Video: Korea's Science Institute Introduces Robot that Flies Aircraft Safer than Human Pilots

Where is the evidence it can fly safer than a human?

In the 44 years of my flying career I have had quite a few situations where the failure did not 'follow the book'! Failures are just that... stuff doesn't work as it should or in a way that nobody has predicted a certain failure. We deal with it by following the checklists for corrective action and decide to land or continue. Complex machinery demands a complexity of thinking that is often outside the set procedures, and cannot be left up to a computer.

"But the integration of technologies like ChatGPT has marked a pivotal progress point."

ChatGPT? Lord help us all.

Kill it

.......... all good until; like the driverless car, it encounters a situation it has no awareness of.

I just read a driverless car drove into a highway under construction and did not stop until wet cement bogged all 4 wheels............. no cement in the air but plenty of other unknowns.

As my dad likes to say about this pilotless plane scenario, the last cabin announcement always ends with "Have no fear! Nothing can go wrong....go wrong....go wrong..."
More seriously, machine learning models can do amazing things on good training data, but heaven help you if the real world ventures beyond the training data! The models are completely unpredictable in that realm because there is no actual understanding of the world, just good pattern matching within the bounds of the training.

https://youtu.be/rQbj9uvYL8I?t=70

It won't know how to say "Ah Shit" and figure out what to do for crap that really happens, that isn't in the manuals. That's why you need a real pilot. Plus no one is going to eat the fish dinner anymore.

This is the safest ship in the world! It doesn't even need life quotes!

Some human pilots may be able to outperform this robot pilot, but others will not be able to. Human pilots screw up fairly often. Plenty of accidents are caused by pilots doing the wrong thing for the situation they find themselves in. Reasons for human pilot failures include high stress, didn't know, couldn't remember, fixation, fatigue, or just could not make the connection between failures. Lots of these reasons for inappropriate response to aircraft problems may be mitigated or negated with robot AI pilots.

Yes, an unforeseen failure could fall outside the programming of the robot pilot. But unforeseen failures also fall outside of the training programs of pilots as well (see definition of "unforeseen"). Unforeseen events have caused crashes in human piloted aircraft.

so a fully automated pilot is instructing a fully automated aircraft what to do.....Gee I cant see a problem with that....Next it will be fully remote ops from home via a laptop.

LOL. Safer until it is NOT. Maybe someday.

That said, bots are coming to the cockpit in one form or another.

They say it can react to emergencies faster than a human pilot, yet its movements are slow. I guess they mean no delays in decision making.

I mean, really, what could go wrong? /S

And the best part of all is they wont ever need a Union!

I will never board a plane with no human beings in the cockpit, just like I will never use a driverless car !!

Fly up side down... Have crack up?

No kidding, better than a human pilot?
Pibot Vs pilots , does the school goes to the student or the student go to school ?
Nothing can replace a human brain , after all the Pibot was created by a higher power “ that has created the brain “
Are we going to call “ a mechanical “ to fix the aircraft or the Robot ?”
According to this opinion, can future humans or passengers trust a “ pibot captain ?”

I would never get on a single-pilot plane, but I have ridden on high-speed metro trains and taken inter-city busses without a second thought. They both have single operators/drivers, and none of us hesitate to Uber or Lyft.

1st commercial real flight, captain welcome address : "Here's captain speaking ...[scratch] ... speaking[scratch] ... speaking[scratch] ...."
:o))

So Airliner Watch has fallen hook, line, and sinker for a press release. This is just comical.

Yeah, not in this lifetime!

And what about in case of an emergency, such as an engine failure...
How would the pibot establish the best area to land based on ground features (size, shape, slope, surface type, situation into wind, services/stock) ??
Agree on plenty of unknowns up there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMhYl74vw2c

No Thanks

Great project! I hope technology improves faster than 2026. I would love to watch it in action. As stated, it has fantastic future use in the military as opposed to risking human lives and having manned machines that then have human limitations. Progress is awesome.

I'm not a pilot, but am a programmer. Almost all software has errors (bugs) when first written. Testing every condition of a complex program can take longer than writing the original program, but for aircraft it is vital. Even after thorough testing, some combination of conditions can show up much later. The MCAS in the 737 MAX was an example. If this PiBot is to be used, at least one human, seasoned pilot must be in the "other" front seat.

When virtual reality makes the experience of being there good enough, you won't need this robot because you won't need the airplane.

There is a bit more to the job than ‘navigating’ Isn’t there. What about aviating, when all else fails ?

I will NOT FLY ON ANY AIRCRAFT WITHOUT HUMAN PILOTS!

Je suis Pilote et je ne pense pas qu'un Robot pourrait remplacer les qualités Humaines. Si cela se produisait et les compagnies aériennes opteraient à ce remplacement, je n'effectuerais plus mes voyages en avions et j'opterais aux Navires

AI is already in the cockpit check out the latest fly by wire systems in the latest airplanes they can takeoff,fly, land and finally taxi to the gate while the pilot keeping an eye.

If AI can do mostly everything else what is flying an aircraft,AI is coming and another human job is bites the dust.

Is there a outlet for pilotless drone combat "find and shoot the enemy drone". That is what is needed! Not in your lifetime will commercial aviation offer pilotless passenger aircraft..

Gift one to Kim Jong-Un with a defective robot.

So much for accusations.
Here we go again , another chance to personal attacks against pilots .
how many “ pilots were doing the wrong thing or error crashes have you confirmed this year ?”

Once the idea of an elevator not controlled by an operator was considered dangerous.

Automated trains?
There was a time when the idea of a train being totally automated like a horizontally travelling long-distance lift was considered ridiculous, but there are metros all over Europe and Canada and in Australia that do this now.

Automated cars?
Right now so-called self driving cars really only have systems to assist the driver, not replace them. You can't go to sleep while it drives you around. Big strides have been made, but I still wouldn't trust one yet. Driving and traffic are pretty complex and unexpected, bad things can happen instantly.

Automated flight?
Flying is very complex and I sure wouldn't trust it. However cruise missiles and other UAVs that are largely automated seem to do what they're supposed to, so perhaps it could happen one day. I wonder if there's even a way to 'can' airmanship?

I think human pilots will be a round for a long time yet.

This would be a good replacement for We Too Lo and Sum Ting Wong who flew Asian 214 into the ground at SFO.

No more sudden cardiac events due to covid vaccines.

At some point flight crews will be out of work due to automation. I say we start first with single pilot cargo flights. As the technology improves move to passenger operations. Flight crew salaries are the largest item in the budget. If we reduce those costs, investors will reap the benefits of this technology. Remember when a flight crew was comprised of pilot, copilot, navigator, radio operator, and flight engineer? The Luddites back then swore that flight crew reduction was unsafe and unworkable.

The comments are do predictable, complete with fake stories about Tesla crashes while driving autonomously.
I'll take the computer with hundreds of thousands of tests over the human that got drunk the night before, or is stressed because their marriage is falling apart, or has mental illness, or has worked too long without proper rest, or or or...
People that think a human can outperform a properly developed AND TESTED computer are either old or stupid or both.