This is Garman SafeReturn, and this is its first real save.
Here's a demo.[1] It's been shipping since about 2020, originally on the Cirrus Vision Jet. There's a lot going on. The system is aware of terrain, weather, and fuel, but not of runway status. So it gives the ground a few minutes to get ready, sending voice emergency messages to ATC.
If you watch the flight track, you can see the aircraft circle several times, some distance from the airport, then do a straight-in approach. It sets up for landing, wheels down, flaps down, lands, brakes, and turns of the the engine. It doesn't taxi. Someone from the ground will have to tow or taxi the aircraft off the runway.<p>It's mostly GPS driven, plus a radar altimeter for landing.<p>The system can be triggered by a button in the cockpit, a button in the passenger area, and a system that detects the pilot isn't making any inputs for a long period or the aircraft is unstable and the pilot isn't trying to stabilize it. The pilot can take control back, but if they don't, the airplane will be automatically landed.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ruFmgTpqA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ruFmgTpqA</a>
Famously the golfer Payne Stewart and the total of 6 people on the LearJet 35, died after a sudden loss of cabin pressure incapacitated everyone including the pilots. A system like this, would have detected it and possibly saved them.<p>I wouldn't expect a whole lot more detail, as that airport is often used by defense contractors like Ball Aerospace, who have a large office nearby.
There's a bit more detail today.[1] Air taxi service, plane flying with two pilots, no pax, loss of cabin pressurization, system activated automatically, crew decided to let it finish its job.[2]<p>[1] <a href="https://avweb.com/aviation-news/garmin-autoland-activation-crew-decision/" rel="nofollow">https://avweb.com/aviation-news/garmin-autoland-activation-c...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/plane-emergency-landing-colorado-autoland/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/plane-emergency-landin...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.buffaloriveraviation.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.buffaloriveraviation.com/</a>
Even without autoland, I've never understood why there wasn't an emergency system to handle depressurization events when it detects no pilot input. There have been enough ghost flights, even in the last 20 years, that such a system could've saved hundreds of lives. (Helios Air 552) Automatically dropping altitude, or even just changing the transponder to some automatic value, would help.
Some planes have this, but planes are expensive and last a long time, so a lot of them don't.
I guess in some cases lowering altitude could result in flight into terrain or possibly entering airspace where collision with other aircraft would be more likely ?
SafeReturn doesn't detect that as I understand it. It still requires manual activation by one of the passengers.
This is fascinating.<p>My uncle was a pilot, and I asked him 15 years or so ago about the job. He was going on and on about computers and autopilot, claiming that pilots were only really needed anymore for takeoffs and landings, and they could sleep during the rest. Probably realizing the liability in what he said, he was quick to clarify that he didn't, of course.<p>In that short time span we now have a system that can land a plane by itself. Nothing less than magic, and huge congratulations and thanks to everyone at Garmin who made this happen.
Even take-off doesn't <i>really</i> need a pilot; the production Lockheed TriStar airliner had full automation and on at least one occasion ( 25 May 1972 ) flew entirely from runway to runway, across the USA, without pilot intervention.
This was crew decision and there was no pilot incapacitated...<p>"Garmin Autoland Activation Was Crew Decision" - <a href="https://avweb.com/aviation-news/garmin-autoland-activation-crew-decision/" rel="nofollow">https://avweb.com/aviation-news/garmin-autoland-activation-c...</a>
Is there any option for passengers to chose another airport? Or for ATC to force the plane to use the next best airport? For example if the runway is under construction and severely blocked.
I would imagine it is aware of NOTAMs that indicate runways being closed when it picks where to land.<p>It's probably a possibility in some bizarre & unlikely set of circumstances with perfect timing, but even then it's still a better outcome than flying into the ground uncontrolled. See the Gimli Glider where a 767 flown by humans was forced to make an emergency landing at a runway that was <i>actively being used as a dragstrip during the landing</i>—everyone survived.
If you're one of the many developers at Garmin who worked on this, I can't imagine a better Christmas gift!
