Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

Re:Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern person... by makestuff on Monday August 05, 2024 @04:47PM (#41165444)

> Unlike a traditional airplane, it becomes impossible to command the airplane into a stall, a spin, unsafe attitudes, or other bad states.

Interesting product and definitely different from most YC startups we see!

However, I am curious how the above will be impossible. Since it is fly-by-wire it seems like there is always a chance your sensor/servo fails and causes bad input. Or a software defect causes bad input with no manual overrides to just fly the airplane.

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Re:Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern person... by spaceywilly on Monday August 05, 2024 @05:47PM (#41165932)

I worked for a company doing something similar and they used servos that were strong enough to control the plane, but no so strong that the safety pilot couldn’t overpower them if needed. I think it’s the same for any autopilot really. And there’s always a big “disconnect autopilot” button in case it goes haywire.

I think they will need to consider that situation though, if the autopilot does fail the pilot would still need to have enough skills to land the plane. Even ATP pilots have this issue where they over rely on automation too much and lose their ability to land manually in an emergency situation.

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Re:Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern person... by n_ermosh on Monday August 05, 2024 @04:54PM (#41165509)

redundancy in sensors, computers, and actuators reduces the probably of a system failure due to random errors/failures and dissimilar computer systems help reduce the probability of a common mode software bug causing a failure.

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