“We believe that unmanned aircraft are the next big transformation in the aviation industry,” says Doug Davis, director of the unmanned aircraft programme at New Mexico State University.Of course, the military already know this. Automatic landing systems have been used for years to help pilots drop F-18 aircraft on to the narrow landing strips on top of aircraft carriers. Then there is the rise of drone warfare. These planes are still flown remotely by pilots on the ground, but most have the capability to follow a predefined flight path and even land themselves if they get into serious trouble or the link between the ground is broken.
In some modern aircraft the pilot is only needed to taxi the aircraft to the runway. Everything else from take-off to landing can be automated. “The technology is here,” says Missy Cummings, an ex military pilot who is now associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
She points to the rise of so-called fly-by-wire technology, which has replaced the mechanical link between the pilot and the plane’s engines and control surfaces. “Any fly-by-wire plane can be an [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle],” she explains. “The controls are digital, not analogue, everything is done electronically so you don’t need a person in there to push a hydraulic actuator.”
To prove the point, technology company BAE Systems recently flew a converted Jetstream aircraft – known as “The Flying Test Bed” – with no pilot in UK air space.
A plane will need to be aware of its surroundings and be able to plot a new path that is not disruptive to other users of the skies - intelligence known as “sense and avoid”. Look at the rise of the autonomous car to see that computers are getting better and better at viewing an interpreting their surroundings.
Dr John Tracey, chief technology officer at Boeing, agrees. He sees no need for decisions to always be made on the ground by Air traffic Control. He believes the current system based on ground based radar, and a controller who uses voice commands to “say to the pilot ‘turn left, turn right, go up, go down,’” is very inefficient. “The new planes that we deliver already have the capabilities built into them to use GPS satellites, to allow them to fly on the most optimum flight path,” Dr Tracy says. The next step would be to allow aircraft to make more decisions for themselves and respond to other planes and weather patterns by themselves.
Professor Cummings says the data is increasingly in favour of unmanned systems. “About three years ago UAVs became safer than general aviation, meaning that more general aviation planes are crashing than UAVs, per 100,000 flight hours,” she says. “So UAVs are actually safer than a weekend pilot, flying a small plane.”
Update from article newscientist:
Jim Scanlan, one of the designers of the world's first 3D-printed unmanned aerial vehicle is impressed. "I think it's great. It's good to see such progress in the UK – especially with the US hoping to open up its airspace to UAVs in 2015."
The main thing ASTRAEA needs to get right is that sensing and avoiding capability, says Scanlan. "That's the showstopper at the moment. Without a pilot they need a sensing system to replace the Mark 1 eyeball – one that can tell a hot-air balloon from a cloud."
Source:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130502-pilotless-planes-plan-to-take-off/1
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23521-passenger-jet-flies-800-kilometres-without-a-pilot.html
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