Tag: 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum

Humans, Robots and Infrastructure: Happy Together

Speaker: David Mindell, founder and CEO, Humatics Corp., and professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

by Duane Hyland, AIAA Communications (2008-2017)

As autonomous systems become more numerous, humanity will have to find ways to integrate them, but according to David Mindell, founder and CEO of Massachusetts-based Humatics Corp. and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that won’t be as difficult as it sounds.

Mindell told the audience of the “Beyond the Robots: Toward Situation Autonomy” session at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver on June 7 that the intersection of digitized machines working with humans goes back to the Apollo era.

Computerized, semi-autonomous systems made the lunar landing possible, Mindell said, pointing out there were some changes to original designs. Originally, he said, the first user interface on Apollo “would have two buttons, one saying ‘go to the moon’ and the other saying ‘take me home.’” As things turned out, it was a bit more complex. The Apollo capsule was full of digital equipment, making the lander what Mindell called “the first digital fly-by-wire system and the grandfather of today’s everyday fly-by-wire systems.”

Researchers have been continuously developing autonomous systems, but Mindell said “systems in extreme environments — air, sea, space — become valuable when they are situated within human systems of operations and use.” He said the value of autonomous systems only truly comes about “when they do something for people, whether it’s package delivery or delivering medical supplies. It’s the place where there’s a relationship with a human individuals or a system of humans.”

However, Mindell said, humans are as valuable to machines as they are to us because we give them purpose as they benefit us.

“People, robots and infrastructure: We have to think about the relationship between these three things and how we engineer the relationships between the three,” he said, explaining that by thinking about the relationships, our ideas of autonomy will continue to evolve and bring about more complex relationships.

Amazon fulfillment centers — where robots work closely with humans — are a good indicator of what our cities will look like over the next 10 years, Mindell said. He added that Humatics is working to make human-robotic interactions safer by measuring range of motion, which will soon be able to “measure location down to a millimeter, down from the 30 centimeters that most systems today can achieve.”

Humans will always need to think about humanity’s relationship with robots, Mindell said.

“I worry a lot about being killed by a poorly designed robot than an evil robot, and that problem worries all of you a great deal, worries me a great deal,” he said. “We must be very cognizant of how we build our human intentions, biases and inputs into the most intelligent systems, and we are learning about data bias and how it’s collected and it’s so dependent on data, etc. And I think of all of these autonomous systems as extensions of human systems. I worry more about the relationships of people getting built in than I do about robots taking over the world.”

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Unmanned Aircraft Are Not the Wave of the Future — They Are the Present

Panelists: Moderator Glenn Roberts, chief engineer, Center for Advanced Aviation System Development, The MITRE Corp.; Jonathan Evans, co-president, Skyward; Jesse Kallman, president, Airbus Aerial; Van Espahbodi, co-founder and COO, Starburst Accelerator; Wes Ryan, manager, Programs & Procedures (Advanced Technology), Small Airplane Directorate, FAA

by Duane Hyland, AIAA Communications (2008-2017)

Evolving-Culture-of-Aviation-Panel-AVIATION2017 — Participants in the panel discussion, “The Evolving Culture of Aviation,” June 6 at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

Unmanned aircraft have exploded onto the aviation scene in recent years, and the industry needs to focus on the safety and security involved with these systems, a panel of experts said June 6 at the
2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

The
FAA predicts about 7 million total hobbyist and commercial drones will be purchased by 2020.

“All this change is happening at an incredibly rapid rate,” Glenn Roberts, chief engineer at the Center for Advanced Aviation Systems Development with
The MITRE Corp., told the audience in a session titled “The Evolving Culture of Aviation.”

Panelists explained the benefits of increased drone use, including eliminating human error from aviation; better monitoring of remote areas, such as power lines and rail lines; a greater collaboration between the information technology and aviation sectors; and a nearly limitless potential for creative future applications of the technology.

But, they said, there are challenges, including ensuring safe and successful integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace; educating the public about the safe nature of drones; and ensuring the systems are not put to nefarious uses.

