Boeing puts Loyal Wingman robot fighter jet through its paces... on the ground
- Reference: 1603390158
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/22/loyal_wingman_boeing/
- Source link:
Trials in Australia earlier this week showed that the unmanned aircraft, [1]intended to fly and fight alongside a traditional fighter jet with a human pilot, was able to drive itself around an airport.
“The low-speed taxi enabled us to verify the function and integration of the aircraft systems, including steering, braking and engine controls, with the aircraft in motion,” [2]said Paul Ryder, Boeing Australia’s flight test manager, in a canned statement.
The jet reached eye-bulging speeds on the ground of 14 knots (16mph) while carrying out such death shutdown-defying stunts such as stopping on demand and manoeuvring.
[3]
Boeing's Loyal Wingman doing its stuff. Source: Boeing. Click to enlarge
While this may sound fairly tame, it is an important step in making the unmanned fighter jet capable of fully autonomous operation – something that national treasuries will be rubbing their hands in glee at, as the cost of training a fighter pilot from scratch comes to around £2m over several years.
Actual flight is relatively easy to automate compared to the myriad taxiways, hangars and unique markings encountered at airports and military airfields across the world, and that's what this week's test was all about.
[4]Youtube Video
British defence ‘n’ aerospace conglomerate BAE Systems’ Australian arm also joined in with Boeing’s celebrations, with local CTO Brad Yelland saying in a canned quote that “both companies have a shared national heritage having partnered on a number of early unmanned flight vehicles.
“The partnership and latest advancement highlights our combined commitment to deliver a world-leading program to the nation leveraging home-grown engineering expertise,” he said.
Current technology allows airliners to fly themselves from moments after takeoff to landing and stopping on a runway after an intercontinental flight, though humans still need to do the taxiing around on the ground. Nonetheless, that may not last for too much longer; Airbus carried out tests on its Autonomous Taxi, Takeoff and Landing (ATTOL) project [5]earlier this year , basing its tech on machine vision and image recognition technology while it flew itself around Airbus’ home base in Toulouse, France.
Back in the UK, BAE Systems has an “optionally manned” concept fighter jet it calls Tempest. So far nothing has been created other than wooden mockups shown off at airshows, however. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/27/boeing_loyal_wingman_fighter_jet_drone/
[2] https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=130759#assets_20295_130759-117
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/10/22/wingman.jpg
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqjQC1F0zHY
[5] https://www.yahoo.com/news/airbus-self-flying-plane-just-120900008.html
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Taxiing challenge
The challenge was not only discerning the taxi ways...
That comment reminded me of a couple of times I had to visit RAF
"Keep an eye out for the little traffic lights" was the instruction; they were indeed little and stood no more than wheel - hub height; obviously enough a red light meant there was an aircraft coming through, a green one meant it was my turn.
Made "ordinary" traffic lights a little boring thereafter.
Happy days... :)
I would assume this is the "hello world" of developing an autonomous aircraft. It's not as trivial a task as it seems.
It's not as trivial a task as it seems.
Boeing seemed to think that adding MCAS was trivial, and see where that got them for a non - autonomous aircraft.
16 knots - are they mad?
0.2 miles per hour is plenty fast enough for autonomous manoeuvring. Any faster any the vacuum cleaner won't pick up enough dust.
Taxiing challenge
Based on my experience working on light airframes, we would often go to collect and aircraft from the other side of the field and then taxi back to the hangar.
The challenge was not only discerning the taxi ways but also the myriad of student pilots and often the 'too late to have flown in the war' type members of the flying clubs who invariably had Spitfire tie pins along with some semblance of a handlebar mustache but little common sense.
If Boeing can get the Loyal Wingman to autonomously negotiate it's way across an airfield's taxi ways with several flying clubs based there, and do it on a weekend, it will be able to handle any of the dog fighting stuff easily.
One of our commonest repair jobs was changing wing tips that had been dinged on taxiing.