Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You've hit the crux of the issue. The aircraft are getting complicated to the point where training in them -- especially outside of "normal" flight regimes -- is difficult. All the references to Normal/Alternate/Direct law are indicative of this.

Ever hit the wrong key in emacs and wondered why it was suddenly responding differently? Imagine that happening at 38k feet, at night in a thunderstorm.

My doctoral work was exactly in this field. Mode awareness, transitions awareness and autoflight understanding, especially in rare flight configurations, is a deep problem that needs to be tamed.

More info in my dissertation (never though I'd write that on HN!): http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/9172



Mode awareness

My opinion is that requiring mode awareness is a big chunk of overhead. It should be eliminated wherever possible.


Modes allow you to subdivide the problem space: only certain actions/transitions can occur in a given mode.

Removing that restriction allows anything to happen at any time. This is believed to be more complex to model.

Think of modes as a mechanism to prune a decision tree.


The problem with modes is that if you are wrong about what mode you are in, you'll make wrong decisions.


I wonder if there's research about mode awareness in crisis situations?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: