Tag: Demand for Unmanned

Driverless Cars Have Much to Learn from Aviation

Speaker: Mary Louise “Missy” Cummings, associate professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and director, Humans and Autonomy Laboratory, Duke University
by David Hodes, Aerospace America contributing writer

by David Hodes, Aerospace America contributing writer

The coming autonomous world of travel and transportation is one in which two industries could learn from each other for safer, more quickly developed technology, said Mary Louise “Missy” Cummings at a June 15 presentation at the 2016 AIAA Demand for Unmanned Symposium in Washington, D.C.

During the “Perspectives on the Future of Autonomous Systems and Technology” session, Cummings, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University, examined how the auto and aviation industries could collaborate on the path to developing autonomous vehicles.

For example, some aircraft have sensors that scan and read gauges inside a cockpit to help pilots who are alone. That technology could also be used in all forms of transportation, she said, and will lead to cargo aircraft becoming drones very soon.

“Planes are much better flown on sensors than humans,” Cummings said, adding that commercial jets use automation to save gas, help level landings and perform other tasks.

However, driverless cars are still an unknown quantity compared with commercial jets. One of Tesla’s driverless cars crashed into a parked van on a highway recently because it could not determine its situational awareness fast enough.

Developers of driverless technology are “woefully unprepared” to do the proper testing of their autonomous systems, Cummings said.

“As soon as a car goes driverless, a driver goes into internal reflective mode,” she said. “I told Tesla that you can never ever count on a human to intervene in the driverless car’s control.”

She said the U.S. Airways plane landing in the Hudson River in 2009 is a good example of collaboration between human and automated machine.

“The real heroes were the engineers who designed the jet to set the right attitude, for instance, for the landing on the water,” she said.

Overall, Cummings said, the U.S. needs to “up our game,” because cargo plane drones are already being used in other countries, and change is coming for both auto and aviation.

“Jobs are shifting now, but we will still need humans in and around and on the loop in autonomous systems,” she said.

All 2016 AIAA AVIATION Forum Videos

Developers Charged With Making UAS a More Trusted and Autonomous System

Panelists: Moderator I.J. Hudson, former technology reporter, NBC4 Washington (WRC-TV); Brian Argrow, professor of aerospace engineering sciences, University of Colorado; Michael S. Francis, chief advanced programs and senior fellow, United Technologies Research Center; Parimal H. Kopardekar, manager, Safe Autonomous Systems Operations Project, and principal investigator, Unmanned Aerial Systems Traffic Management, NASA’s Ames Research Center; John Langford, chairman and CEO, Aurora Flight Sciences Corp.; Richard Wlezien, professor and Vance and Arlene Coffman endowed department chair in aerospace engineering and director, Iowa Space Grant Consortium, Iowa State University

by David Hodes, Aerospace America contributing writer

Getting a more autonomous unmanned aerial system to understand what it needs to do with less human direction and finding ways to control it in the airspace are crucial issues for developers, according to a June 15 panel of experts at the 2016 AIAA Demand for Unmanned Symposium in Washington, D.C.

Sandy Magnus, executive director of AIAA, introduced the panel, “The Changing Face of Aerospace: The Impact of UAS on Aviation,” by pointing out users are helping developers understand what needs to happen in design, presenting a shift in the usual method of product development. Now, she said, it’s up to policymakers and lawmakers to make decisions regarding the limitations of technology and its advantages.

Jay Gundlach, founder and president of Flighthouse Engineering LLC, said that UASs are so early in development that we don’t even know what to call them yet.

Parimal Kopardekar, manager of the Safe Autonomous System Operations Project and principal investigator for NASA’s Unmanned Aerial Systems Traffic Management, said that one of the main principles in drone operations is understanding the value of constraints.

“We are talking about managing traffic that has to be as flexible as possible,” he said. “We will be setting up the rules of the road.”

In terms of education for next-generation UAS developers, Richard Wlezien, the department chair in aerospace engineering and director of the Iowa Space Grant Consortium at Iowa State University, said it has been frustrating because drone flights are too restrictive.

“Imagine training to be a physician and not being allowed in the operating room,” he said. “We have long way to go to open up airspace to students.”

Brian Argrow, professor of aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado, said he sees three growing applications of drones: rescue missions, national security, and climate and weather prediction.

“Agriculture has not been a top application,” he said. “But there is a project underway now about soil moisture management using a small UAS.”

One of the biggest issues panel members discussed was trust.

“As they become more autonomous, software for drones has to have some level of trust that they will make the correct decisions,”Argrow said.

That issue is being worked on now, according to Michael Francis, chief advanced programs and senior fellow at the United Technologies Research Center.

“We want the UAS system to be able to learn,” he said. “That’s the part of the industry that is going to grow, because we need to be able to operate safely under expected contingencies.”

Panelists all agreed standards are needed but cautioned that when they are made, they are hard to change or adjust.

“We need to be careful what we put in place and be careful about the nature of standards and what the intent is,” Kopardekar said. “We need to ask ‘What could it stop in the future?’”

All 2016 AIAA AVIATION Forum Videos

Tomorrow’s Drones Are Amazing, but Obstacles Exist

by David Hodes, Aerospace America contributing writer

Speakers: Andy Lacher, UAS integration research strategist, Mitre; Dale Richards, senior research fellow in human factors, Coventry University

Drones that essentially fly themselves are available now, but there are obstacles, and the future needs humans working with drones, experts said June 16 at the 2016 AIAA Demand for Unmanned Symposium in Washington, D.C.

In the panel, “Visions of the Future,” Andrew Lacher, UAS integration research strategist for Mitre, showed examples of what the future of drones looks like.

First was a drone from Lily, a camera company. He said it’s essentially a flying selfie stick that follows its subject based on criteria the subject programs into a special wrist watch. Though, according to Lacher, the aircraft is really flying itself as it follows its subject.

“This aircraft is picking its flight path, its speed and direction, working to counter wind, and will land itself when it detects that the battery is running low,” Lacher explained.

Another example was the fixed-wing PrecisionHawk robotic airplane. He said the company views itself more as a seller of data than a drone manufacturer because it uses the plane’s camera to gather pictures and other data for agriculture and other similar uses.

Lacher said overall, there is a need to make operating unmanned aerial systems simpler.

“We want to lower user sophistication — make these aerial systems easier to operate so that there is less training on how to use them,” Lacher said. “There is more automation needed in the system, but it needs to still work as a team with a human.”

Dale Richards, senior research fellow in human factors at Coventry University, said U.K. drone rules are similar to the rules in the U.S. (except for maximum flying altitude, which is 400 feet in the U.K. and 500 feet in the U.S.).

“But they consider the users as pilots and not operators,” he said of U.K. rules. “I don’t think that is going to work.”

Lacher said what is really needed is pilotless aircraft, which he called “the future.”

The discussion also touched on autonomous cars. Lacher cited the time a Google autonomous car was pulled over for driving too slowly and the time it faced a woman in an electric wheelchair chasing a duck in the middle of the road.

“It’s these non-normative conditions that need to be thought about,” Lacher said.

All 2016 AIAA AVIATION Forum Videos