Another scientific breakthrough emerges from the US military,
as its funded project invents a robotic co-pilot which managed to fly and land
an aircraft Boeing 737 in flight simulator. The robotic project is named ALIAS
(Aircrew Labour In-Cockpit Automation System), the robotic system can help a
pilot fly and even land a Boeing 737.
The scientific feat was designed by Aurora Flight Sciences
which is one of its research projects to support more automation on existing
aircraft
The project was embarked on due to how expensive both
civilian and military aircraft operations are, as it needs extreme and skilled
experts are needed to react in the right direction during unforeseeable circumstances.
Taking the seat of the co-pilot, ALIAS makes use of machine
vision to enable the computer running the automated system take and understand
visual feedback as humans. Just like human beings, it can as well manipulate
the flight control.
Just like the Amazon Alexa voice command assistant, it has
the ability to recognise speech and synthesis, formulating responses to
communicate with the pilot.
"Having successfully demonstrated on a variety of
aircraft, ALIAS has proven its versatile automated flight capabilities,"
said John Wissler, Aurora's vice president of research and development.
"As we move towards fully automated flight from
take-off to landing, we can reliably say that we have developed an automation
system that enables significant reduction of crew workload."
The work was completed for a project for the Defence
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the US.
DARPA, is the US military's research wing, which supported
projects that have been useful in non-military situations, including the
ARPANET, the earliest predecessor of the internet.
The aims for ALIAS include it ultimately supporting the
execution of an entire mission from take-off to landing, even in the face of
serious aircraft system failures.
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