posted on Dec, 6 2012 @ 09:56 PM
The Army recently flew the first test of a truly autonomous unmanned helicopter program over California. A UH-60 Blackhawk was flown with pilots on
board, but not in control, through the Diablo Range. The flight was the first test of autonomous UAV programming. The helicopter had to avoid
obstacles in its path, and safely pick out a landing area at the end of the flight.
The flight lasted two hours, using the RASCAL JUH-60A Blackhawk. It successfully demonstrated terrain sensing, statistical processing, risk
assessment, threat avoidance, trajectory generation, and autonomous flight. The helicopter was flown 23 miles of terrain, at 40 knots, without any
prior knowledge of the terrain it was over.
At the end of the flight, the computers picked out a landing zone in a forested area, and brought the aircraft to a hover at 60 feet. The final hover
was within a foot.
A remotely-piloted highly-modified Black Hawk helicopter recently flew over the Diablo Range, east of San Jose, California, in the first
autonomous flight test of the next generation rotorcraft tech: obstacle field navigation and safe landing area determination.
Although the chopper had Army experimental test pilots Lt. Col. Mike Olmstead and Ott, system operator Dennis Zollo, and Dr. Marc Takahashi on board
for safety reasons, the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command’s Aviation and Missile Center successfully demonstrated the
aircraft’s terrain sensing, statistical processing, risk assessment, threat avoidance, trajectory generation, and autonomous flight control
edit on 12/6/2012 by Zaphod58 because: (no reason given)