A Meditation on Automation - Part 2

02/06/23 • 47 min

In the second part of our Meditation of Automation, we take a look at the practical aspects of automation. Artificial intelligence is progressing at a staggering pace – but does that equate to automation being smart enough to replace human pilots? To answer that question, we are going to review some of the practical challenges that fully autonomous aircraft and single-pilot airliner would face.

Previous Episode

A Meditation on Automation - Part 1

In March 2018, one of Uber ATG's self-driving test cars slammed into a pedestrian. Who is responsible for the accident: The pedestrian? The driver? The software? Or someone no-one suspected?

In this episode, which is the first part of a two-part series on automation, we take a look at the 2018 Uber ATG accident in Tempe, Arizona, and use it as a starting point to discuss the role of automation. Automation has made us safer, there is no doubt about that. But if we add even more automation, will we become even safer?

Sources for this episode include:

The National Transportation Safety Board’s accident report (https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/accidentreports/reports/har1903.pdf);

The article Driver in fatal Uber crash rejects plea deal; death in Tempe was 1st in nation for self-driving vehicle written by Ryan Randazzo and published on azcentral.com in June 2022;

Julie Bort’s excellent article Uber insiders describe infighting and questionable decisions before its self-driving car killed a pedestrian published in Business Insider in November 2018;

Sumit Singh’s article: Airbus Says Single Pilot Flight Crews Are The Long Term Future, published in Simple Flying in September 2021;

Driver Behavior in an Emergency Situation in the Automated Highway System by Dick de Waard, Monique van der Hulst, Marika Hoedemaeker and Karel Brookhuis, published in Transportation Human Factors in 1999;

Automated driving: Safety blind spots by Ian Noy, David Shinar, and William J. Horrey, published in Safety Science in February 2018.

The news clip at the beginning of the podcast was taken from a 12 News Arizona report: https://www.youtube.com/c/12NewsAZ

Next Episode

Rescue 116 - The Flight That Shouldn't Have Been

The accident of Rescue 116 is tragic in many ways. On a dark and rainy night, the helicopter and its crew were on a mission to assist in airlifting an injured seaman off a fishing vessel when they collided with terrain. Once again, we go beyond the immediate and obvious reasons for the accident and take a long, hard look at the organisational factors, including the overall safety management. Why wasn't any terrain shown on the crew's maps? Why didn't the EGPWS any warnings? And why was Rescue 116 called out to assist in the first place?