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Kinda weird you had to bring Stripe developers up where there’s pacemaker, and insulin pump, and ventilator developers.
"This person sent goodwill to one group of people so obviously wants other groups to die in a fire" is not really devil's advocate...
no.
the devil doesn't need an advocate.
Found the recording with VASAviation subtitles and timeskips (because I couldn't decipher it without!) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Nl3LOZNjc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Nl3LOZNjc</a>
Absolutely amazing. Well done, Garmin. Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives. Fantastic systems engineering work.
“ Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives.”<p>I work on medical devices that improve and save lives but the work actually kind of sucks. You spend most of your time on documentation and develop with outdated tools. It’s important work but I would much prefer “move fast and break things”. So much more interesting.
Well, I'm glad it's that slow. I can't shake the idea of the horrors it would be to get a glucose pump whose software has been vibe-coded.
I work on team managing safety critical code. Management has asked to increase our AI usage, especially for generating requirements.
I certainly get it. But I also am very frustrated with the snails-pace development of closed loop glucose pump system. The tech has existed for quite some time to implement them in theory. Body hackers have already done so a decade ago.<p>I often wonder if we have created the correct balance here. How many quality of life years have been lost due to the decades lost by being conservative? And how much of the conservative pace is done for the “right” reasons vs personal or corporate CYA?
It's a question of incentives.<p>For safety regulators, the incentives are all on the side of limiting acute downside (e.g. a plane crashing), not maximizing potential aggregate upside (e.g. millions of tons of fuel saved per year and millions of tons of C02 not in the atmosphere).<p>Society punishes regulators that approve products that kill people, so regulators adapt to this and as a result tend to be very conservative.<p>Regulators don't capture any of the upside (reputational or otherwise) when a new product enters the market and cures disease, makes cars more efficient, helps planes land on their own in an emergency, etc.<p>I don't know what "right" should be here, but you've hit on a good point. It's complicated.
Not to invalidate your experience, but I think both of you feel this way because “you only want what you don’t have”. There are different kinds of joy that come from being impactful, and different kinds that come from moving fast. If only we could move fast and be impactful :’(
I could be fast and impactful. Just in a negative way. The problem is that I come from the software dev side so I tend to be less interested in the medical side. It’s the same in a lot of safety critical. There is a lot of mundane work to tick the necessary checkboxes. There isn’t much that is interesting from a technological side. Maybe the result is interesting but getting there takes a lot of extremely boring work.
Maybe you should change your line of work. If you're that unhappy about what you do in spite of the fact that what you do is orders of magnitude more important than the next move-fast-and-break-things-advertising-driven-unicorn then that suggests to me that you should let someone else take over who does derive happiness from it and you get yours from a faster paced environment.<p>Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to do the latter and I'd be more than happy to do the former (but I'm not exactly looking for a job).
Lots of the moving fast stuff is very impactful, just often in a bad way.
What is in this particular case that requires outdated tools? If they are code, certainly you can write them on VS Code or whatever you likes, and only need to compile and load on the original tools, can’t you?
It’s more the library and language side. Typically you are years behind and once a version has proven to be working, the reluctance to upgrade is high. It’s getting really interesting with the rise of package managers and small packages. Validating all of them is a ton of effort. It was easier with larger frameworks
Sometimes it's because you need to support ancient esoteric hardware that's not supported by any other tools, or because you've built so much of your own tooling around a particular tool that it resembles application platform in it's own right.<p>Other times it's just because there are lots of other teams involved in validation, architecture, requirements and document management and for everyone except the developers, changing anything about your process is extra work for no benefit.<p>At one time I worked on a project with two compiler suites, two build systems, two source control systems and two CI systems all operating in parallel. In each case there was "officially approved safe system" and the "system we can actually get something done with".<p>We eventually got rid of the duplicate source control, but only because the central IT who hosted it declared it EOL and thus the non-development were forced, kicking and screaming to accept the the system the developers had been using unofficially for years.
You need tracability from requirements down to lines of code. It's a very painstaking process.
