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Comment by java-man | Hacker News Reader

It's only a matter of time.

However, how will the robotic plances integrate with existing voice-based air traffic control? Would there be a new digital channel, or the planes would it use an on-board voice recognition and synthesizer?

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If the airplane isn't in the clouds and is below 18,000 feet MSL the pilots are still responsible for seeing and avoiding other traffic. There are a lot of places in the USA that don't have ATC radar coverage, so traffic separation is based almost entirely on see-and-avoid and cloud distance laws for VFR pilots.

The ATC problem is probably the easiest one to solve, and there are already some solutions in use like D-ATIS and automated pre-departure clearance (PDC).

If that airplane isn't in clouds and is at/above FL180, pilots are still required to maintain vigilance to see-and-avoid other traffic. It's true that positive separation is also provided by IFR rules in class A airspace, but any time you're in visual conditions, you're expected to see-and-avoid.

FAR 91.113.b: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.113

That would be quite a feat without updating the quality of the voice transmissions. When you listen to some recordings of ATC, it becomes clear pretty quickly that context clues is paramount to being able to communicate with ATC. Some of the transmissions are so difficult to hear it amazes me that humans can even communicate through it.

Perhaps a lot of that is cabin noise, and without it, the transmissions would become a lot clearer.

For what it’s worth the radio transmissions sound quite a bit more clear (usually) in the plane. LiveATC uses ground stations which don’t always have great reception and they compress the audio like crazy. I can barely make out what they say on LiveATC sometimes but in the air it’s rarely a problem.

That's what I was hoping is the case. Good to know!

Agreed. The radio comms are also generally following a fairly predictable pattern of information.

If you suddenly transmitted "and I'll have a BLT on rye, hold the mayo", you're almost certainly going to be asked "say again?"

If I was doing this I would start with remotely "piloting" (sending instructions to) them and having the remote pilot communicate with ATC via the traditional radio channel.

What if radio communications are lost? This is not a super infrequent occurrence

Right, but that requires a fairly reliable radio link (that we don't have, e.g. MH370).

Or perhaps a set of dedicated routes, with ATC actively routing other traffic around the robots?

That would require radar contact along the whole route. Otherwise if a transponder stops working you suddenly have a ghost aircraft capable of causing massive amounts of damage.

So get one. Partner with SpaceX or oneweb and plot courses only where you will have continuous connectivity.

We pilot drones in warzones remotely, the technology exists to pilot then in peace time.

> We pilot drones in warzones remotely,

True but we also are ok with those drones getting destroyed.

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