An autonomous Black Hawk helicopter has crack on with its late psychometric test flight of stairs and shown it safely and faithfully perform shipment resupply missions – all without the need for human pilots .
In mid - October , the helicopter managed to fly without any gang onboard for 133 klick ( 83 mi ) around the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona while extend 400 units of real and simulated bloodline weighing 226 kilo ( 500 pounds ) . Part of this journeying even involved the whirlybird descending into a vale as low as 61 meters ( 200 feet ) above earth level .
In another flex last calendar month , the crewless helicopter lift off with a 1,179 - kilogram ( 2,600 - Cypriot pound ) incumbrance attach to a 12 - meter ( 40 - groundwork ) scarf bandage and flew at 100 knots for 30 moment toward a landing place zone .
A training mission was also design to simulate the evacuation of an injured soldier , in which a model of a causalty was loaded on the chopper and flown to a field infirmary .
“ We showed how the optionally piloted Black Hawk helicopter can be flown by human pilots , who then land the aircraft and simply flip out a switch to activate flight with zero pilots , ” Igor Cherepinsky , Sikorsky Innovations director , said in astatement .
“ With no human being on plug-in , the aircraft vaporize at 100 naut mi , to cede a big quantity of parentage product , an outside cargo load , and rescue a fatal accident , ” added Cherepinsky .
The task for the US Army is a collaboration between Sikorsky , a party owned by Lockheed Martin , and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ) . The previous round of flying add up hot off the blackguard of thehelicopter ’s first successful flightback in February 2022 .
The fomite manages to fly autonomously using DARPA ’s ALIAS ( Aircrew Labor In - cockpit Automation System ) projection and Sikorsky’sMATRIX technology , a system of computer software and hardware components that earmark eggbeater and fixed - wing planes to fly with varying level of autonomy .
If further tests go well , the developers believe this technology has the big businessman to revolutionize the field of honor .
“ The potential drop for ALIAS to translate warfare is unlimited , whether we are talk about unmanned or manned platform . By reducing work load , increasing rubber , enable raw missions , these demonstrations show what ALIAS has to offer up for changeover to our services , ” Dr Stuart Young , the DARPA ALIAS Program Manager , articulate in a statementfollowing the February flight .