Wes Ryan, manager of Programs & Procedures (Advanced Technology) with the
FAA’s Small Airplane Directorate, explained that safety is paramount, because if drones are put to “nefarious uses, nothing will kill quicker in the mind of the public.”

Jesse Kallman, president of
Airbus Aerial, echoed Ryan’s concern.

“It would only take a small incident to change the public’s perception,” Kallman said.

Panelists debated the role of humans when it comes to drone technology, settling on a scenario that would leave humans in the loop. As Jonathan Evans, co-president of
Skyward, explained, the human role would be “not in a cockpit, but sitting in a network control center.”

Van Espahbodi, co-founder and COO of
Starburst Accelerator, urged attendees to “find ways to participate in the UAS sector, especially as the tide rises.”

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Around the World in 6 Months on Nothing but Solar Power

Speaker: Hannes Ross, consultant, Solar Impulse Project

by Duane Hyland, AIAA Communications (2008-2017)

The success of the Solar Impulse 2 aircraft’s flight around the world demonstrates we can have technology that saves energy and uses clean energy sources, Hannes Ross, a consultant with the Solar Impulse Project, said June 5 during the Wright Brothers Lecture in Aeronautics at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

“We have technologies available right now to save energies and to provide new clean energies today,” Ross said, adding that the Solar Impulse concept wasn’t designed to be used for commercial flights but to send a message: “We must use these energies … to leave the world for the next generation.”

Ross took the audience through a brief history of solar trips around the globe and the path to the Solar Impulse program — from Ferdinand Magellan’s sailing expedition to Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones’ hot air balloon ride and beyond.

“Maybe looking back is always a good thing to do to learn what other people have … done before,” he said.

The team first conceived Solar Impulse 2 and designed it in 2011. The aircraft was tested in 2014, and its worldwide flight began in March 2015. It made 16 stops and crossed both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In July 2016, it became the first aircraft powered only by electricity generated by solar power technology to circumnavigate the globe.

Ross explained the entire design, manufacturing and flight process of Solar Impulse 2. He also discussed the logistics involved in staging a flight around the world — from working with various air traffic control agencies to arranging customs clearances in all the nations the flight visited.

“Wherever we landed, we had quite a bit of spare parts along,” Ross said. “We had our own kitchen … and all of that had to be brought into the country and taken away, and everything needed to be checked by customs.”

He said the team even had to design a portable, inflatable hangar big enough to accommodate the aircraft’s 71.9 meter, or 236 foot, wingspan to shelter the plane on its various stops.

Of the Solar Impulse team, Ross said: “They are all very proud to have been able to participate in such a successful program.”

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New Technology Won’t Replace X-Plane Pilots

Panelists: Moderator Starr Ginn, deputy aeronautics research director, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center; Edward L. Burnett, senior fellow, Modeling, Simulation, and Controls, Lockheed Martin; Robert E. Curry, chief scientist, Armstrong; Bill Gray, chief pilot, U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School; Nils Larson, chief, Flight Crew Branch, Armstrong; Daniel Murri, NASA technical fellow for flight mechanics, NASA’s Langley Research Center; Dana Purifoy, director of flight operations, Armstrong; Art Tomassetti, director and F-35B U.S. Marine Corps program manager, Lockheed Martin

by Tom Risen, Aerospace America staff reporter (2017-2018)

X-Planes-panel-AVIATION2017 — Participants in the panel discussion, “X-Planes: Discovery Through Flight,” June 5 at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

Some aircraft engineering obstacles remain impossible to discover without building an experimental X-plane and sending a pilot to fly it, despite advances in ground testing and remote-controlled flight, a group of scientists and test pilots told the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forumin Denver.

Flight simulators and wind tunnels have long been used to test an aircraft’s design before the final product is built, but they cannot always re-create the way planes will fly in real life, representatives from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin explained June 5 during the “X-Planes: Discovery Through Flight” forum.

The X-35, which the Defense Department tested in a joint operation as a prelude to the F-35, taught the military how to improve the jet’s hovering thrusters, said Art “Turbo” Tomassetti, who flew both planes for the Marine Corps. Tomassetti retired from the Marines in 2013 and is now the F-35B Marine Corps program manager at Lockheed Martin.

