Better Tomorrow Challenges

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Flying: First computer-pilot military cargo aircraft flown without a human flight crew between

two military bases. The aircraft must carry cargo that is at least 80% of its maximum carrying load. The aircraft must be completely computer-piloted, from taxiing to the runway and taking off, to arriving and taxiing to its parking spot. As with all of the following future challenges, the only things that can be transmitted to the aircraft is its destination, flight plan, and the instruction to go. It then acknowledges the order and takes off.

[Human pilots can be drunk, high, suicidal, insane, and almost HALF of airline pilots fall asleep during their flights! Now would you like to be one of the unlikely passengers who is flown by any of those pilots? Do you have any control over such a fate? Would you even know? Computers never sleep, come to work angry because they had a fight with their spouse, arrive depressed because the bank foreclosed on their house, flirt with the stewardesses instead of monitoring the instruments, leave to go to the bathroom, have a head that a terrorist can put a gun to, panic, work through procedures too slowly (which is why the Miracle on the Hudson airline jet sank), or worry about their loved ones as they're about to crash and die (almost all pilots do die in plane crashes). As for a computer making an error or having a bug, there would never be only one pilot computer on board any jet. There will probably be at least five, as there were on the Space Shuttle. That is at least three more than there are currently human pilots in the cockpit. All making the same decisions and, as was the case with the computers on the Space Shuttle, if one of them makes a decision that is at variance with the other four, majority wins. If one computer keeps making errors and/or acts oddly, the other four can shut it down. So for safety reasons alone, computers will replace humans in the cockpit. If you then add in much lower operating costs and the fact that the computers will never go on strike, this future is guaranteed to happen. This and the below future challenges are meant to help accelerate this switch-over.]

To win this challenge (and Future Challenges #1 through #20), the program must include a learning algorithm, must transmit at least once per operational day what it has learned to the company that developed the program, and download updates from that central server.

Future Challenges:

1) First civilian computer-flown passenger aircraft with a full load of human passengers to fly from New York City to Los Angeles.

2) First US state to set a five-year deadline for all aircraft to be computer flown at all of the state’s airports (both commercial and private) and schedule the elimination of all human air traffic controllers at its airports within a month (30 days) after that deadline.

3) First US state to set a five-year deadline for all aircraft to be computer-flown at the state’s commercial airports.

4) First civilian airline to have all of its fleet be computer-flown.

5) First civilian airline to add a computer-flown airline jet to its fleet and use it for a regular international trans-oceanic route.

6) First civilian airline to add a computer-flown airline jet to its fleet and use it for a regular domestic route.

7) First civilian, computer-flown airline jet to fly with a full load of human passengers (numbering at least 100) from Tokyo to Los Angeles.

8) First civilian, computer-flown airline jet to fly with a full load of human passengers (numbering at least 100) from London to New York City.

9) First civilian, computer-flown airline jet to fly with a full load of human passengers (numbering at least 100) between New York City and Los Angeles.

10) First civilian, computer-flown airline jet allowed by the FAA.

11) First corporate jet maker that only makes computer-flown corporate jets. [As this will eliminate the cost of having a human flight crew (except possibly flight attendants), this innovation will likely greatly increase sales of corporate jets.]

12) First computer-pilot, cargo-only, military aircraft flown without a human flight crew between two military bases, with the flight crossing either the Atlantic Ocean or Pacific Ocean. The aircraft must carry cargo that is at least 80% of its maximum carrying load.

13) First civilian computer-flown passenger aircraft approved by the FAA.

14) First civilian package-delivery company to have its entire cargo aircraft fleet be computer-flown.

15) First civilian package-delivery company to add a computer-flown cargo aircraft to its fleet and use it for a daily route.

16) First civilian, computer-flown, cargo aircraft allowed by the FAA to fly from New York City to Los Angeles.

17) First civilian computer-flown cargo aircraft approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). [The military should take the lead in this challenge because they are not controlled by the FAA, because taking risks is all part of being a soldier, and because reducing soldier fatalities and prisoners of war (which occurs frequently with downed flight crews) is a prime goal. Once the military works out all the kinks and, after tens of thousands of flight hours, proves that this system can safely be trusted to do the job, civilian aviation will soon follow.]

18) First military that has all of its cargo and troop transport aircraft computer flown and makes the non-classified flight data available to its country’s private sector aviation industry.

19) First military to have all of its cargo and troop transport aircraft be computer flown, without human flight crews.

20) First military to have all of its cargo aircraft be computer flown without human flight crews. [A likely key to developing this technology is machine learning not only by the aircraft itself but through communication with other computer-pilot aircrafts. Unlike a human pilot, a computer can learn from all flights flown by robot aircrafts IF programmers allow them to do so. Each individual computer-pilot aircraft will fly essentially solo, but once it lands and uploads its flight information to central computers, that data can be compiled, compared, and analyzed against other computer-pilot flights and then all computer pilots who update their software by connecting to these central computers can learn what other computer pilots learned from their flights. And this exchange of information doesn't need to wait until the plane has landed but could be exchanged during a flight. The more computer-pilot planes that fly and the more often they fly, the better machine learning will be achieved. And since an aircraft learns nothing sitting on the ground, expect these computer-pilot aircraft to be nearly constantly flying in the air when they start operating. If need be, these computer-pilot planes will do "locals" (taking off and landing at the same airport) just like human pilots do in the military to maintain their flight hours but with these computer-pilot aircraft, they never need to sleep, eat, or kick back and relax so they might only land to refuel or to take on an actual flight mission. Again, the more these computer-pilot planes fly, the faster this technology will develop and improve.]

21) First computer-pilot, military troop aircraft flown with a full load of soldiers, but without a human flight crew, between two military bases with the flight crossing either the Atlantic Ocean or Pacific Ocean.

22) First computer-pilot, military troop aircraft flown with a full load of soldiers, but without a human flight crew, between two military bases.

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