American scientists are going to create a new automatic aircraft piloting device, which should replace several people at once. Work in this direction is carried out by specialists from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense). The agency's specialists are creating a new autopilot that will be able to replace up to 5 professional military pilots in flight, according to the Internet portal Wired. This project was named ALIAS - Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System.
It is reported that the new autopilot will be able to replace up to 5 crew members (so far only military aircraft), turning the only living pilot into a real flight director who will control the aircraft using a touchscreen. ALIAS was introduced as a special, detachable, customizable support kit for all phases of aircraft flight. In this autopilot, even the program of work in case of failure of the emergency rescue system is implemented. DARPA emphasizes that their new autopilot will help reduce the burden on the pilot, which will allow him to focus on flight safety and combat missions.
ALIAS is a personal computer system that is installed in the cockpit of an aircraft. It is reported that it will be adapted for installation on almost any aircraft of the US Air Force - from transport helicopters to the heaviest machines. DARPA agency specialists promise to teach their new autopilot to control all stages of aircraft flight from takeoff to landing, as well as actions in extreme situations, for example, when certain systems of an aircraft or helicopter fail in the air. The pilot, who will act as the operator, will be able to issue commands to the autopilot using a speech recognition interface or a touch screen.
“Our main goal is to create a complete automatic assistant that can be easily configured to control a wide variety of types of aircraft. The capabilities of our new autopilot will transform the pilot from a vehicle's combat systems operator to an air mission supervisor who will issue commands to a highly organized, reliable device,”says Daniel Pratt, a DARPA employee. According to him, ALIAS will be able to monitor the condition of the aircraft, performing minor technical duties, which will reduce the number of flight personnel, especially on complex military aircraft.
The Automated Universal Pilot Assistant will have many different settings and a user-friendly interface, making it possible to adapt it to different aircraft. According to Daniel Patt, who works with the ALIAS program, a system of this level of automation will allow more efficient use of aircraft resources, make the entire flight safer and will help to land the aircraft even when the pilot is incapacitated for one reason or another.
Thus, the defense research agency expects to apply in its project all the latest achievements in the field of flight control and automatic stabilization of the aircraft in order to create a highly adaptive system that could independently carry out takeoff and landing operations, and also be controlled by the pilot's voice commands or touches the touchscreen control panel. It is worth noting that DARPA has long been placing serious emphasis on unmanned technologies in aviation. At the same time, all of the agency's most fantastic projects are acquiring more and more real features over time.
Aviation expert and editor-in-chief of Russia / CIS Observer magazine Maxim Pyadushkin notes that a number of individual technologies used in ALIAS are available now. In an interview with Russian Planet, he noted that in the digital era, the field of activity for the development of systems for automatic control of equipment is only expanding. At the same time, on modern civil air liners, pilots can hardly interfere with the aircraft control process. In addition, with the help of special sensor systems, Boeing or Airbus are able to receive wirelessly a large amount of information about their aircraft from almost anywhere in the world.
Maxim Pyadushkin believes that the new American system will work on the same principles as American drones. The expert explained that the use of the autopilot is associated with the development of UAVs - unmanned aerial vehicles, where the pilot controls the equipment not from its cockpit, but from a special ground control point. In automatic flight mode, modern drones actually act as a standard autopilot.
It should be noted that the replacement of living pilots with "iron" ones fits perfectly not only in the DARPA program, but also in the policy of the new course, which is being pursued today by the Pentagon and aimed at reducing the number of servicemen in the American army. In February 2014, information appeared that the head of the Pentagon, Chuck Hagel, was hatching plans to seriously reduce the American armed forces to the level that was in the country before the start of World War II. At the same time, the US Air Force expects to part forever with the U-2 strategic reconnaissance aircraft, as well as the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft. Both machines can be attributed to the old-timers of the American Air Force. An anonymous source in the US Department of Defense told the New York Times that the Pentagon, despite all this, still expects to have a very large army, but the new army will be flexible. It must become more modern, efficient and trained.
