wrong it goes wrong much worse.
ILS being under maintenance and unavailable for certain runways is also far from unusual.
Currently we rely very much on the problem solving abilities of human pilots to deal with troublesome situations. Autopilot will disengage in many scenarios.
Category IIIC ILS (full auto-land) does exist but requires special equipment for both the aircraft and airport. Human pilots have to actively monitor the system and take back control if anything goes wrong (which does happen).
Garmin also has the Autonomí auto-land system for certain general aviation aircraft which can attempt to land at the closest suitable airport. But this is only used for single pilot operation in case the pilot becomes incapacitated. It isn't suitable for regular flights.
I still believe that having an actual pilot inside the plane that care for his own life is not a bad idea vs someone remote feeling a bit disconnected with the reality of a crash.
I have no idea if that works but I thought you were making a good contribution to the conversation by proposing a potential solution to the exact problem everyone is talking about.
The less you can change about the product and environment, then automation run slower and less effectively.
Air liner operations could be automated, but the minimum equipment list would be more stringent, the destination airport would not be able to take any equipment out of service for maintenance, visibility minimums would increase, takeoff and landing operations would require more slack time.
Besides all of that, the owner of the airplane would still want to have some crew on board.
In short, it's not worth it yet.
===
There is also the paradox of automation: Automation generally makes the hard parts harder and the easy parts easier.
Look up the Airbus ATTOL project's first automated takeoff a few years ago.
Also, there's virtually no automation when it comes to interacting with ATC.
In fact, it's pretty routine. Don't have the source at hand, but somewhere around 1% of all landings (at airports with ILS) are autolands.
I think it was Boeing that even requires at least 1 autoland per plane every 30 days or so.
You can find videos of this on YouTube. Completely hands-off.
I’d really like to see either a Waymo competitor emerge in Europe, or even Waymo themselves operating here. The regulatory environment is obviously more complex, but it’d be great if we didn’t end up years behind on something this transformative.