Tracking how more than 18,000 kilograms of thrust from lift fan of the X-35 caused it to stall in real life was “extremely difficult if not impossible to model” without a test plane, Tomassetti said. Pilot feedback about flight experiences like landings and cockpit controls is also important for design improvements, he added.

Bill Gray, chief test pilot at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, said test pilots will always be necessary, but “autonomy is kind of where we are headed,” despite some fears from the aviation community that remote piloting will replace humans.

However, unmanned X-planes are often not less expensive or more efficient than sending a test pilot, said Dana Purifoy, director of flight operations for NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.

“You have to be careful in deciding what you want to obtain and whether it is worth it to use [unmanned planes],” Purifoy said.

Situations where unmanned X-planes could be useful include long-endurance tests and high-risk flights of unproven aircraft, said Nils Larson, the chief test pilot at Armstrong.

NASA is approaching the preliminary design review process as a prelude to building an X-plane to test low-boom supersonic flight, a NASA spokesman said. There is no timeline for the design review, but NASA expects the process to be complete by the end of June.

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Aerospace Entrepreneurs Try and Find a Way Around City Traffic

Panelists: Moderators Brian J. German, associate professor, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; JoeBen Bevirt, founder, Joby Aviation; Geoffrey Bower, chief engineer, A^3 by Airbus Group; Gregory J. Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy, General Aviation Manufacturers Association; David Josephson, engineer/CEO, Josephson Engineering Inc.; Mark D. Moore, director of aviation, Uber Engineering; Tine Tomažič, director of research and development, Pipistrel; Jon Rimanelli, founder and CEO, AirspaceX

by Hannah Godofsky, AIAA Communications

EHang-184-AP — EHang 184 | Associated Press-©

A new wave of aerospace entrepreneurs and technology startups are stepping in to try and solve the problem of traffic, and according to a panel of experts at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver, it could be done with vertical takeoff and landing, or VTOL, aircraft.

As any commuter knows, roadway congestion eats up a huge amount of time and energy, and “traffic is taking over our lives,” Jon Rimanelli, founder and CEO of AirspaceX, said during the discussion June 8.

Rimanelli cited figures showing that each driver loses about $1,400 in fuel costs and productivity each year due to traffic.

“Key to this future is leveraging the automotive industrial base,” he said, adding that his company works with Uber, which has disrupted the taxi and car markets with its ridesharing app.

“Our mission is to support Uber, and their mission is to move people,” Rimanelli said.

Mark Moore, director of aviation at Uber Engineering, said his company’s working on making electric VTOL a reality and plans to tests the system as soon as 2020.

“Uber is going to connect the users to the network. Uber is a software company, and there is a great deal of software in this ecosystem,” Moore said. “Uber will be very active in developing the network, including the network operations center.”

But, Moore insists, “We see many participants in this system.”

One such example is Pipistrel, whose director of research and development, Tine Tomažič, explained where electric flight is at in terms of development today.

“We understand what happens when you are really challenged with power demands,” Tomažič said.

However, he said, some of the problems that still need to be solved before e-VTOL is a reality on a mass scale aren’t directly related to the vehicles themselves.

“When these vehicles are connected all the time to the service network, one has to think, ‘how do you isolate the vehicles from cyberattacks?’” Tomažič said.

Other obstacles panelists noted are potential objections from local governments or federal regulators.

“You have to make the case that the tradeoff between noise to the community and benefit to the community is positive,” said David Josephson, engineer and CEO of Josephson Engineering Inc.

Greg Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy at the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, said he’s skeptical the infrastructure is ready for e-VTOL on a mass scale.

“When we talk about the needs of charging one of these vehicles in five minutes, it’s like adding a grocery store to the grid for five minutes,” Bowles said.

Despite these risks, even large companies like Airbus are investing in e-VTOL technology, said Geoffrey Bower, chief engineer of A^3 at Airbus Group.

“We’re trying to disrupt Airbus and the rest of the aerospace industry before somebody else does,” he said. “The technology, the components are there; we just need the integration.”

