Jobs of the future, Part Nine: Air Traffic Commander

With drones, self-driving vehicles and supersonic flights rising day after day, we are very likely to see a massively congested sky by 2050. Some would say the Jetsons has arrived and, if you look at what is happening today, they are not far wrong.

Most of our flying and automated vehicle structure will run autonomously but, like any reasonable structure, it will need human oversight. Machines can get things right most of the time but what happens in those rare situations where they get it wrong? That’s when you need a Traffic Commander.

Let’s look at the stats, courtesy of Sophie Deen:

• the global drone market is set to be almost $60 billion by 2026
• commercial drone flights are set to exceed 13 million annually by 2025
• the UK drone industry could contribute £42 billion to the economy by 2030

This is certainly true if you look at how drones are being used already in China and Dubai:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0KNhSejkOI

The thing is that you need someone to control all of these things, which could be automated, but what happens when circuits fail? What happens when the self-driving vehicle switches off its self-driving circuitry? What happens when a rogue drone goes wild?

This is where the Traffic Commander steps in and manages the machines. Their job?

• orchestrate urban airspace for drones and flying taxis
• ensure safety in our crowded skies
• optimise flight paths and traffic flow
• coordinate with ground-based transportation
• organise ground-based routes and traffic
• liaise between self-driving vehicles and drones traffic flow between ground and air

Just as we have seen the past century build a massive rail, road and air infrastructure, we are going to see the next century build an even bigger rail, road and air infrastructure. Who manages this? Who regulates this? How do we minimise incidents? What happens when an incident occurs? Where does the fault lie? Who is accountable?

These questions raise lots of challenges for governments and the insurance industry. When two drones crash, who is accountable? If two drones crash and one lands on someone’s house, who is accountable? If two drones crash and one bounces off my house onto my head, who is accountable?

Bear in mind that we are not talking about little buzzy drones which take nice movies for us, but we are talking about air taxis that can carry two humans around the city, these will become serious questions.

For example, what will the Traffic Commander do in this situation. An out-of-control drone hurtles towards a crowded park and you, as the controller, must decide whether to divert it to an empty street potentially damaging property, or risk injuries in the park. What do you decide?

It’s the classic trolley problem. The trolley problem was proposed by the Oxford philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967, asking the question about the driver of a runaway [trolley] can only steer from one narrow track onto another: five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track the tram enters is bound to be killed. Which one should they choose?

This is why we cannot fully automate everything as we will still need humans to navigate these moral mazes.