> develop with outdated tools<p>I suspect a lot of aviation is the same.<p>Many private planes use outdated tech, carbeurated piston powered engines driving propellers.<p>Maintenance heavy, but all of it is well known and stable.
Oh, you could "move fast and break things" in your current job. For a while... ;)<p>(please don't)
You'd be even more impressed if you saw just how little resources they have to use (ram, storage, cpu), or how old of a C standard they have to work with. I have a few friends that work on this.
Garmin really is setting a standard for modern engineering. Hard to think of another company that still has solid engineering for both consumer and industrial applications.
The hardware side is routinely impressive. The software and business sides leave a lot to be desired.
Cane to say the same.<p>I have a Garmin "smart" watch (with every app notification etc disabled) and I love the fact that I can do almost two weeks of exercises (ride, walk, gym) without needing to charge it. The bike computers are also solid. But sadly the UX of the software on these leaves a bunch to be desired, and I've been bitten by many software and firmware bugs in the last years... Including months for which HRM would randomly and persistently drop it's value from say whatever the real value (say 145 for argument sake) to 80.
> Including months for which HRM would randomly and persistently drop it's value from say whatever the real value (say 145 for argument sake) to 80.<p>It’s annoying but a proper HR strap fixes all the issues associated with wrist based optical readers.
I know all of the wrist watches experience this issue, but this was extreme like drop from 145->80 for like 60+ min then rapidly shopt back up. Not like a small couple min blip.<p>This was a near the top end model at the time, and after complaining Garmin support owned up that this was a firmware bug impact all sensors of that generation and it would take 2+ months to fix (took like 5).<p>But they did send me a HRM for free and I've been using that. So I am grateful that and using it since. But for short rides (like 90 min or less) I don't always remember to think to bring the HRM.<p>Prior to that I had two lower end Garmin watches, and despite having theoretically lower end HR sensors they did not experience such bugs or drop outs (an unexpected blip every once in a while).<p>But I think the main point still stands, their software/firmware/UX has not moved in relation with the hardware. Next time I'm in the market I will be consider all the options. Feels like Coros and others have come a long way.<p>Prob the biggest thing keeping me in their ecosystem is multi sport (variations of bike riding types -- I do all), hiking, strength training, erg, winter sports. But even there the list of strength exercises has not been updated in like a decade.
That’s just most heart rate monitors. Often it isn’t enough conductivity (add water before activity) or the battery is low
Look at coros. Currently wearing Nomad - getting around a month of runtime on a charge WITH notifications enabled (not too many tho, only important ones). And UX is great too imho. (Not affiliated, just a happy customer)
Even the hardware is kind of stupid. They push you into basically buying a separate gps device for each and every hobby you do. It would be nice if there was one gps device that could be a bike computer, exercise watch, golf gps, etc etc. Yes, some devices have multisport mode but usually feature locked compared to the more sport specific device, and for no good reason really. I guess that would prevent them from selling you a $600 gps half a dozen times so that is why it isn’t done.
Yeah, have they ever actually used a garmin product? The hardware and the sound effects are excellent. Everything else is barely functional.
You've obviously never used Garmin software. It's always been woeful and lags well behind the rest of the industry.
The computer announcing the pilot incapacitation is at 11:50.
The mp3 file is malformed but playable. I get different timestamps for the same audio if I jump around.
Thank you. The time marks in the text were way off.
Amazing how bad the speech synthesis is for something so safety critical.
Then again I understood exactly what it was saying every time, which is more than I can say for some of the other traffic on that recording. I’m not sure synthetic-sounding means bad here.
The embedded systems qualified for use in general aviation avionics have very limited hardware resources. They are severely constrained by form factor, power, and cooling. It's amazing that the developers were able to get speech synthesis working so well.
I could do better than this with pre-recorded samples for each word. Especially for the phonetic alphabet.<p>Also avionics aren't <i>that</i> underpowered these days. They have full touchscreen displays and multicore CPUs.