Rimanelli urged regulators: “What we need you to do is collaborate, partner or get out of the way.”

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Researchers Discuss Need for Teamwork Between Humans and Machines

Panelists: Moderator Dale Richards, senior research fellow in human factors, Coventry University; Danette Allen, senior technologist, Intelligent Flight Systems, NASA; Andrew Lacher, senior principal and unmanned and autonomous research strategist, The MITRE Corp.; David Mindell, founder and CEO, Humatics Corp., and professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

by Hannah Godofsky, AIAA Communications

The relationship between humans and machines is changing to one in which humans and machines need to work as a team, a panel of experts said June 7 at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

“Any place where we’re transitioning from automation to autonomy is an opportunity to team between multi-agents, humans and machines in the system,” said Danette Allen, a NASA senior technologist for Intelligent Flight Systems and head of the autonomy incubator at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

She said NASA needs automation.

“All of these new missions have one thing in common, whether they’re Earth-bound or space-bound or planetary-bound, they all need very complex automation and perhaps even autonomy to succeed,” Allen said. “Because we’re talking about distances beyond cislunar. We’re talking about high-latency, very cluttered environment — safety-critical, time-critical systems and decisions that have to be made in uncertainty.”

Andy Lacher, a senior principal at The MITRE Corp., elaborated on human and machine teamwork.

“What we’re really talking about is a partnership, where the human is the senior partner, but the human and the machine have to work together,” he said.

But, he stressed, the human has to be alert and aware in order for a partnership to be safe and reliable.

“The key here is the human can’t be the safety net for the automation,” Lacher said. “The human has to remain vigilant, because when the machine can’t handle it, it hands it back to the human. And sometimes it’s at the most critical or the hardest part.”

Lacher cited examples like automated driving features or underwater robotic exploration to explain why humans need to stay aware even when some aspects of machine operation have been automated.

David Mindell, founder and CEO of Humatics Corp., said there are benefits of working with automated systems as a team.

“Computer chess programs learned how to beat people more than a decade ago,” he explained. “But actually today, the best chess players are people with computers, and they can beat either computers or people alone.”

Mindell gave an example of archeologists who at first were skeptical of a role for automation and robotics in their field but later came to embrace autonomous data collection for their studies.

“We gave them a level of overview of a problem that they couldn’t get in a different way,” he said.

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Making Aerial Ride Sharing a Reality

Speaker: Mark Moore, director of aviation, Uber

By Tom Risen, Aerospace America Staff Reporter (2017-2018)

City-dwellers spend hours in traffic, but the wave of companies building electric vertical takeoff and landing craft, or eVTOLs, could allow commuters to fly above gridlock, Mark Moore, the engineering director of aviation for Uber, said June 9 at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

Prior to joining Uber in February, Moore worked at NASA’s Langley Research Center as the principal investigator for the X-57 aircraft being built to test new electric propulsion technology, which capped off his 32-year career with NASA. Moore is using his knowledge of the electric propulsion community to build the Uber Elevate ecosystem by partnering with electric charging companies and real estate firms to create infrastructure for landing, flying and charging eVTOLs.

Uber is not building its own aircraft, but its aerospace partners so far include Aurora Flight Sciences, Slovenia-based electric plane maker Pipistrel, Bell Helicopter, Brazil-based Embraer and general aviation manufacturer Mooney. Creating this ecosystem could make eVTOLs a more efficient, safer and less noisy option for broad use in an urban environment than helicopters, Moore said.

“Helicopters are simply not good enough,” he said, touting the potential for aerial ride sharing using eVTOLs that aim to be affordable enough for most consumers because electric power is more efficient. “Ten percent of millennials say they never want to own a car.”

Moore said Uber aims for aircraft provided by its partners to conduct the initial experimental flights for the Uber Elevate aerial ride-sharing program in 2020 in Dallas and Dubai and expects to begin offering aerial ride sharing to consumers in 2023 in those cities.

