AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2020 - 92

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P&E

TECHNOLOGY

situations," said Brad Hayden, founder
and CEO of Robotic Skies, a New Mexico
company with a global network of repair
stations for drones. "The real paradigm
shift will happen when the pilot is there for
times in which the automated system fails."
And that tipping point, Hayden said,
may not be far away.
"We're entering an automated era, and
people are adjusting to it," he said. "I recently
rode in a Tesla in Southern California and
the vehicle essentially drove itself. I was
uncomfortable at first, but it took about an
hour to get to our destination, and by the
time we arrived I was totally cool with it."
Self-driving cars have much more
complex problems to solve in a far less
predictable and fast-changing environment than aircraft navigating the airways.
Each self-driving Tesla, for example, has
multiple cameras and sensors, and can share
information with a network that distributes
it among tens of thousands of vehicles. When
a Tesla hits a pothole, for example, the car
remembers and avoids the pothole by taking
another route or driving in a different lane,
and tells its network so other cars know, too.
The Garmin Autoland system is selfcontained within each airplane. The next
step in automation, Hayden said, is datalink communication with other aircraft and
air traffic controllers.
"That technology is being used in
the unmanned world right now," he said.
"Technology is being shared more and
more between manned and unmanned aviation, and eventually those distinctions will
go away. It's all just aviation."
Mike Busch, founder of Savvy Aviation,
an aviation firm that does a great deal of
engine data collection and analysis (see
"Savvy Maintenance: Hot Seat," p. 100),
said the safety benefits of automated flight
are compelling. About 75 percent of aviation accidents are caused by pilot error,
a figure that has remained stubbornly
unchanged for decades.
"It's easy for automation to do a better
job of flying airplanes than humans," Busch
said. "Look at our record."
A modern, digital autopilot updates
about five times per second and never
gets tired, or hungry, or wakes up in a bad
mood. Huge investments in self-driving
92 | AOPA PILOT April 2020

"Technology is being
shared more and more
between manned and
unmanned aviation,
and eventually those
distinctions will go
away. It's all just
aviation."

-Brad Hayden
cars and mass production of miniature
cameras and other sensors eventually
will remake aviation. "I've got sensors in
my car that look in all directions every
moment that it's on the road," Busch said.
"It doesn't have blind spots. I've got good
technology in my airplane, too, but I don't
see everything around me."
The FAA's recent move to performance-based standards has led to a major
shift that includes the use of modern,
relatively low-cost non-TSO avionics in
standard category airplanes. Busch said
he expects manufacturers to use experimental category aircraft to explore
autonomous approaches and landings and
bring unmanned technology to GA.
"You can't gather the data that demonstrates these systems are safer than what
we've got without flying them," he said.
"The experimental category allows for
that kind of work."
Ric Peri, vice president of government and industry affairs at the Aircraft
Electronics Association, said he expects
Garmin's Autoland system and products
that spring from it to change aviation
across the full spectrum.
"When it will replace the second
pilot-or third on long oceanic flights-
is anyone's guess," he said. "Automatous
flight is a major goal of the unmanned
world, so a lot of research and development money is pouring into that sector
right now. The traditional timelines are
significantly skewed-but we fully expect
to see significant evolutionary jumps as
new products are introduced."
AOPA
EMAIL dave.hirschman@aopa.org

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2020

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