Date of presentation: 18-Apr-2022
Subject: Airplanes and Artificial Intelligence: A Gentle Introduction
Description: This month's presentation was a real treat. Speaking to us tonight, Professor Mykel Kochenderfer gave us a "gentle introduction" to some of the concepts being developed by teams like his in the field of artificial intelligence as designed for aviation. He talked about some of the features involved, such as evaluating possible outcomes of a situation and scoring them based on several factors, then choosing an option based on the scores received. He talked about something called the Markov Decision Process (MDP), which is a process for evaluating possible outcomes. He then went on to explain a bit about how these same or similar technologies could be used in other fields, such as automobile autopilots and so on. The technologies being developed here are planned to supplant the existing TCAS II, which was first approved for operational evaluation way back in early 1987 following several mid-air incidents.
This was a fabulous talk even though it only scratched the surface of what is obviously a huge topic, but Professor Kochenderfer was very generous with his time in answering many questions posed by squadron members and other virtual attendees, both during and after his presentation. Big thanks go out to Professor Kochenderfer for being so giving of his expertise and patience, and to 2nd Lt. Ashish Goel for arranging the whole thing.
The lecture was recorded, and there is a link available to California Wing members via SharePoint, but I do not currently have permission to post it here - if I should obtain such permission, I will update this post with a link to the presentation video.
