Automated Pilots: Limited Beta

[joefremont]

I have been testing this myself for a bit but think its time I opened it up to for a few others to test. This is a limited beta, let me know if you want to test this and I can turn it on for your VA. This phase I am only going to let a few (up to 6) established VA's try it out. Let me know by PM or support ticket if your interested.

Automated Pilots.
I have been working on this system for a while now and feel its ready to start opening it up for some limited beta testing. If your interested let me know and I can activate it for your Airline. So how do you manage Automated Pilots? You need to hire them, you need to assign them to flights or schedules, and you need to keep them happy, because if they are not happy they may quit your airline.

Hiring Automated Pilots.

To hire an automated pilot, go to your VA Profile page and (if its active for your VA) you will see a management option for "Hire Automated Pilots", it will open a page where you can hire the pilot.

At the top of this page it will show a table that shows how many pilots and how many automated pilots you have and what your airline's limits are. The actual limits are still to be decided but for now for each platinum account member your airline has you can hire 10 automated pilots and for each gold account member you can hire two more, these pilots count against the total number of pilots your airline can have.

Next you will see three dropdowns to select:

• Hiring Fleet: This is the flight the pilot will be assigned to, unlike human pilots an automated pilot must be assigned to one and only one fleet. This fleet pays incidental costs for the pilot like transfers, hotels and training.

• Home Airport: This is where the pilot starts and also where the pilot makes their home. It is important to be aware of this, if the pilot is away from home they will have to stay in a hotel for each night they are away and also if they are away from home on most nights, they will become unhappy.

• Pilot Rank: Same as other pilots.

• Initial Training/Type Certificates: This is the initial hiring cost and training. Unlike human pilots, Automated pilots require a 'Type Certificate' to be able to aircraft larger than basic GA aircraft. When you assign a type certificate to a pilot, they automatically get all the rating needed to fly within your airline (although fleet restrictions still apply). Automated pilots do not get type ratings through rank.

Once you have confirmed all the information a new pilot will be created and joins your VA. All automated pilots are named in the form of ‘Auto Von <Town Name>’, yes it's a play on ‘Otto Von Bismarck’ who was the Prince of Bismarck and first Chancellor of the German Empire. In his case ‘Von’ was an indicator of nobility but in the case of commoners it can simply mean 'of' or 'from'. So for us we are using ‘Auto’ to indicate they are automated pilots and the town name after is a city or town close to the location they were hired. So in testing for my airline I hired a pilot near KJFK and the pilot is named ‘Auto Von New York City‘.

Next you need to assign them to Flights or Schedules.
You can either book a flight for the automated pilot the same way you would yourself, either with a scheduled route or a charter flight. If doing a scheduled route you will have the option to fly 'ASAP' (starting in about 30 minutes) or based on the starting time in the route.

The other way is to assign the pilot to assign them to a schedule. This is probably the preferable option as once a pilot is assigned to a repeating schedule they will continue to fly it until you stop them by removing them from the schedule. You may want to set up a schedule for each pilot so you can manage their flying hours and coordinate with other pilots. When an auto does a flight as part of a schedule, they will always fly the flight at its scheduled day and time. If the auto arrives late and can get the next flight off within 3 hours of its original time it will do so, if not it will wait until the next scheduled time to fly.

It is important to note some of the differences between human and automated pilots. Biggest of which is that the auto's are restricted as to how many hours they can fly. Automated pilots are limited to 10 hours of flying each day and no more than 100 hours per month (28 day period). The hours for the day must happen within a 14 hour 'duty shift' and there needs to be a 10 hour rest period between their next 'duty shift'. We will allow a pilot to fly more than 10 hours per day as long as it is their only flight of the day. If a flight would put that pilot over the limit then they will wait until the next scheduled time.

So if a pilot starts with a 5 hour flight, then has a four hour gap before their next 5 hour flight, that is ok, because their total shift is 14 hours. But if they had a five hour gap instead that would put them over the 14 hour shift limit. Another example, say a pilot has a six hour flight and the six hour return flight is scheduled one hour later, While the shift would be only 13 hours it would involve 12 hours of flying so it would not be allowed.

