Highly automated cars have undergone tremendous investment and progress over the past ten years with speculation about fully-driverless cars within the foreseeable, or even near future, becoming common. If a driverless future is realized, what might be the impact on personal aviation? Would self-piloting airplanes be a relatively simple spin-off, possibly making travel by personal aircraft also commonplace? What if the technology for completely removing human drivers turns out to be further in the future rather than sooner; would such a delay suggest that transformational personal aviation is also somewhere over the horizon or can transformation be achieved with less than full automation? This paper presents a preliminary exploration of these questions by comparing the operational, functional, and implementation requirements and constraints of cars and small aircraft for on-demand mobility. In general, we predict that the mission management and perception requirements of self-piloting aircraft differ significantly from self-driving cars and requires the development of aviation specific technologies. We also predict that the highly-reliable control and system automation technology developed for conditionally and highly automated cars can have a significant beneficial effect on personal aviation, even if full automation is not immediately feasible.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Transformational Autonomy and Personal Transportation: Synergies and Differences Between Cars and Planes


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (AVIATION 2016) ; 2016 ; Washington, DC, United States


    Publication date :

    2016-06-13


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English