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by mgr86 249 days ago
I think this is a case where I simply don't know enough, but couldn't auto-pilot be a lot easier and safer when adding a new axis? A lot fewer things to run into in the air, and if you could just rise or fall a couple dozen feet to avoid an collision seems safer.
4 comments
nradov 249 days ago
The big limitation of autopilots is that they can't handle emergencies. By their nature emergencies are unpredictable so programmers can't reliably code for emergency situation handling in advance. An experienced human pilot at least has a chance to figure out a solution by reasoning from first principles and reacting intuitively to novel situations. These new eVTOL aircraft have a certain amount of redundancy built in but realistically if anything goes seriously wrong they're just going to spin and crash (or maybe pop a recovery parachute if so equipped and within the flight envelope for those to work).

Autopilots also can't handle VHF voice comms (with a very narrow exception for the Garmin Autonomí system in certain situations) or perform "see and avoid" traffic management in VFR.

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dzhiurgis 248 days ago
Flying FPV drone is ridiculously easy. I can't see these being any harder, other than road rules of course.
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nradov 248 days ago
Sure, easy until something goes wrong. Then it gets really difficult really fast.
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ngokevin 249 days ago
Not sure about the autopilot part (even planes autopilots follow a flight path). I'm not an expert either, but with roads, there are clear lanes and markings. And ability to generally see around you, and judge distance.

Is what sets the lanes in the air are traffic controllers and flight plans? We're already short on traffic controllers. And there are already lots of near-misses (and not near-misses) even with the heavy regulation and control. Can't imagine having it as mass personal transit driven manually. There'd need to be a mass central system that controls everything, and in that case, might as well just keep it commercial

The energy efficiency isn't great either on personal aircraft

not an expert, just shooting the crap

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saubeidl 249 days ago
Yup, there's a bunch of Chinese startups building that rn. EHang [0] is one of the bigger ones.

[0] https://www.ehang.com/

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codyb 249 days ago
If it's autopilot you could probably also channel the vehicles to specific routes such that they maintain a road like set of channels where they're flying so the rest of us can not worry about random flying cars zooming around our yards and playgrounds.

We already do this with planes which have corridors they fly along.

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