Originally Posted by
CoefficientX
I don’t think you need to look any further than the roll out of CPDLC. How long has it taken and we are only up to 3 centers now actively using it. The timeline is out to at least another year and a half before all centers are up and running with it.
Relatively speaking that’s basic technology yet NameUser is anticipating them to stand up a fully functional autonomous system guiding thousands of pilotless airliners around the country in 10 to 15 years.
The premise is laughable.
Yes that has come up in my thoughts as well. So you are absolutely correct, CPDLC development started decades ago and implementation keeps getting pushed back. And you are right, compared to an automated ATC system such as nextgen tied together with routing and re-routing flights on the fly, the two are light years apart. NASA has successfully tested UTM for small unmanned aircraft either this year or late last year. But it was very very basic in its handling of traffic.
So there are certainly different aspects of this.
- Pilot/operator monitoring of aircraft from the ground (I believe the tech exists today or will within the next few years to do so).
- Aircraft making decisions based on learned behavior such as when to divert, when to delay takeoff due to weather, when to go around, what to do if they experience an engine failure. The concept has been proven on a small scale with Garmin's autoland feature (basic level of executing scripts).
- Autonomous vehicles controlled by central computers and linked together. This will be quite a while off. Certainly the holy grail but getting all the partners together (government, airlines, manufacturers, etc) to decide on a standard and work together...yes a very long time away.
This is one of my favorite videos about step 3 and how effective and efficient it can be. Imagine a human controller giving instructors to each of these drones to keep them positioned doing the figure 8's:
https://youtu.be/cF6QHTQqL7g