You also have to be aware of how many hours per month they are flying. Say you setup a pilot to do the 12 hour New York to Tokyo route, out one day, back the next. That would be 24 hours of flying for each cycle. Do that four times and they would have to wait. In that case you would probably set up their schedule so they fly out one day a week (say monday) then return and that would be their week, They could repeat that continually and not exceed their limits.

If an automated pilot has to overnight at an airport that is not their home base, you have to pay their hotel and other expenses, which is 200v$ per day,

When an automated pilot does a flight they always use 1x time compression and a maximum profit multiplier of 10x.

Please Note:
One thing your going to run into when setting up schedules is that up to this point, the departure and arrival times on routes did not mean anything, they were just informational, but with automated pilots assigned to a schedule, they are going to follow those times. So if you set up your routes departing at 0930, your automated pilots will probably only do one flight a day, which may not be bad since given they can only do 100 hours per month or on average 3.5 hours per day that might work out. (Note to self, maybe pilots should be unhappy if they have not gotten 48 continuous hours off in the last two weeks)

In your VA settings there is a property for 'Schedule timezones', which can have the value of 'UTC' or 'Local'. If the value is set to 'UTC' all the times in your schedule are interpreted as UTC time, if 'Local' they are interpreted based on the timezone set on the airport. Also note if the timezone on your favorite airport is wrong, please don't submit a support ticket, instead push the 'Edit Airport' link from the options on the airport information page and submit the change.

Pilot Happiness.

Now that you have hired your pilots and you have them assigned to routes you need to keep them happy, if not they will quit.

First you need to make sure they don't run out of money. They start with 10,000v$ and they spend about 2,000 v$ per week in 'expenses' that are subtracted from their bank. This could be their rent, mortgage, food and other bills to support their family. Each week their expenses go by 50v$ until it reaches 4,000 v$ per week. The money they earn from their flights adds to their bank. If they ever run out of money, they will quit your airline, they just have to go someplace else to support their families.

Next you need to keep them happy, they have a happiness score that is calculated on four factors.

• Flight Hours: A pilot likes to fly, if they have flown less than 60 hours in the last month, they will not be happy.

• Make Money: A pilot wants to make enough money to cover their expenses, if their average weekly income over the last month falls below their weekly expenses they will not be happy (it does not matter how much money they have in their bank, automated pilots don't like to fly for free).

• Career Advancement: They know they may be flying the same aircraft for some time, but don't want to move backwards, if they have a type certificate for a large aircraft and it expires because you are having them fly smaller aircraft, they will not be happy.

• Time with Family: The pilots know that they will have to spend some time away from home, but if they are spending more than two thirds of their evenings in hotels away from home, they will not be happy.

The system will calculate a happiness score for the pilots (you can see it on their logbook page) and if the score falls below 90% the system will calculate a probability they will quit that week, lower the happiness, the more likely they are to quit.

Monitoring: Pilot List
The first option in the VA overview page is 'Pilot List', this has been there for some time but I have updated it to show more information to help you monitor your pilots, things to note are:

• Home/Location: This shows you their home airport and their current location. If they are stuck some place that is not home you should be aware.

• Happiness

• Balance: The pilots cash balance, if it drops to zero they will quit, so keep an eye.

• 28 Days: How many flight hours in the last 28 days, if they reach 100 hours they have to stop flying.

• Status: You will notice
  • Ready: Has had 10 hours of rest since last flight
  • On Duty: Their 14 hour duty shift has started
  • Off Duty: Their daily shift has ended and are in their mandatory 10 hour rest period.

You will notice a "(Sch)" on some pilots, it means they are assigned to a schedule.

Still Working on
This is still a work in progress, I will update the description as needed. Still to do is some way to change the home base of pilots and more reporting to monitor the pilots.

One thing I am thinking of is some way to say if a pilot does not have enough monthly hours to finish a schedule, they should not start one.

