Scott Grigsby, right, of Ball Aerospace talks with driver Sam Schmidt prior to a May 2014 demonstration of an aerospace-inspired electronic system that allowed Schmidt, a quadriplegic, to drive this specially outfitted race car, the SAM Project Corvette. | Timothy R. Gaffney
Speaker: Mary Louise “Missy” Cummings, associate professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and director, Humans and Autonomy Laboratory, Duke University
by David Hodes, Aerospace America contributing writer
by David Hodes, Aerospace America contributing writer
The coming autonomous world of travel and transportation is one in which two industries could learn from each other for safer, more quickly developed technology, said Mary Louise “Missy” Cummings at a June 15 presentation at the 2016 AIAA Demand for Unmanned Symposium in Washington, D.C.
During the “Perspectives on the Future of Autonomous Systems and Technology” session, Cummings, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University, examined how the auto and aviation industries could collaborate on the path to developing autonomous vehicles.
For example, some aircraft have sensors that scan and read gauges inside a cockpit to help pilots who are alone. That technology could also be used in all forms of transportation, she said, and will lead to cargo aircraft becoming drones very soon.
“Planes are much better flown on sensors than humans,” Cummings said, adding that commercial jets use automation to save gas, help level landings and perform other tasks.
However, driverless cars are still an unknown quantity compared with commercial jets. One of Tesla’s driverless cars crashed into a parked van on a highway recently because it could not determine its situational awareness fast enough.
Developers of driverless technology are “woefully unprepared” to do the proper testing of their autonomous systems, Cummings said.
“As soon as a car goes driverless, a driver goes into internal reflective mode,” she said. “I told Tesla that you can never ever count on a human to intervene in the driverless car’s control.”
She said the U.S. Airways plane landing in the Hudson River in 2009 is a good example of collaboration between human and automated machine.
“The real heroes were the engineers who designed the jet to set the right attitude, for instance, for the landing on the water,” she said.
Overall, Cummings said, the U.S. needs to “up our game,” because cargo plane drones are already being used in other countries, and change is coming for both auto and aviation.
“Jobs are shifting now, but we will still need humans in and around and on the loop in autonomous systems,” she said.
