Hacker News Reader

Comment by squidi | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know if the latest airplanes detect pilot drowsiness, as various cars have been implementing that for a while (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection)

View on HN

Yes, some models of the B777 (at least) will sound a warning if no controls have been moved/activated for 15 minutes:

"CREW ALERTNESS MONITOR The FMC continuously monitors the activation of switches on the mode control panel, EFIS control panel, display select panel, CDUs, and VHF/HF push-to-talk (PTT) switches. When a predefined time elapses after the last control activation, the EICAS advisory message PILOT RESPONSE is generated. The PILOT RESPONSE message can be cleared by pushing any control on any of the monitored systems or panels. If there is still no response after a short time, the EICAS caution message PILOT RESPONSE is displayed. If there is still no response, the warning message PILOT RESPONSE is displayed. Any control activation on the MCP, EFIS control panel, display select panel, CDUs, or VHF/HF transmitters resets the PILOT RESPONSE message. The PILOT RESPONSE message is inhibited at all altitudes below 20,000 feet while the aircraft is in a climb and the flaps are not up."

15 mins seems like a lot of time for a timeout. The B777 top speed is 950 kmph, which means the plane can travel ~237 km before someone wakes up. That's scary.

The car keep the driver awake long enough so the driver can pull over and stop driving. What's the plane going to do in that situation?

If the autopilot is detecting the pilot is drowsy I'd rather it let the pilot sleep than prod the pilot awake into further drowsiness.

You seem to think that keeping the pilot awake is the only option (based on your car example and rhetorical question) but actually there are several options but it's important to be tracking pilot drowsiness as a datapoint first.

While Toyota's apparently monitors the driver herself, it seems most of the others on that list monitor driver input. Especially on a long haul flight where autopilot is on, they aren't likely to have any direct input, but should be monitoring the radio, engines, destination, and other key systems. The real concern with sleeping pilots is something like this happening [1], for which I never found a explanation other than sleeping pilots as particularly likely.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/26/airliner.flyby/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com