737 Max Explanation by a Software Engineer

Re:737 Max Explanation by a Software Engineer by clavoie on Sunday March 17, 2019 @06:00PM (#19416952)

So, a modern aircraft probably have a few thousands sensors (if not way, way more), not strictly redundant but overlapping in some fashion -- I have to believe there's been some modelling trying to check that sensor input is consistent; if only to have some kind of way for the computer to figure out that a sensor has gone crazy (say your compass suddenly detects a significant change in heading, but no sensor has detected even a degree of roll, a change in speed, heading computed by GPS over time is stable... compass might be borked, whaddya say?)

Why isn't such modelling used to let sensors be disabled when they're clearly sending bogus input?

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Re:737 Max Explanation by a Software Engineer by rocqua on Sunday March 17, 2019 @06:15PM (#19417076)

My guess is that such systems are complex, hard to model for safety assurances, and hard to reason about in the moment.

Yes, it will probably make the system safer, but your guarantees become a lot more fuzzy. This is not the field for fuzzy guarantees.

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Re:737 Max Explanation by a Software Engineer by de_watcher on Monday March 18, 2019 @06:45AM (#19420019)

> Why isn't such modelling used to let sensors be disabled when they're clearly sending bogus input?

You need to crash a lot of planes to train that NN.

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Re:737 Max Explanation by a Software Engineer by m463 on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @07:45PM (#19437389)

there should be at least 3 AOA sensors - so you can not only detect a mismatch, but figure out which sensor is most probably incorrect.

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