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May 22, 2005
Airplanes That Land Themselves?
The military is apparently pursuing the development of an automated method of landing planes on carriers. This is not a crazy idea, but it's an idea who's time has not come. The dynamics involved in landing an airplane at night, in a storm, on a carrier are too complicated to be trusted to a few million lines of code. It's true that humans make errors in landing planes on carriers, but that doesn't mean that software can do a better job. Some company named QinetQ has apparently demonstrated an automated landing of a short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft on a ship. But, this doesn't mean it's a good idea. I was immediately reminded of the performance of this highly automated Airbus A320 at an airshow in 1988. More details on this A320 crash here. We don't need software flying planes or driving cars, as automated systems make as many mistakes, if not more, than people do.
Posted by Peenie Wallie on May 22, 2005 at 4:32 AM
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