Obstacles to aerial taxi services include not only gaining public acceptance with low noise and affordability, but also proving their safety to the FAA. Limits on how far apart aircraft can fly between each other in Class B airspace near airport traffic areas could make it difficult to fly numerous air taxis in a city if that regulation is not addressed.

Uber is working with the FAA on how to prove the safety of eVTOLs that could launch and charge from “vertiports,” including at unused helicopter pads, he said. If regulators certify the eVTOL ride-sharing ecosystem, it could set the stage for “clean electricity to be the dominant energy for the future,” he said.

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Third Aerospace Revolution Rapidly Changing the Face of Aviation

Speaker: Paul Eremenko, chief technology officer, Airbus

by Lawrence Garrett, AIAA Web Editor

Airbus is determined to play a leading role in what Paul Eremenko, Airbus’ chief technology officer, considers the third aerospace revolution.

“This is a chance not just to influence, not just to leave a mark, but really to imagine and build the future of flight together,” Eremenko said June 6 during his keynote address, titled “Innovation in the Age of the Third Aerospace Revolution,” at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

Referencing the Wright brothers and the dawn of aviation as the first revolution and the jet age of the 1950s as the second, Eremenko said that the third revolution, as evidenced by the current confluence of developing technologies and business opportunities, is remarkable.

“I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams that … a multibillion dollar market for commercial and consumer drones would emerge — and not just from us, the disruptors at the time, but from the cellphone industry,” he said. “When you have this kind of rapid technological evolution across multiple different domains, some kind of convergence, something interesting, is almost bound to happen.”

Eremenko explained that digital and electrical technological developments have already created a revolution in the aerospace industry that will lead to an even bigger development.

“I’m talking about the ability to manipulate matter, or in other words, the ability to design and create new materials and structures with ease and flexibility of writing a software specification,” he said, referring to reconfigurable manufacturing robotics, direct metal 3-D printing, and the ability to create new materials and structures using biological synthesis. “These and other technologies give us mastery over the creation of the physical product, could well lower the barrier to entry to aerospace even further and lead to opportunities for disruption.”

Referring to a presentation given by Airbus CEO Tom Enders at AIAA AVIATION 2015 in which Enders asked, “Are we moving fast enough,” Eremenko echoed Enders: “When we launched Airbus back in 1969, we weren’t just bold. Some might say we were downright rude. And it worked.”

Eremenko also discussed the rapid advances in electric flight. In 2010, Airbus sponsored the development of a small all-electric aircraft that has seen advancements every year since. In 2015, an Airbus test pilot flew the E-Fan across the English Channel.

Eremenko said the first powered flight of Airbus’ Vahana, a single-passenger all-electric, fully autonomous vertical takeoff and landing air-taxi demonstrator with a tilt-wing configuration, is slated for later this year.

“In V/TOL, we stand at a convergence point of several new technologies, namely autonomy, electric propulsion, low-cost mass manufactured composites … and the digitally enabled business model of on-demand personal mobility,” Eremenko said. “Combined, they seem to offer the realistic prospect of a new class of vehicles that could make the dream of urban air mobility finally real.”

Eremenko cautioned that the industry is still in the early stages of the urban air mobility journey, but he said he would be “astonished” not to see in the next four to five years a full-scale pilot of an urban air transport system in a major city.

“And I sure as hell want to help build it,” he said.

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Commercial Supersonic Travel Could Shrink the World

Panelists: Moderator Peter Coen, project manager of commercial supersonic technology, NASA’s Langley Research Center; Michael Buonanno, deputy chief engineer, QueSST X-Plane, Lockheed Martin; Robert Cowart, director of supersonic technology development, Gulfstream Aerospace; Vik Kachoria, president and CEO, Spike Aerospace; Blake Scholl, founder and CEO, Boom Technology; Gurdip Singh Ubhi, business development executive, Rolls-Royce

by Tom Risen, Aerospace America Staff Reporter (2017-2018)

Advances including aerodynamics, propulsion and composites can make supersonic flight more affordable and open more travel routes than the commercial flights once offered by the British Airways Concorde, a panel of aviation executives said during the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

Supersonic flight can “shrink the world” the same way subsonic jet flight did by making it easier for families to visit relatives or vacation or for executives to make business trips, Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Colorado-based startup Boom Technology, said June 6 in the “Supersonic Transport” panel.

