Australian scientists and U.S. aviation giant Boeing are set to test unmanned aircrafts, which would share airspace with piloted passenger planes without causing any collision.
In a non-descript shed in suburban South Park in Seattle, a team of young Boeing engineers are overseeing an experiment that provides a startling glimpse into the future.
Their 30-metre by 15 metre by five-metre-high unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) “swarming” laboratory looks like a small indoor cricket shed with model rotor aircraft parked on the concrete floor.
Suddenly the UAVs are airborne and swarming around the shed, their pre-determined tracks, altitudes and collision avoidance mechanisms already programmed in using advanced algorithms that could ultimately spell the end of piloted aircraft, The Courier-Mail reports.
The aim of this cutting edge science is to build the mathematical models that will allow uninhabited aircraft to fly safely in controlled airspace.
Boeing’s new Australian research chief Bill Lyons talks about the aim behind the experiment: “To allow (unmanned) systems to operate at least as well as human piloted systems.”
The algorithms developed in the swarm lab will soon be put to the test in the skies above Kingaroy in southern Queensland in the world’s first ever trial of unmanned aircraft inside controlled airspace.
Airspace authorities in both the US and Australia, highly wary of having pilotless drones in potential conflict with airliners carrying hundreds of passengers, will require 100 per cent guarantees before they will allow the two to mix.
Senior Boeing engineer John Vian said the major challenge for unmanned aircraft operating in controlled air space is safety.
“We don’t know how these systems will develop. For these systems to be viable they have to be reliable and totally autonomous. We develop the technology, how it is applied is up the customer,” Dr. Vian said.
(ANI)
