flashing across california desert skies
the airplanes you see here are writing
new chapters in the story of man-made
fights there she goes this is my first
opportunity to greet you as deputy
administrator of the national
aeronautics and space administration
together you and i must make our new
agency the most unusual place an
organization that can challenge
conventional wisdom we can engineer
anything we can write the requirements
for we're going to make your idea work
this particular idea is quite disruptive
a typical flight of course starts under
the wing of the b-52 mother ship this
sleek high-speed machine
would have made rube goldberg proud the
matter in which we fly re-entry from
space on the space shuttle was pioneered
on the x-15 the x-31 pretty much wrote
the book on breast vectoring along with
its sister program the f-18 car an
observation of an occupation is one of
the more challenging missions that sofia
can do
right now we are looking at the dawn of
new era of aviation
something has now emerged that might
make even our most elegant theories
workable scientists developed equipment
which would be able to think machines
that do things and make choices without
human beings that uncanny spectacle is
automation capable of storing processing
calculations that would ordinarily take
hundreds of man hours unique ability to
check itself on possible errors cheaper
and quicker and better electric eyes
limit switches servo mechanism secretary
librarian banker teacher medical
technician
bridge partner volumes of changing data
into a continuous flow of
interpretations aladdin's lamp couldn't
do more joy loading machines electric
drill it's all automation computers
have taken wings by the late 1960s
digital computers had become more
available
using data about the aircraft's
performance the computers vote on the
correct amount of control deflection to
make in response to the pilot's stick
and rudder movements this system could
make air travel of the future smoother
and safer by reducing aircraft vibration
through automatic response from the
computer to the aircraft controls
we did the digital engine control we had
an early large digital computer that ran
the engine and the inlet and exhaust
system
we did an integrated control study to
provide digital control of the inlets
autopilot throttle air data and
navigation system a digital computer
here major improvement capability
airplane test pilots are flying a plane
without having to leave the ground it's
a new way of flight testing advanced
aircraft that's both more economical and
less hazardous a research pilot in a
realistically recreated cockpit on the
ground complete with flight controls
flies the remotely piloted craft using
computers and television
the airplane includes computers those
computers take stick commands and
continuously monitor what the airplane
is doing
and compares it to what the pilot wants
the airplane to do
the computer signals the controlled
surfaces to not only execute the pilot's
maneuver but also to counter any attempt
by the x-29 to veer out of control
in the artificial intelligence area and
it's called aircraft automation the
technologies that end up coming out of
this would be autonomous flight vehicle
technology
eras stands for environmental research
aircraft and sensor technology platforms
that could fly higher and longer than
the current piloted airplanes do science
missions and other commercial
applications primarily the dull dirty
and dangerous we can go all the way up
to where the airplane can fly itself
completely autonomously with no input
from anyone on the ground fly up to 50
60 000 feet fly a circle loop perhaps
over a city providing the capability
that satellite now does now that we can
fly for on the order of 8 to 10 to 12
hours we can look at long duration
processes biogeochemical cycling looking
at carbon and nitrogen moving through an
ecosystem to sort of kick-start
a commercial uav industry the technology
that we've seen here in this test is
what would be the foundation for a
follow-on program to really address the
issue of how can uavs routinely operate
in the national aerospace system
the primary benefit of this technology
is the ability of it to adapt to the
unknown whether it be a system failure
battle damage icing on the wing or
flying in an unknown atmospheric
environment the aircraft may be able to
be flown but the pilot may or may not be
able to find a solution to how to fly
that aircraft neural net control systems
where the controls are going to teach
themselves and keep being smarter from
flight to flight it can reconfigure the
airplane in an optimal way in order to
give you the best flying qualities
there is no operator of the vehicle
itself
on the ground
basically the role that the human plays
is more in managing the mission an
orchestra director not the instrument
player
the vehicle will complete all the
autonomous actions necessary to release
the weapons optimally positioned to hit
the target one of the next things that
we'll be demonstrating in ucab is the
collaboration amongst aircraft how do
sets of aircraft interact together in
almost a social form
we're going to examine the feasibility
and technical utility of actually being
able to fly two airplanes or multiple
aircraft in formation with each other
now the trick to this is to make sure
that they fly in formation close enough
that they can extract the advantage
without obviously running into each
other the station keeping would be
fairly close proximity for hours the
workload on the flight crew would be
quite high so we started to develop
autonomous algorithms to do the station
keeping so you basically would have an
autopilot that you can engage the
computers are flying the airplane
without your stick input even in the
system to allow a piloted airplane to
take two three or four unpiloted
vehicles on a long distance trip we're
just getting started on this technology
we'll use this technology to refuel
unoccupied combat air vehicles the
basket's slightly moving looks like it's
going high
okay it detected a miss and came back on
its own so i did not do anything she's
got it she's got it congratulations guys
that was fantastic
the autonomous soaring project has one
simple goal is to program a small uav to
soar and thermals similar to the way a
glider pilot or birds do has been
reprogrammed to automatically detect
that it's in an updraft and then use
that updraft by circling there's a wide
variety of applications for this
technology to help uavs do things like
forest fire detection
police surveillance border patrol and
weather monitoring
if the aircraft was damaged you don't
have to necessarily just rely on the
pilot to compensate and fly the airplane
adaptive flight controls autonomous
flight controls different things where
we're using the airplane to assist the
pilot it'll take over basically the
controls of the airplane as far as
flight stability the platform precision
autopilot is capable of staying on a
given path within about 15 feet it
allows the synthetic aperture radar
system to fly over essentially the same
path more than once this obviously has
some potential applicability when you're
looking at first surface movements such
as after an earthquake or if you're
looking at ice pack melting
for the f-16 we went out and tested the
system and based them on actual mishap
cases it prevented every single mishap
what we're developing here is merely an
aid should the pilot get distracted or
disoriented by automating it we can take
out the pilot reaction time entirely the
computer takes full control away from
the pilot for a very brief period of
time and it redirects the trajectory of
the aircraft to save the human
adsb is automatic dependent surveillance
broadcast equipment onboard an airplane
that transmits its position and velocity
information twice per second we're
really trying to prove that we could use
adsb as a way to do coordinated flight
between multiple vehicles this system is
present on a lot of manned aircraft but
we were one of the first uas to perform
testing of it in the national airspace
nasa has a project for integrating uas
so one day uis could hopefully fly with
other commercial airlines and everybody
will fly together safely there's various
benefits to
integrating unmanned aircraft being able
to monitor specific weather systems
monitor
fires delivering packages to your
doorstep operations to deliver medical
emergency supplies infrastructure
surveillance and monitoring the
technical side is a big challenge but
being able to integrate them
safely is maybe even a bigger challenge
to have thousands of these vehicles
flying at the same time you're going to
have to have a lot more automation on
the vehicle and in the air space system
regulations for operations of the
vehicle regulations for airspace
regulations for infrastructure these
aircraft are going to be highly
autonomous piloted optionally piloted
unpiloted vehicle it's not just looking
at the uam it's actually integrating the
small uas the package delivery or even
the larger cargo delivery subscale
aircraft we use those for a variety of
reasons to test things like new
technology which could be hardware or
software or even a completely new
vehicle you can do almost anything you
want without much risk
you can realize those gains very quickly
we're researching some level of autonomy
the aircraft in most cases are capable
of taking off flying around and landing
without any human intervention things
like argue pilots and multi-rotors and
flying computers are allowing kids to
play with research type tools that they
never had access to before so it's sort
of driving this new robotic learning
type environment that never did exist