If you put more technology in the cockpit, you have more technology that can fail.
~ Amy Pritchett, Professor of Cognitive Engineering at Georgia Tech.
Quoted in the New York Times article Planes Without Pilots. The same piece also quotes the normally enthusiastic Professor Mary Cummings, a former fighter pilot and currently director of Duke University’s Humans and Autonomy Lab, as saying:
You need humans where you have humans. If you have a bunch of humans on an aircraft, you’re going to need a Captain Kirk on the plane. I don’t ever see commercial transportation going over to drones.
What do you think? What’s the real value of humans in cockpits?
