[info] robot pilots better than humans at air refuelling

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

(
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/15/air_to_air_refuelling_robot_darpa/
)



Droid pilots beat humans at air-to-air refuelling
Robots acquire another key human pilot skill
By Lewis Page → More by this author
Published Wednesday 15th August 2007 11:35 GMT


The Pentagon killer-boffin agency DARPA (the Defence Advanced Research
Projects Agency) has made another move forward in its plan to replace
all US military humans with robots. The latest trick the droids have
learned is that of flying a plane during air-to-air refuelling.

Air-to-air refuelling, in which a military aircraft tops up its supplies
by plugging in to a pipe trailing from a tanker plane, is a key military
capability and one of the trickier piloting feats. Now that robots can
do it, unmanned aircraft can potentially stay airborne for very long
periods, limited only by maintenance requirements.

DARPA announced (pdf) last week that it had successfully completed a
programme called AARD, for Autonomous Airborne Refueling Demonstration,
and the story appeared yesterday in the Defence Industry Daily.

Over the past year, the AARD system* has apparently conducted 11
air-to-air refuelling flights without human input. The trials took place
using an F-18 fighter jet operated as a testbed by NASA. The F-18 had a
human pilot aboard during the trials as a backup, but the droid pilot
required no help from its meatsack passenger. It was able to jack the
F-18's fuelling probe into a basket trailing behind a refuelling tanker
in the toughest of conditions.

Not only did the robo-flyboy manage to hook up with the trailing fuel
point flapping up and down in turbulence by up to five feet - apparently
the limit for most human stick-jockeys - it could also plug in while the
tanker was turning.

"Although pilots routinely follow a tanker through turns while
connected, they typically do not attempt to make contact in a turn,"
says DARPA.

The software improved significantly during the trials, according to NASA
test pilot Dick Ewers. Last year it flew "like a second lieutenant", he
said. But the robot rookie was upgraded, and now it's "better than a
skilled pilot". If it was human, it would now retire and go to work for
the airlines, and the military would have to start again with a another
second lieutenant; but the robot will stay this good forever, or
improve.

DARPA said that in the end the "algorithms were actually able to
precisely match the drogue motion – something pilots are specifically
taught to avoid... the system followed the drogue through a full
three-foot cycle in the two seconds before making contact, never
deviating more than four inches from the exact centerline of the drogue,
all the while traveling at 250mph, 18,000 feet above the Tehachapi
Mountains".

Human pilots, rather than tracking the drogue, are taught to try and
slot in with a forward move at the right moment. Pilots have
traditionally described the manoeuvre as "like taking a running f-ck at
a rolling doughnut".

But now, yet another of their hard-won manual skills has been mastered
by the droids. Things don't look good for the military flyboys at all,
in the long run. That said, the money which might buy robot aircraft is
largely in budgets controlled by former pilots. ®

*AARDman ...? Some kind of legal problem, no doubt