The Concorde had a top speed of Mach 2, or more than 2,000 kph, when it flew commercial flights between 1976 and 2003. The plane was too expensive to fly on limited commercial routes, however, so it “was an economic catastrophe,” Scholl said.

Advances including carbon composites and improved propulsion, however, make it more affordable to build a new generation commercial supersonic jet, Scholl said. In 2018, Boom plans to test the XB-1, a prototype version one-third the size of a supersonic airliner it hopes to debut and certify in the early 2020s.

Supersonic flight, however, creates noise that can not only disturb people and wildlife, but also can have environmental impact — like causing avalanches in mountain ranges, said Vik Kachoria, CEO of Spike Aerospace in Boston.

For this reason, the FAA banned supersonic flights over land even before Concordes began flying over the Atlantic. Reducing the noise of a sonic boom could make it more acceptable for regulators in the U.S. and Europe to allow supersonic flight routes around the world that could take hours off travel time.

To address the noise problem, Spike is developing its S-512 Quiet Supersonic Jet, which aims to cruise with 18 passengers at Mach 1.6 without producing a loud, disturbing sonic boom on the ground, Kachoria said.

This new generation of supersonic commercial travel will be available mainly to the “super rich for now,” Kachoria said, adding there will be a demand for people to travel to London for important business meetings within three or four hours.

“We’ll figure out how to do it better, faster, larger,” he said.

Selling supersonic jets or commercial flights to the wealthy who can afford it “breaches the market; it opens the door,” said Robert Cowart, director of supersonic technology development at Gulfstream Aerospace.

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Changing Culture With Electric Aviation

Panelists: Moderator Andrew R. Gibson, president of business development and aerospace engineer, Empirical Systems Aerospace; Mike Hirschberg, executive director, AHS International — The Vertical Flight Technical Society; Amy Jankovsky, subproject manager, Hybrid Gas-Electric Propulsion, NASA’s Glenn Research Center; Matt Knapp, founder and aero CTO, Zunum Aero; Joseph Oldham, director, San Joaquin Valley Clean Transportation Center, CALSTART

by Tom Risen, Aerospace America Staff Reporter (2017-2018)

Electric-powered flight could improve safety, fuel efficiency and convenience, but innovators first have to clear regulatory hurdles and make the technology accepted as part of daily life, a panel of aviation executives and officials said June 7 during the “Aircraft Electric Propulsion: Transforming Aviation” session at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

Automakers are leading the way in electric and hybrid electric transportation, but aviation firms have yet to win over consumers and regulators who have “grandfathered in” gasoline as the accepted aircraft fuel, said Joseph Oldham, director of the San Joaquin Valley Clean Transportation Center for CALSTART. The nonprofit Oldham works for is dedicated to the growth of clean transportation technologies.

Switching to electric-powered flight would reduce carbon emissions and save on the fluctuating cost of gasoline, but Oldham said it would also make aircraft safer by removing the risk that aviation gas would explode in a malfunction or crash.

Electric flight could also help lower costs for regional airports and consumers who travel through them, said Matt Knapp, a founder of Zunum Aero. The startup, based in Kirkland, Washington, aims to create a hybrid jet with 10 to 50 seats designed to fly on low-cost trips shorter than 1,600 kilometers. Zunum’s planes would be powered by both jet fuel and electricity and would be designed to be upgraded with “evolving energy storage capacities” as battery technology changes.

“Fuel is a highly volatile price point, and there is a cost to volatility,” Knapp said of the benefit of relying less on gasoline.

Fuel efficiency and safety are particularly important to advance vertical takeoff aircraft because hovering requires a stable and low-cost power source, Knapp said. Vertical takeoff planes were “ridiculed” and did not becoming widely used in much of the 20th century because of “a huge number of accidents,” said Mike Hirschberg, executive director of nonprofit AHS International — The Vertical Flight Technical Society. The nonprofit formerly known as the American Helicopter Society has become “laser focused on vertical flight” because of its potential to make urban travel more convenient with the help of electric power, he said.

