Todos
← Back to Squawk list
Air Force Tests Contraption That Can Turn Any Plane Into a Robot Plane
Scientists say new ROBOpilot completed a two-hour test flight, essentially turning a manned plane into a drone. (www.nextgov.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
What could possibly go wrong?
Make me think of the movie Airplane! with the inflatable pilot
Seems to take up a lot of space in the plane and require removing a lot of the cabin interior. Might work ok on large aircraft, but on small planes it would reduce the utility of the aircraft if all the interior space and useful load is taken up by the "pilot".
Yeah, the fact that it was made removable complicates the design significantly. Taking something like a Cessna and making it remotely controllable is not that technically challenging by itself. Lots of off the shelf tech to make that happen. But making it easily removable would be much harder
A “Contraption”. Lol. Is this the 1920’s?
First thing that I believe will happen is the one person cockpit. If the pilot needs a restroom break an ACARS message sent to the ground will result in the aircraft being remotely monitored/flown until the pilot returns and confirms via ACARS that he/she is back on deck. If another German wings event or Malaysian 370 event occurs the day this will happen will move forward significantly. Technology for this is already available.
So many problems with this concept. The biggest one is that pilotless aircraft will never, EVER, make its way in to commercial aviation...NEVER!!!