One of the world’s most widely used cargo planes has completed an entire flight without anyone on board for the first time.
The flight lasted about 12 minutes in total, took off from Hollister Airport in Northern California, and was operated by Reliable Robotics, which has been working since 2019 on a semi-automated flight system in which the plane is controlled remotely by a pilot. CNN reported.
The remote operator—a real pilot who must be certified to fly the plane just as if he were in the cockpit—sends commands to the plane via encrypted satellite signals, but he does not fly the plane in real time or receive a visual feed from the plane. The plane yourself.
Each command sent to the aircraft contains all the instructions needed to land, so the aircraft always knows what to do, even if communication is lost. “You could say the plane is self-driving,” Rose explains. “If you tell him not to do anything else, or cut off contact with him, he will do the last thing you asked him to do: the definition of independence. No direct human control.”
sources): CNN