Can the helicopter fly even automatically?Challenge to autonomous flight that extreme difficulties

On the morning of January 11, 2000, Mark Ward, a Helicopter of the United States Coast Guard, was urgently dispatched under the rescue signal.The ship is likely to sink off the strong wind northeast off North Carolina.

Ward struggled with a strong wind of 70 miles per hour (about 112 km / h), but managed to stabilize the helicopter at a height of 30 feet (about 9.1m).In the meantime, the helicopter crew successfully raised all five on the fishing boat.

The mission at this time was one of the most difficult things in Word as a pilot of a 22 -year search and rescue helicopter.And now, he is working to prevent his juniors from being similar in danger.He is a Chief test pilot in the development plan for autonomous flight helicopter by helicopter maker Citcorsky.

"The realization of a certain amount of automatic pilot will reduce the workload of the helicopter pilot and relieve stress and anxiety," Ward says."There are things that cannot be seen by humans in the machine, and it is possible to handle and respond to information that cannot be done by humans."

Now, most passenger aircraft are flying most of the time by automatic pilot, and robot cars are testing in various cities around the world.However, teaching to fly to the helicopter is somewhat different.

The helicopter must be hovered at the gust -blowing sea, and must land in the strong winds in a petroleum drilling base.Furthermore, when you dodge the transmission lines and the moving communication steel tower that are not listed in the aviation topographic map, and rescue the injured climbers, you must drop only one side of the skid (helicopter leg).。

"Helicopters fly in a lot of obstacles, so the pilot has a lot of work," says Chris Van Buiten.He is a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, the vice president of Cichorsky Innovation, who is developing autonomous flight helicopter.

According to Buiten, robot helicopters need more computers than autonomous airplanes.This is the case, especially when you are not going back and forth between the well -maintained airfield."The sinking ship rarely emits SOS on a sunny day. SOS is more often emitted off Alaska on a rainy night."

The aviation industry is already spending a lot of money into the autonomous flight helicopter.In May 2018, Aurora Flight ScienceS, a subsidiary of Boeing, installed an unmanned cargo transport system under development in the "Bell UH-1H", and for the first time in California, the first automatic pilot was in California.I succeeded in delivering to.

Lockheed Martin has been developing an unmanned helicopter K-MAX since 2007.He began development from remote control and semi -automatic pilot, and transported supplies in Afghanistan in 2011 to 2014.

Minimize the role of AI

Sikorsky is developing an automatic pilot system named the Matrix Technology System.Since 2013, Word has been conducting a demonstration experiment by maneuvering the Sikorsky Autonomy Research Aircraft = Sara, which is equipped with the system on its commercial helicopter "S-76".The basic function is to fly traffic patterns around the airfield for approaches and landing, and track them to approach and land on the sea.