A Robot Copilot Just Flew—and Landed—a 737
A Robot Copilot Just Flew—and Landed—a 737 Sim
Good morning from the cockpit, this is your robot
speaking.
By Andrew Moseman May 16, 2017
A robot arm can fly an airliner.
You may remember DARPA's Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation
System (ALIAS) from such flights as the time it piloted a Cessna. Now the
robotic arm is moving up to bigger and better planes. DARPA just announced that
ALIAS has flown and landed a simulated Boeing 737.
In brief: ALIAS sits in the copilot's seat and uses
cameras to monitor all the dials and gauges and switches in a cockpit, feeding
that information to a processor. The system has a robotic arm to move the
throttle and actuators to control the rudder and control column. It previously
flew a Diamond DA42 and then the Cessna Caravan last October.
This time, ALIAS went to a Boeing 737-800NG simulator at
the U.S. Department of Transportation's John A. Volpe National Transportation
Systems Center in Cambridge, MA. The machine not only flew the plane during the
sim but also used the 737's automated landed system to set it down safely,
showing it could do so if it ever needed to—say, if the human pilot were
incapacitated.
Obviously machines can fly themselves without any human
occupants—for years now we've had drones flown by remote human pilots, and UAVs
are learning to fly with more and more autonomy. ALIAS, however, was made to
stand in as the copilot on a two-person flight crew, allowing the
flesh-and-blood occupants to attend to other matters of the mission while its
chill robot arm keeps the plane on course. It might take a while, though,
before watching a robot copilot is anything but out-of-this-world.
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