It doesn't appear to me to be speech synthesis but rather prerecorded messages
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This, if it sounds too human ATC is going to try to help and possibly provide vectors, as they should, but The way the system works, ATC needs to be prioritizing clearing the runway and keeping aircraft away
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This feels like the evolutionary endpoint of what people casually call “autopilot,” not the traditional aviation sense.
This is a huge milestone, and everyone at Garmin who worked on Autoland should be patting themselves on the back, they saved some lives today and will undoubtedly save more. Amazing technology.
It's amazing what this technology can do. I wonder what the interface in the cockpit was like, who activated it and why, how it chose the runway, and other details that will likely come out in the final report if not earlier.<p>I think the radio call could be improved a bit though. It spends sooo much time on the letters and so little on the "emergency" part. It almost runs that sentence together "Emergencyautolandinfourminutesonrunway. three. zero. at. kilo. bravo. juliet. charlie."<p>>Aircraft November 4.7. Niner. Bravo. Romeo. Pilot incapacitation. Six miles southeast of Kilo. Bravo. Juliet. Charlie. Emergency auto land in four minutes on runway three zero right at Kilo. Bravo. Juliet. Charlie.<p>It would be nice to hear something more like:<p>Aircraft November-Four-Seven-Niner-Bravo-Romeo. Mayday mayday mayday, pilot incapacitation. Six miles southeast of the field. Emergency autoland in four minutes on runway three zero right at Bravo-Juliet-Charlie.<p>Still amazing, and successful clear communication ... but it could use some more work :)
The cockpit side is very passenger friendly, it assumes zero aviation knowledge. It's a single button and once pressed the system will show on the screens that it's active, what to expect and where it is going. The passengers just sit and watch, while it tells you via voice and on the screens what's happening. No action required apart from the single button.<p>It uses the navigation database (onboard) and weather data via datalink (ADS-B in the US, satellite in other places) to select an airport/runway. It looks for a long enough runway with a full LPV (GPS) approach available and favorable wind.
Some of the audio replays I heard had silence cut out, but the aircraft transmits every two minutes, for about twenty seconds each. It does share the information I'd want to hear in an uncontrolled environment, but in a busy towered class delta it likely needs to be shortened. They had plenty of advance warning of this aircraft being inbound and cleared the airspace well before it arrived, but if it had happened with less notice critical instructions may have been "stepped on" at a critical time.
The only complaint is it uses phonetics for everything multiple times in each transmission, I'm a radio guy, I would use phonetics once, then otherwise spelled out letters - aka, "whiskey lima foxtrot" and WLF the next time I needed to say it.
This is not how communication is done in aviation. Instead, it’s common to abbreviate to the last three alphanumerics of tail numbers (so “niner alpha bravo” for N789AB) after the first call — but this is conditional on not having a potentially confusing other aircraft on frequency (N129AB), and the system here can’t reasonably know that, so must take the conservative option.
I took issue with calling out the airport, multiple times in full phonetics, both at the beginning and the end of the transmission. All other callsigns, perfectly reasonable.
At an untowered field, saying the airport name at the beginning and end of each transmission is standard phraseology.
In phonetics?q
Typically, at an untowered airport, it's something closer to "{airport_colloquial_name} traffic, {your_aircraft_type} {your_n_number}. {MESSAGE}, {airport_colloquial_name} traffic"<p>So, "Columbia traffic, Cessna november one two three alfa bravo [N123AB], three mile final, full stop, runway one eight, Columbia traffic"<p>At a towered airport, you'd say "Columbia tower" instead, and you don't have to repeat it at the end of your message.
If anything, the tail number does not matter nearly as much. A plane with auto land presumably already has ADSb out (almost certainly 1090ES), is squawking 7700, and is probably already IFR anyway. As in this situation, the controllers knew well in advance they had an emergency inbound and who it was. At an uncontrolled field, I need something to tag (robotic "bravo-romeo" is plenty) and a relative position. Bonus if it does the math and predicts landing time, which it does.<p>Frankly, it should know (like I have to) if it's going to auto land at a towered field or uncontrolled, and adjust as necessary to those circumstances.