[MrJTSZ]

Absolutely amazing Joe, this will add more hours of fun than just making our own flights. I just have one question for now.

Regarding this, would that $4000 be the total maximum expenses per week or will it continue to increase?

... Each week their expenses go by 100v$ until it reaches 4,000 v$ per week. The money they earn from their flights adds to their bank. If they ever run out of money, they will quit your airline, they just have to go someplace else to support their families. ...

[joefremont]

Absolutely amazing Joe, this will add more hours of fun than just making our own flights. I just have one question for now.

Regarding this, would that $4000 be the total maximum expenses per week or will it continue to increase?

The current plan is that it tops out at 4000 week, this could be changed of course.

[MrJTSZ]

So far I have sent the autopilot to make 4 flights, 2 short and 2 long and I have certain questions.

-The duration of the flights both outbound and return have been the same. Will this continue like this?
For example, LEPA-LHBP normally takes 2.5 hours but there have been times when I have been able to do it in 2 hours due to wind or controller shortcuts.

-Is there a possibility that the autopilot makes a divert to an airport during its flight?
(I imagine that it will be linked to the status of the aircraft.)

-The landing rate (fpm) I imagine will also be random? Will there be some flights that land normal and others in which it has a hard landing?

-And the last question, to the right of its status I see a "optionwheel" trying to look like some kind of options menu, but it does not let me access it. I attach a screenshot.

[image]https://gyazo.com/4a0f3af1c681e111d22eea18ee2a5809[/image]

[joefremont]

So far I have sent the autopilot to make 4 flights, 2 short and 2 long and I have certain questions.

-The duration of the flights both outbound and return have been the same. Will this continue like this?
For example, LEPA-LHBP normally takes 2.5 hours but there have been times when I have been able to do it in 2 hours due to wind or controller shortcuts.

-Is there a possibility that the autopilot makes a divert to an airport during its flight?
(I imagine that it will be linked to the status of the aircraft.)

-The landing rate (fpm) I imagine will also be random? Will there be some flights that land normal and others in which it has a hard landing?

-And the last question, to the right of its status I see a "optionwheel" trying to look like some kind of options menu, but it does not let me access it. I attach a screenshot.

[image]https://gyazo.com/4a0f3af1c681e111d22eea18ee2a5809[/image]

When the flights are created I am calculating a efficiency score based on pilot experience, happiness and aircraft size with some randomness added to adjust the flight hours, landing speed and possible penalties (crash/wrong airport/overspeed) or failures. And yes diversions are possible.

As far as flight hours they will probably be the same both direction. I don't have access to any data on global wind patterns so I don't know how I would do that.

The "optionwheel" is really just supposed to be a cog showing the pilot is a bot. You may notice stars in the same column next to other pilots indicating they have a premium account. It has no functionality.

[Cat]

Question 1: Willl automated pilots fly a route via waypoints listed in the flight plan or is that a waste of time and they fly direct always?

At this time it appears (B) "wasted time" is the answer to adding waypoints to autopilot routes.

I set up a 5 leg day, 5 days a week, weekends off for a CRJ pilot. Once his shift completes tonight, I will reconfigure the "executive charter" seating back to a more realistic regional seat layout and see how the income differs.

Las Vegas, San Diego, Fresno, Medford, Reno, Las Vegas. Very typical one day regional pilot work. I allowed 1 hr turnaround times between arrival and departures in my schedule along with a 90 min turn time between legs 3 and 4 to allow the crew to relax and eat a good lunch. I over estimated my enroute times intentionally to see how the automated pilot responds to arriving early, etc.

This is actually a pretty cool feature and is not all that difficult to get up and running with a set schedule for the automated pilot. Eventually I will add in a "weekend crew" to fly the same routes on Fri and Sat and then they will do other flights on Wed Thurs Fri as they will have Mon Tue off.

Also of note, operators will have to pay attention to aircraft status as they are flying far more often and have a contingincy plan for when a bird needs that all important A service check.

