I saw a youtube video of RC planes. What if engineers would invent RC real airplanes for transportation? What is your view in this suggestion?

And what would you do when it disappears over the horizon? Are you going to run after it with your little transmitter?

The military controls predators with pilots sitting on the ground, and the plane half way around the world. And, NASA controls rovers on Mars and other solar bodies. Distance is not a big problem.

Edited August 2, 20178 yr by EdEarl
Mars

20 minutes ago, Manticore said:

And what would you do when it disappears over the horizon? Are you going to run after it with your little transmitter?

There are hitech ways on how to control this like radio signals or gps satellites for guidance..

Edited August 2, 20178 yr by Randolpin

Actually, autopilots are capable of flying an airplane from takeoff through landing. Pilots are great in emergencies, where autopilots are currently incapable of saving a plane.

My thinking around this always goes to trains. 

It is far simpler to have driverless trains than pilotless planes. Why is it we don't have many driverless trains? The technology exists and has done for a while. 

My impression has always been it's mostly down to people feeling better with someone sat at the front notionally in charge. Now expand those feelings on trains to people's increased fears of flight. I don't think we'll have pilotless passenger planes very soon. 

13 hours ago, Klaynos said:

My thinking around this always goes to trains. 

It is far simpler to have driverless trains than pilotless planes. Why is it we don't have many driverless trains? The technology exists and has done for a while.

It seems likely that it is more difficult to retrofit such a system than build it in from the start. Consequently we would expect to see the technology appearing on new rail systems. I believe most new rail systems are MRTs. When we look at such systems we find many of them do use driverless trains. Our suspicions are confirmed.

2 hours ago, Area54 said:

It seems likely that it is more difficult to retrofit such a system than build it in from the start. Consequently we would expect to see the technology appearing on new rail systems. I believe most new rail systems are MRTs. When we look at such systems we find many of them do use driverless trains. Our suspicions are confirmed.

I agree, many but not all new MRTs and the technology has been around for a long time (e.g. Docklands light railway, 1985). It's definitely an interesting area. 

19 hours ago, EdEarl said:

The military controls predators with pilots sitting on the ground, and the plane half way around the world. And, NASA controls rovers on Mars and other solar bodies. Distance is not a big problem.

Distance is a huge problem - time lag in the signal can lead to PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillation) which can be a killer.

Also:

Many years ago I was flying in West Africa when the Harmattan began (Harmattan is when the winds change, bringing dust from the Sahara). As the dust thickened, I lost radio contact with the Tower as well as the VOR signal. I flew home by a combination of dead reckoning and road following. Contact was not regained until I was less than 10 miles from the airport.

Edited August 3, 20178 yr by Manticore
Typo

The distance problem between here an Mars is much worse. There is no way to directly control a rover on Mars. Instead, they have software that can execute a command to go from here to there without giving detailed instructions about every rock to dodge. The software does the detail driving. I expected predators to have something similar, but tuned for use in near real time. Even so, there would be challenges.