The United States Army is known to be one of the most powerful in the world, and as far as DARPA (Defense THEadvanced Research Prockets THEgency; in Portuguese, “Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency”)this statement will remain valid for a long time.
During the last weekend, it was reported that the helicopter S-70™ BLACK HAWK®which has a still experimental automation system in the cockpit, managed to successfully carry out a test flight.
To put it in simple words, the autonomous helicopter completed a flight without the need to have a pilot in the cockpit. The test lasted about half an hour, and took place at the US Army facility in Fort Campbell, Kentucky – with a pilot from Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, American helicopter manufacturer.
Proposal is to increase safety and reduce working hours
According to the description of DARPA, the intention is that this technology increases the safety of the aircraft, and can make life easier for pilots, reducing their workload. Professionals will be able to spend more time managing missions instead of having to worry about mechanical issues.
This automation program is known as: “Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (INDEED)”. Check out the video of this event that happened in the last Saturday, February 5th:
Anyone who thinks that this journey of DARPA to enable autonomous aircraft is recent. since 2004 the agency sought out who could develop vehicles capable of traveling great distances autonomously. It took a long time for a piece of equipment to meet the requirements of its training protocol.
Even though all this technology seems to come straight out of movies, Science fiction, it is important to point out that the main objective is to reduce the team’s obligations with mechanical issues, so that they can focus on other fundamental elements of operations. Eventually, the technology is expected to reach a point where everything can be controlled remotely – from takeoff to final landing.
And whoever thinks that all this will not affect the rest of the population, the “civilians”, is also wrong. It is not new that technologies created for military purposes, after being structured and mature, end up on the shelves of the general public in the form of technological solutions – a great example is the GPS.
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Source: extremetech.com, power360.com.br, Defenseaereanaval.com.br, aeroflap.com.br, lockheedmartin.com