Forum 360: Machine Intelligence & Autonomy Meet Aviation: Toward Safer & More Accessible Skies 15 January 2021 1400 - 1515
A cross-domain topic that focuses on AI/autonomy for both unmanned systems and general aviation (GA), especially within today’s context and the post COVID-19 world. Aviation is still in infancy on integrating machine learning/AI and autonomy. Over a number of years there have been ongoing efforts on robotic co-pilots, fully autonomous cargo planes, ground collision avoidance (auto GCAS), automated landing of GA aircraft, etc. This provides an excellent backdrop for a discussion of the acceleration of machine intelligence integration in the mainstream aerospace world. Further aspects to consider: the unmanned aviation technology and policy community is not taking advantage of the massively reduced sky traffic to try out new things right now. General aviation, charter, and Part 91-K flight operations should see a big boost from the current situation. Getting costs to a reasonable point will require going to one pilot initially, to remote pilots with one pilot per aircraft evolving to M pilots controlling N aircraft, and eventually to no pilots on board. The demand for that may have been created, or at least accelerated by COVID-19. .
Moderator
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Zohaib Mian
Head of Systems Engineering, Alphabet/Loon -
Eric Spero
Lead, Systems Engineering for Autonomous Robotics Integration, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Army Research Laboratory
Panelists
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Natalia Alexandrov
Principal Investigator, NASA Langley Research Center -
David Hansell
Global Head, Aviation Regulation and Policy, Loon, LLC -
Andrew Lacher
Senior Principal, Aerospace Research and Autonomous Systems, Noblis -
Sanjiv Singh
Chief Executive Officer, Near Earth Autonomy; Consulting Professor, The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University -
Arne Stoschek
Project Executive, Machine Learning and Autonomy, @ Acubed, an Airbus Innovation Center