Autonomous flight

The line between crewed and uncrewed aircraft has blurred even more after a Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter carried out a demonstration cargo mission as well as a medical "emergency rescue" entirely on its own without anyone aboard or human guidance.

Wisk Aero has bumped up the passenger-carrying capacity of its upcoming air taxi from two to four, and none of those will be a pilot. The company intends to take its 6th-gen autonomous eVTOL to market, and will now be seeking FAA type certification.

Zipline has developed and patented an AI-driven safety system it says allows autonomous drones to detect and avoid other aircraft and drones up to 2 km away in all directions, using a light, cheap and robust microphone array. Will it satisfy the FAA?

While aerial drones have many uses, there are some situations where ground-based drones are a better choice – they do use less battery power. The HUUVER combines aspects of the two in one vehicle, as it features both propellers and tank-like treads.

DARPA's Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program has taken another step forward, with a US Army UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter taking to the air over Fort Campbell, Kentucky on February 5 for a 30-minute autonomous flight with no one aboard.

Multicopter drones have many uses, but they're still held back by short flight times and limited lifting capacities. The Firefly quadcopter is designed to address those shortcomings, with the ability to fly for about two hours and carry up to 100 lb.

Although fixed-wing drones can fly farther and faster than multicopters, they typically require runways to take off and land. The Vetal flying-wing drone addresses that compromise, with a rather striking "tail-sitter" design.

Kawasaki has shoehorned the supercharged 1,000cc engine from its wild H2R hyperbike into a heavy-lift autonomous cargo helicopter, and has now demonstrated a robotic system for loading and unloading it without exposing humans to those big blades.

It seems China's about to win the race to commercial, autonomous, electric VTOL air taxi operations, with daylight a distant second. eHang says its EH216 could be fully certified within months, several years ahead of competitors from the USA and EU.

Usually when we think of multicopter drones, we picture aircraft with four or more rotors. The V40 agricultural drone takes a different approach, using two tilting two rotors in an effort to improve range and spraying efficiency.

Google's drone-delivery sister company Wing is rapidly expanding its drone delivery services in Logan, a city in Queensland Australia that Wing says is now the drone delivery capital of the world. Only red tape is holding back world domination.

Through a novel algorithm that can plot a flight path with great efficiency, scientists at the University of Zurich are now claiming to have demonstrated an autonomous drone that can beat human pilots in a race.