Re:Lack of redundancies on Boeing 737 MAX baffles some invol...
by phire on Wednesday April 03, 2019 @08:34PM
(#19568405)
The USSR were flying their Buran space shuttle in the 80s with full autonomous capabilities.
It could launch into space, orbit, de-orbit, fly though re-entry and land at a runway without any external control (it was designed to complete it's mission under signal jamming conditions).
It had full situational awareness and could autonomously make decisions like redirecting to a different runway or airport depending on weather and other factors.
Maybe it's a bit of a stretch to say Buran was safe enough to fly passengers autonomously, but it was in the right direction.
Compared to a self driving car where you have to detect respond to other cars and solid objects, the amount of processing power to maintain a dynamic aerodynamic flight model and fly under instrument conditions is actually pretty low.
It's the same problem we see with Tesla, Uber, etc and autonomous cars. If it's to be truly autonomous, it needs to do so without ANY human intervention. As soon as a human is added to the loop, the system needs to be understandable by any human operator.
In the case of the MAX, even with Redundancy sensors, there is the possibility enough of them fail that the plane doesn't "know" how to resolve the problem. So, control must be returned to the pilot with enough time and enough information to avert disaster.