[joefremont]

Question 1: Willl automated pilots fly a route via waypoints listed in the flight plan or is that a waste of time and they fly direct always?

At this time it appears (B) "wasted time" is the answer to adding waypoints to autopilot routes.

At this point in time I do not do anything with the waypoints listed in the flight plan, they are just information to (human) pilots. Mainly because I don't have any waypoint information in the database. The application I use to extract info from the simulator (MakeRwys) only extracts airport information and does not include any waypoint data.

Actually doing that calculation would not be hard, its finding the data that is difficult. (Now if someone was to find a reliable source of data...)

Same for trying to adjust flight time by wind patterns, I don't have access the data to make the calculation.

Oh and in regards to MrJTSZ question about diversion, yes the auto pilot can divert if the need arises.

[Cat]

It's still cool, well done sir!

[Cat]

Some hours math issues?

[Cat]

Is there a way to change an automated pilot's duty status once their daily schedule is completed? Mine is still showing "on duty" and I want his 10 hour break to start ASAP.

[MrJTSZ]

Some hours math issues?

I think those are duty time and the other flying time

[Cat]

If that's the case then the "duty time" line needs to be 14 hours instead of 10. ATP pilots can have 10 hours flight time max and 14 hours of duty time before their mandatory rest period. That's why long distance flights carry 2 full sets of crew members as those 14+ hr flights would make them "illegal" when it comes time to land if they don't swap out with the other crew for rest periods.

and this is why there is a beta test ... to work out all the kinks before the masses start hiring themselves an army of automated pilots. LOL

[joefremont]

As far as the differences in hours, when I first started on the hour calculations I was worried about human pilots gaming the systems and how some sim are not accurate in the hours calculated, so I came up with formulas that did not use the hours recorded in the sim, but with bot pilots its always calculated so it should be the same, I will fix that.

As far as the 'duty type' and when a pilot is 'off duty' or 'ready' I used the following logic to figure it out.

First, if it has been more than 10 hours since the end of their last flight, they have had their rest period and are ready to start there next shift.
Next since they have finished a flight within 10 hours when did there shift start? If the first flight is within 14 hours they are 'On Duty', if more than 14 hours they are 'off duty' and can't fly. I hope this would be sufficient?

I figured if a pilot is assigned to a schedule then they would know from that when their rest periods start, it only becomes funky when we are booking flights for them outside of a schedule.

[Cat]

Thanks

So just ignore the On Duty status designator after their daily schedule is completed and as long as they will have more than 10 hours off before they start again, I just have to watch their total flight hours within any given 24 hour period and of course the 100 per 30 calendar days.

Many in the real world confuse the "daily hours" with actual "days", but it works on a continuous running 24 hr cycle based on the pilot's home base time. So if they land at midnight after flying a late afternoon shift, they might be close to being out of hours on the first leg the next day if they start again right after 10 hours off. But as the day wears on they "throw out hours from the previous day while adding hours as they fly the next day"..... it's a complicated thing we pilots let the schedulers worry about. LOL

The easiest way I see to solve this for me and my simple brain is to follow the 12 on 12 off rule and hire more pilots. LOL Need morning guys and afternoon guys to Keep It Simple. Morning guys get those 5-6am sunrise starts and the late guys fly the sunset shift.

And once they have flown their schedules a few times, I can look at their flight data and adjust individual flight dep/arv times accordingly, although for regional guys I am still allowing for 1 hour turnarounds to add some leeway in the system. I figure 30 minutes to deplane and quick/clean the interior, pick up fuel for the next leg and then 30 minutes to board and get outta dodge. I may cut the turnaround time down to 45 mins if the bot guys show they are consistently efficient.

It looks like 5 routes per schedule is the max right now which works for me but air taxi ops flying extremely short runs might have a beef with that. I'm setting up CRJ regionals with multi-leg work days so they will get close to but not over their alloted 25/100 hours limits and getting them home nightly to keep them happy. I can set their days off in the schedule too and just plug it in as recurring.

[joefremont]

The hours on the logbook page should be fixed.