While Hirschberg is excited about companies like Uber and Airbus trying to encourage different industries to support vertical takeoff aircraft, he discouraged the use of the term “flying car.”

A vertical takeoff craft “is not a flying car unless it drives on the road,” he said.

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Internet of Things Could Enable Drones to Change the World

Panelists: moderator David Loda, executive director, NCPS Research LLC; Sam Kogan, chief executive officer, Gen5 Group LLC; Dave Kasik, senior technical fellow, Boeing; U.S. Air Force Col. Tim West, senior materiel leader, Test Operations Division, Arnold Engineering Development Complex; Zhennan Cao, president, STARC Solutions Ltd., China; Wu Hui, general manager, (HRG) HIT Special Robot Group Co. Ltd., China

by Lawrence Garrett, AIAA Web Editor

The “internet of things” will completely revolutionize the aviation industry, particularly through its application to the growing unmanned flight sector, a panel of experts said June 8 during the “Internet of Things as Applied to Aircraft Systems” session at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

The internet of things is the networking of devices, vehicles, buildings and other items with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity. The connected objects are able to collect and exchange data, which offers aerospace manufacturers a way to have real-time data communications with their deployed products.

David Loda, executive director of Connecticut-based NCPS Research LLC, explained that humans traditionally have had to manually harvest and collect data and then bring it back for design, but the internet of things is now providing an autonomous capability.

“We’re embedding intelligence onboard the asset where it’s actually occurring and then processing it onboard, and then creating a neuro-network type of global distributed intelligence that can then convert that data into information, to knowledge, to wisdom and actionable intelligence,” Loda explained.

Leveraging the lessons already learned through the application of the internet of things, Loda said that the industry is now at a “major shift point when it comes to industrial drones.”

“Drones are going to change the world from the commercial side,” Loda said, explaining that drones will create a “data explosion” through what they are looking at. “It’s all about visualization and also about algebraic computation of how we can use new ways to visualize, and understand and mine this data.”

Sam Kogan, CEO of Massachusetts-based Gen5 Group LLC, said he got involved with the internet of things a couple of years ago.

“It’s a new trend, a new enabling technology that will significantly effect a lot of businesses,” he said.

When it comes to the internet of things enabling drones or other products, Kogan said it’s important to keep in mind that it will completely change the business model. Using agriculture as an example, Kogan suggested that with a connected smart drone, fields for growing crops could change size and that today’s supply chain of equipment could no longer be needed.

But, he cautioned, “If you’re not going to address the main premise of value of all stakeholders in a value chain, in a supply chain, this technology will die.”

Kogan expressed his excitement about applying the internet of things to commercial drones, calling it “the future.” He noted that it will take a “complex approach in making sure that we have a great enabling data process to address the value drivers.”

David Kasik, senior technical fellow in visualization and interactive techniques at Boeing, agreed.

“Ultimately, what we want to do with all that data is not do something that I’ve termed to be write-only data stores, where you just store it and then nothing ever happens to it again,” he said. “You want to extract some value from it.”

Kasik said the value drones provide “is that now we add visual cues that supplement those digital ones that have been around for literally decades.”

U.S. Air Force Col. Tim Smith, who oversees ground testing at the Arnold Engineering Development Complex in Tennessee, cited a number of commercial drone applications: package delivery, agricultural monitoring, fire patrol, industrial facility inspections and “anything that’s hard to access.”

“There are a lot of hard things to inspect that could be done easier with a drone,” he said of his test facility.

Smith said he sees three big challenges that applying the internet of things to drones could help solve. The first is safety and ensuring that any given drop zone is clear, Smith said, noting for example, if someone’s dog is in the area, the “rules of engagement you build into a system” need to be able to handle that sort of problem.

He said the second challenge is interaction with other aircraft, including aircraft avoidance, the integration of drones into the national airspace and the question of how much autonomy to give these systems.

“And, how do you handle failures?” asked Smith, citing the third challenge, “Because things will go wrong.”

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