Who cares?
>> That's true. The human's not in the
thing makes it unsafe.
>> So, a lot of pilots, they're not trying
to do the maximally safe thing. They I'm
not saying pilots are unsafe.
Remember that pilots are working within
industry constraints. Like, a guy who
flies a bizjet or a charter helicopter
operation, he is flying within the same
constraints as a chauffeur, right? He
You got to approach everything smooth.
You If something's going wrong, you
don't want it to show until it has to,
right? You You are not going to want to
take aggressive really aggressive
evasive maneuvers at the first sign of
trouble. If I'm a robot, that's what
it's going to do. It's going to see the
first sign of possible trouble and do
the most evasive action. Your charter
helicopter pilot is not going to do that
because you're going to get really bad
reviews and you're going to lose your
job really fast. I think just the way
that you look at these things are very
different between human pilots and
unmanned pilots. My experience has been
that a lot of like let's take like
fighter pilots, for example. Yes, they
love to fly, but more they want to win.
>> Well, I think I think with our
autonomous systems, it really was like
seeing is believing, right? Like, we
demonstrated the capability and now
everyone's on board. The collision
avoidance.
>> Well, you run the missions and you run
the mission simulations. And also with
human pilots, you run them in
simulators. You're like, "Okay, let's
see you not hit the terrain in this
situation, right? Your GPS is out. Look
at this recent GPS jamming scenario
where where it took out the medevac
pilots."
Like, so put a lot of pilots into that
same situation and they're going to
they're going to have a they're going to
controlled flight into terrain
for sure. And maybe a few of them will
avoid it. And then you integrate that
with some of these safety systems and
all of a sudden every person in the sim
lives. And I think that does convince
people. We need to show people more of
that stuff.
>> So, I got a follow-on now. I've seen
things that work great in the sim, they
work great in a laboratory environment.
And this is not just autonomy, this can
be sensors. I've done a lot of helmet
queuing type of things. Work great in
the sim, you get in the real flight
environment, you get to some of those
edge cases, it's a lot more challenging.
>> You need to have exercises that are that
are realistic and representative of your
actual workflow and workload and then
ideally overloaded. One of the big flaws
of a lot of exercises, and including
ones that we're part of is that they
have this nice scripted thing and here's
how it's all going to go and it's all
very easy. Like you have a bunch of
beyond visual line of sight engagements.
Oh, we've picked it up. We passed the
queue and my
I've got I've got to fire my weapon.
It's going to pick up the track.
Great, it all works. Well, what happens
when actually there was a bunch of stuff
that you didn't expect and now it is
shooting at you. Also, a bunch of your
support systems are offline. Maybe
you've actually lost some of your
stability augmentation system in your
rotorcraft. Maybe because it was shot or
maybe just because the combat cadence
maybe we're in the middle of the third
week of the war and you haven't been
back to actually get properly maintained
in 3 weeks and so it's just total
and not working anymore. Like now what
is it like to do it? Or one of my
favorite ones like I most my daily flyer
is a Eurocopter EC120. I love I love it.
I know it's a little underpowered and
I'd rather be flying an MD500 but
there's things that I like about it.
>> [laughter]
>> Like I can fly a hydraulics out.
>> Mhm.
>> I really would not want to be flying a
hydraulics out in a high workload
situation with a lot of other stuff.
>> in the weather flying at night.
>> night in the weather or and it worse
maybe at night in the weather and I
didn't even expect to be at night in the
weather. Right? So or worse, I end up
overseas and I'm not wearing my
emergency suit and I'm thinking, "Okay,
what risk do I want to take? How far
like I want to be able to auto rotate to
the coast if I lose my main power. Maybe
my chip light is on. I know that I've
only got so much time left on my
engine." Unexpected scenarios should be
part of these exercises. We should be We
should be putting people into the worst
case scenarios and then seeing how this
stuff works out. And I'll be honest, a
lot of our stuff totally fails to work
when you get in those scenarios because
my guys are computer kids, right? And
like we work we have a lot of veterans
here and we try to work custom with the
customers to understand these problems
but it's very easy to develop a system
that works great in the science fair
project scenario and then you put it
into something real and it all falls
apart. And so I
>> This is why I'm all about early test. I
early test as soon as we can when we're
in the design phase so that we can find
the problems and fix the problems.
>> That's right. If you wait too long,
sometimes the fixes are just totally
non-viable. Like to use an extreme
example, what if you were considering
voice controls and it reads out over the
radio and everyone gets to hear it
versus a dedicated tablet for
controlling something. What if you find
out that the tablet's just completely
unworkable in high workload
environments?
The only fix at that point is try to
make the UI on the tablet better. It's
very hard to say, "Well, that's was 5
years of development down the drain.
We're just going to rip this out and
start from
>> Well, touchscreen is one of those
examples touchscreen can be challenging
and
>> I hate touchscreens. They're so bad.
They're so bad. Don't even get me
started. Steve Jobs, I I like the guy,
but man, he ruined technology.
>> I miss my Blackberry.
>> Absolutely.
>> I love tactile feedback. I really do. I
have a whole
>> That's a huge thing.
>> It's so critical.
>> It's the tactile feedback. That's like a
very specific example of what I'm
talking about. I've got this whole
anti-Steve Jobs and I remember I respect
Steve Jobs to death.