| Really? Because BA 38 shows to me why software has a long way to go before it can replace pilots. So you want to detect a fail to spool? OK you need to put a sensor on the engine to detect speed. And one on the throttle to detect position. Maybe there is another way to detect fail to spool but this is what we're going with because linear and rotational sensors are pretty common and well sorted. Now you need to make sure that those sensors are 100% correct before factoring it into your code. So you add another of each sensor. But what if one of those sensors is out of calibration or broken? You need another one to vote for majority. Ok so now you've got 3 sensors on both the throttle and engine shaft. Nothing really crazy here and pretty common. Now you've got to build the software to model the engine. Jet engines have a delay in spool times that depends on air speed, how fast you feed in the throttle, how fast the engine is already turning, and other factors I have no clue about. Now that you've got the model setup you have to add in some hysteresis to keep things nominal and to deal with glitches in readings due to iPods and cosmic radiation and vibration. And then you have to remodel the whole thing depending on which engine is fitted (there are 3 available for the 777 plus variations). And then you've got to test it. Now that you've tested that you are able to detect a fail to spool situation you have to generate the model of what to do in various flight modes. And that depends on how much thrust was lost, air speed, altitude, attitude, rate of decent, wing configuration, weight, landing gear configuration, etc. And then you have to test the flight model. And then you have to update the operational handbook to inform the pilot of what to do if the above fails to work. You also have to amend the inspection and maintenance books to inform the A&P how to test and verify the sensors. You also have to modify the flight recorder to record the sensor positions and software behavior. And you have to modify the sat recording and playback software to handle the new data. You have to do all of the above because if the fail to spool code activates on a normal approach it can very easily lead to a stall and kill 200+ people. You want to be 99.99999% sure your code is correct. You've now spent millions of dollars and years of development to replace something a pilot can detect in 3 seconds by simply listening and feeling to what the plane is doing. AND you have created a liability if a bug crops up. |
The control software does not need to know about the different models of engine. Each engine should measure its own performance and report the results to the self-fly software.
In the case of BA 38, this was done: the aircraft automatically detected the loss of power. Unfortunately the (dumb) autopilot had used a flight profile that was unsalvageable if loss of power had occurred at that point.
The future of travel is self-controlling vehicles. We have usable self-driving cars today. Airplanes are easier to control than cars, and the aviation market has a huge pent up demand for short hop travel that cannot be met by the heavily crewed business model.