I’m not sure I agree. Not sure I disagree, either. If I’m another pilot in the air when this occurs, it feels like the most important things for me to know are (1) stay the hell away from the runway, and the announced approach, for a while; (2) only a single aircraft is doing an emergency autoland currently; (3) assume that the aircraft will need medical response while on runway (no auto-taxi) so if I was planning on landing in the next half hour or so, go to alternate. (1) and (3) are well covered, but (2) is subtle — /today/, the chance of two aircraft doing an emergency autoland at the same field at the same time is negligible, but it’s still something both I and the system designers need to think about.
In aviation you only use phonetics, hams are much less consistent about it so it looks weird from the outside.
I'd actually argue that Aviation is the outlier among Part 90, Amateur, and Public Safety users. The general rule in most radio services is using both phonetics and not, as to try to balance intelligibility and communications density.
Can’t say “the field” in the general case; there are many places in the NAS where the same frequency is used by a few uncontrolled airports that are close together.
I'm pretty sure that every ATC already knows this automated voice and what it means.... in a year or two, after having stories and videos it will become even more well known and then people will say that repeating emergency too much or spending too much time on it is a waste of airtime.
If anything I think it talks slower than the actual pilots around it did - <a href="https://youtu.be/K3Nl3LOZNjc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/K3Nl3LOZNjc</a>
I wonder if a human is in the loop. Obviously the software is hardly ever used (a good thing), so you wouldn't need many humans available. If communication is possible, wouldn't you hand control to a pilot on the ground?<p>I don't know that they could actually fly the plane - is latency too high for landing? - but they could make all the decisions and communicate with air traffic control, other planes, and the passengers.
Super cool! We live in the future my friends :)
> We live in the future my friends<p>I second that. Hearing in the VASAviation video (linked by someone else in a nearby thread) the robotic voice announcing what it's doing, while it does a completely autonomous landing in an airport it autonomously decided on, with no possibility of fallback to or help from a human pilot, is one of these moments when we feel like we're living in the future promised by the so many sci-fi stories we've read as children.
We massively discount how much better we make the world every day.
We have auto-pilot, and we have auto-land. Once we have auto-taxi and auto-takeoff, whats left?
Embraer has been working on their auto takeoff system, E2TS, for some time. While improved safety during a critical phase of flight is a goal, airlines are looking at the possibility that it allows increased performance (higher MTOW, shorter runways, less fuel burn.)
auto-troubleshoot
Auto-radio
Unfortunately there was a plane crash on Thursday of a Cessna Citation 550 that killed former Nascar driver Greg Biffle, his wife, his two kids, and both pilots. Greg Biffle himself was a certificated pilot and helicopter pilot but not flying in the crash. Incredibly sad. Hopefully technology such as this can reduce these tragedies.
FYI, a King Air is a small general aviation plane, seating up the 13 passengers.
There needs to be a button on the console of every airplane which is "return the airplane to straight and level".
All modern autopilot systems I've flown have have a LVL (or equivalent) button.
Most modern avionics stacks have one. Examples:<p>- <a href="https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/aviation/blue-button-helping-keep-blue-side/" rel="nofollow">https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/aviation/blue-button-helpi...</a><p>- <a href="https://pilotsupport.avidyne.com/kb/article/50-dfc90-wings-level/" rel="nofollow">https://pilotsupport.avidyne.com/kb/article/50-dfc90-wings-l...</a>
Let go of the controls.
Proudly wearing my Fenix!
If only Biffle was in a King Air.<p>Awesome to see stuff like this. Light sport aircraft have parachutes. Cool to see safety being incorporated into the avionics and not just flying it, but getting her down safely.
This is one of my biggest frustrations with aviation— the certification required to get this done is hugely onerous. The whole basis of certified aircraft is that they may not change, which makes improvements like airframe parachutes, auto land systems, and even terrain awareness, engine monitoring, etc. very costly to obtain. I think there is an argument to be made that there should be a pathway to airframe recertification to allow for innovation and improvement to take place in the aviation industry.<p>Instead, the FAA is probably going backwards on this issue and doubling down on the regulatory framework that gave us the MAX-8 situation while narrowing any avenue for smaller firms to innovate [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://avbrief.com/faa-wants-to-phase-out-ders" rel="nofollow">https://avbrief.com/faa-wants-to-phase-out-ders</a>
It's not clear what caused the crash of the private jet carrying Greg Biffle and family. The Garmin Autoland system is designed to address pilot incapacitation, not mechanical failures or active pilot errors.
