Plane talk
p2pnet.net News:- MIT aeronautics researchers have developed a system that lets a pilot in one plane guide a robot plane by talking to it.
Graduate students Tom Schouwenaars, left, and Mario Valenti with an operational guidance system they adapted for the helicopter, visible on the left.
“The system allows the pilot to interface with the UAV at a high level – not just ‘turn right, turn left’ but ‘fly to this region and perform this task,” Valenti, a flight controls engineer for Boeing who’s doing a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.
Schouwenaars, a PhD candidate in aeronautics and astronautics, and Valenti are principal researchers on the guidance system, part of the capstone demonstration of the DARPA-sponsored Software Enabled Control (SEC) program.
The new guidance system is designed for volatile combat situations, says MIT, going on:
“For instance, a pilot might be commanded to gather images of an enemy site located in unknown territory. Rather than putting himself in danger, the pilot could assign a nearby UAV to the task. The UAV moves toward the enemy site, avoiding known threats (no-fly zones) and the unexpected (radar emanating from a missile site), all the while communicating its actions to the pilot in the other aircraft, which follows behind at a higher altitude and a safe distance.
“The technology also could have applications in the coordination of multiple air or space vehicles, such as in air traffic control or the reconfiguration of distributed satellite systems.”
Hopefully, it’ll also soon be re-applied in equally useful areas, such giving voice control to disabled people.
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See:-
talking to it – MIT team guides airplane remotely using spoken English, MIT, November 2, 2004
