Aircraft with no pilot? Is the flying public ready to embrace such new technology?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The general public tends to be comfortable with a certain amount of automation in their lives. Frequent fliers understand that there are two pilots in the cockpit of the plane. But those human aviators are relying on autopilot for routine parts of the flight. A commercial airliner can even land itself if needed, although it\u2019s bothersome for the pilots<\/a> to set up that process. Military drones were designed from the ground up to fly with no-one on board\u2014a concept that now is pretty normal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What might seem a little scarier is the idea of taking a regular aircraft like a King Air\u2014a two-engine turboprop\u2014and converting it to fly totally autonomously, with no humans on board. A new outfit called Merlin Labs has announced a plan to do just that with Virginia-based company Dynamic Aviation. Merlin has been testing their system in the Mojave Desert since 2019, albeit with a safety pilot on the plane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re developing is hardware and software that takes big traditional airplanes, at least right now, [and] enables them to fly autonomously,\u201d says Matthew George, the CEO and founder of Merlin Labs. \u201cBut in the future, what we\u2019re building truly is a digital pilot\u2014it could be applied to future types of aircraft that don\u2019t exist yet.\u201d While they\u2019ve used their system on different models of planes, their newest and biggest focus is on the King Air, specifically the 90 series<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The company\u2019s goal is for the system to be able to handle all the tasks a human pilot might execute, \u201cfrom takeoff to touchdown,\u201d George says. They\u2019re also hoping to achieve FAA certification, which is the stamp of approval needed for a company to use the new tech to charge for services, like flying cargo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [Related: <\/strong>This surprisingly common flight issue contributed to Kobe Bryant\u2019s helicopter crash<\/strong><\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n He emphasizes that they\u2019re not developing a system where humans are remotely flying the aircraft from the ground, like what happens with the MQ-9 Reaper<\/a>. In those cases, the link between the aircraft and the terrestrial world below is mission-critical. The Merlin system is different. \u201cWe believe the autonomy needs to be on the aircraft,\u201d George says, adding that a person on the ground would be \u201cmonitoring, but not the primary controller of the aircraft.\u201d He explains that a single person might even watch over multiple missions from terra-firma at once. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The plane\u2019s autonomy extends to being able to touch base with authorities on the ground. \u201cWe believe the aircraft itself needs to do all the functions that a human pilot does, and that absolutely includes communicating with air traffic control,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n