I know. NTSB is on it. It’s just sad. Smaller aircraft <i>should</i> have safety features in case of mechanical issues to be able to bring it down to land without catastrophic injuries.<p>Not sure why the downvotes when all I want is for someone to live. I understand it’s harder for larger aircraft but anything 8 passenger or less, this should be considered.<p>My wish is that one day aircraft will operate off batteries that are charged via the fuselage solar panels and that the airframe will be light enough to support “rapid deceleration pods” or other parachute like devices to bring the aircraft to the ground. Larger commercial aircraft can recharge at the gates.<p>Eliminating the combustible fuel in the wings is another huge win.
Why doesn't it always autoland? We already have self driving cars, so a self flying plane seems imminent.
Very different standards - in its current form of emergency autoland it just needs to be proven to result in equal or better outcomes as a plane with no rated pilot onboard; the best case is another person that knows how to use the radio and can listen to instructions but the more likely case is a burning wreckage when the pilot is incapacitated.<p>To <i>always</i> auto land it needs to be as good as a fully trained and competent pilot, a much higher standard.
did you see the disruption to air traffic? everyone that needed to land had to go into a holding pattern. the plane was communicating to tower and was going to land since it was emergency. it was not observing other traffic, part of landing is knowing the location of other aircrafts to avoid collision. This doesn't seem to have collision detection/avoidance and space coordination with other aircrafts and entering holding pattern to delay programming yet. This is a good start.
Because it requires specific equipment that many airports do not have, for one. It also doesn't understand things like noise abatement procedures. It has to be setup properly. You don't want pilots forgetting how to <i>fly the airplane</i>. Any of a dozen other reasons.
We don’t have self driving cars.
I've confirmed with my own 2 eyes cars driving on the road without humans in them. I've also rode in a Waymo which had no driver. They definitely exist. Teslas also have self driving.
Is that self driving in the sense of fully autonomous, or it only works on whatever Waymo/Tesla have mapped to the milimeter?<p>I've never seen any clear info about that.
These people are basically Moon-landing deniers. They crop up a lot these days, sadly. I wish they'd crop up somewhere else.
I define “self driving car” as level 5. Or at least 4. It should’ve able to drive itself under almost all circumstances. And well.<p>Tesla isn’t that. Nor Ford. Nor GM. Nor anyone else. Waymo is closest, but they limit the domain and clearly still have issues. Stick a Waymo in snow on rural roads is it good to go? Doubt it.
I define "self driving car" as anything that drives as well as I do.<p>We won't get into what happens when <i>I</i> drive on a rural road covered with snow and ice... no, really, let's not go there. Moving right along...
If they didn't have to coexist with human drivers, we damned sure would.<p>We have a couple of nuclear-powered self-driving cars on <i>Mars</i>.
You want your plane to still land when there's a citywide power outage.
i assume it has to do with success rate. If a safety system is 99% successful, that’s really good. Not so good if you’re going to use it all time.
I've ridden on a King Air a few times. Surprised how fast the thing was, traveling west to east we sustained 600mph ground speed. Also pretty quiet interior given it's powered by turboprops.
There are rumors that there were 2 pilots aboard, and that one of them accidentally triggered autoland, and they couldn't figure out how to turn it off:<p><a href="https://vansairforce.net/threads/garmin-emergency-autoland-irl-first-use-reported-all-safe.240041/" rel="nofollow">https://vansairforce.net/threads/garmin-emergency-autoland-i...</a>
And also didn't know how to work thr radio? Surely autoland doesn't disable communication
There's <i>a</i> rumor, that you are propagating. One person, Tandem46, made this claim ... no evidence provided.