ATTOL: Autonomous Taxiing, Take-Off and Landing test flight
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in autonomy debates as evidence that autonomous take-off aircraft exist and as an example of vision-based line following.
What it is
Short Airbus footage of its ATTOL project, in which a test aircraft performed a fully automatic, vision-based take-off at Toulouse-Blagnac. The crew ran eight take-offs over several hours.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2021 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites rtkwe · 2021-09 · on “Video of Tesla FSD almost hitting pedestrian receives DMCA takedown”
They're still in a vastly more controlled environment than cars and moving at much lower speeds as well. If an auto taxiing plane has to avoid another airport vehicle something has gone massively wrong. Judging by this video [0] I'm not sure they're even worrying about collisions and are counting on the combination of pilots and ATC ground controllers to avoid issues while taxiing. It looks like the cameras are entirely focused on line following. [0] [this video]
Cites l33t2328 · 2022-06 · on “US moves closer to recalling Tesla’s self-driving software”
_sigh_ Yes. It can. You’re intentionally misrepresenting reality for what I suspect is some ideological fondness of Tesla. Sure, no _commercial_ plane can take off with autopilot, but such planes exist[1]. But, saying Cat IIIc is required for hands off landing is silly. It’s required for hands off landing in the absolute worst conditions. It’s needed only when conditions are so bad that you can’t safely taxi and you’ll be stuck on the runway. That’s why it’s not used. [1] [this video]
Cites rkomorn · 2025-09 · on “Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high”
Not only that but they are even less capable of taking off on their own (see the work done by Airbus' ATTOL project [0] on what some of the more recent successes are). So I'm not sure what "planes can land on their own" gets us anyway even if autopilot on modern airliners can do an awful lot on their own (including following flight plans in ways that are more advanced than before). The Garmin Autoland basically announces "my pilot is incapacitated and the plane is going to land itself at <insert a nearby runway>" without asking for landing clearance (which is very cool in and of itself but nowhere near what anyone would consider autonomous). [0] [this video] (among other things, but this video is