I was just reading Karlolina's excellent blog: http://designaplane.blogspot.com
And this question of large leaps of innovation in aviation starting with available fly by wire is a great thought. So I thought I would like to have a discussion based on what ifs.
What I know is that the rest of the aviation world from Drones to RC to Airbus and all the others are working on FBW solutions for everything. What I also know is that things like Arduino are making high speed progress along the lines of progression in the personal computing hardware and software sort of speeds. So all the building blocks are there.
It seems that digital proportional computer driven controls are not just possible right now but actually everything needed to do it is off the shelf and cheap right now. So instead of talking about why it can't be done why not talk about how it can be done. What would someone have to do to design and test and open source type of system in order for it to become commonplace?
Some examples in the automotive world that are already intervening between operator and vehicle are traction control and throttle and brakes by wire. Steering by wire is coming very soon to the US. So it is happening. Again, Airbus especially and many others are already there but those systems and the development are astronomically priced.
Take a look at a project like the Megasquirt fuel injection system. It is not harder technically to take that same development environment and scale it to a control system with redundancy.
So what would it take?
And this question of large leaps of innovation in aviation starting with available fly by wire is a great thought. So I thought I would like to have a discussion based on what ifs.
What I know is that the rest of the aviation world from Drones to RC to Airbus and all the others are working on FBW solutions for everything. What I also know is that things like Arduino are making high speed progress along the lines of progression in the personal computing hardware and software sort of speeds. So all the building blocks are there.
It seems that digital proportional computer driven controls are not just possible right now but actually everything needed to do it is off the shelf and cheap right now. So instead of talking about why it can't be done why not talk about how it can be done. What would someone have to do to design and test and open source type of system in order for it to become commonplace?
Some examples in the automotive world that are already intervening between operator and vehicle are traction control and throttle and brakes by wire. Steering by wire is coming very soon to the US. So it is happening. Again, Airbus especially and many others are already there but those systems and the development are astronomically priced.
Take a look at a project like the Megasquirt fuel injection system. It is not harder technically to take that same development environment and scale it to a control system with redundancy.
So what would it take?