How Does Autopilot *Actually* Work?

Autonomous vehicles, autonomous drones, autonomous planes....??? It's hard enough to understand how planes fly, but how do they fly themselves?! Or more accurately, how do the computer systems on board, aka autopilot, control the plane? And how much are commercial pilots actually flying, anyway? Well, it's kinda a long story.

In this video, I take you through the history of how planes became "electrified", through first the invention of Fly By Wire by Airbus, where mechanical controls on the aircraft were replaced by computers and actuators/servomechanisms. Then, I'll discuss some of the brilliant algorithms used to filter the sensor data, handle different errors, and even land the aircraft completely on its own, also known as a CAT IIIc, or zero-zero autoland. I'll take you through the system architecture of an autopilot system and its sistem, the autothrottle! (it's late, don't judge me).

Of course! It's not a real algorithm video without mentioning Artificial Intelligence for aviation, or AI for A! I'll talk about NASA's Learn To Fly developments, and other research programs on what the future of autopilots may be..... and if computers could actually replace pilots!

More Jenny:   / vldmrpoutine  

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0:00 Intro
1:44 A Brief History of Autopilot
3:07 What is Fly-By-Wire?
7:09 How Autopilot Autocorrects Errors
9:53 Limitations of Autopilot
11:27 The Future of Autopilot