FAA Accepts Reliable Robotics' Certification Plans for Autonomous Flight Control System

[Jester123]

Reliable Robotics says the FAA has accepted its certification plans for the autonomous flight control system it plans to install on aircraft to enable remotely piloted operations under a supplemental type certificate (STC).

According to Reliable Robotics, its system can enable fully autonomous gate-to-gate operations through continuous autopilot engagement and an advanced navigation system. “Continuous autopilot engagement” is a term the FAA has used to distinguish the system from traditional autopilots, most of which cannot be used for taxi, takeoff, and landing.

“You get on the plane, you turn on the battery, and then you turn the autopilot on, and everything else is done through the autopilot, including engine start,” Reliable Robotics co-founder and CEO Robert Rose told FutureFlight. “All of the checklists are processed automatically through the system, and you don't turn the autopilot off until you're back on the ground at the destination airport and you've taxied to your parking spot and the shuts the engine off.”

In the near term, Reliable Robotics says this technology could enable safe single-pilot operations as early as next year. Eventually, the company aims to certify its system for remotely piloted operations with no crew on board.

Rose said he expects to have the first STC approved for installations in the next 18 to 24 months. He noted that while it is difficult to predict how long it will take regulators to approve remotely piloted, uncrewed flights, he believes it could happen by the end of this decade.

Reliable Robotics’ first STC will cover the installation of its autopilot system in Cessna 208 Caravan single-engine turboprops, and it intends to make the system available for more types of aircraft in the future. The Mountain View, California-based company has already tested the system extensively in the Caravan as well as a Cessna 172, flying from its test base at San Martin Airport near San Jose.

The company has been awarded contracts with the U.S. Air Force and NASA to design, develop, and test autonomous flight capabilities, and to study the safe integration of uncrewed aircraft in the National Airspace System.

The FAA’s acceptance of Reliable Robotics’ certification plans marks the completion of the third of five stages in the FAA’s certification process for the STC. First, the company had to come to an agreement with the FAA on a G-1 certification basis, which they wrapped up in August 2022.

In the second stage of the certification process, the FAA must approve the means of compliance, or G-2 issue papers, which detail how the company will comply with the rules defined in its G-1 certification basis. Rose said the FAA has accepted nearly all of the means of compliance Reliable Robotics has put forth in the G-2 issue papers. “It’s almost done,” he said. “There's a few details that I think are more bureaucratic in nature that we're working through with the FAA.”

CONTINUOUS AUTOPILOT CONSISTS OF MULTIPLE ELEMENTS
The company’s autopilot involves both software and hardware, most of which it has developed in-house. Its flight control system consists of three flight computers that control two sets of actuators on each of the primary flight control surfaces. Its navigation system uses a redundant suite of advanced sensors, including radar altimeters, magnetometers, and GPS units.

While the company has not revealed many details about the various sensors in its system, Rose said it was inspired by systems used in the space industry. Rose and several of his colleagues at Reliable Robots are former SpaceX engineers.

To test out its new technology and gather valuable flight data, Reliable Robotics has launched its own cargo airline, which it recently named Reliable Airlines, under a Part 135 operator’s certificate. Reliable Airlines has a fleet of five Cessna planes it uses to deliver cargo for FedEx in the Albuquerque, New Mexico area.

“It was important for us to stand up this airline from scratch so that we could get a head start on modifying all of the operational procedures that an airline is going to need to have in order to be able to run the [autopilot] system,” Rose said.

Although Reliable Robotics will initially use its autonomous flight system for cargo operations, it could also be used for passenger flights. “There's nothing in the certification that says that we can only use this for cargo applications,” Rose said.

Reliable Robotics isn’t the only company working to certify self-flying airplanes. Rivaling company Xwing recently began the FAA approval process for its “Superpilot” autonomous flight control system in the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, which it says is the first standard-category large uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) to receive official project designation from the regulator. Boston-based Merlin is also working on a similar autopilot system, and new Canadian cargo airline start-up Ribbit is preparing to conduct autonomous flight trials in northern Canada.

Source: https://www.futureflight.aero/news-arti ... ht-control

[Red_Comet]

There are dozens of autonomous vehicle companies, none of which have delivered on their lofty promises. Musk has stated that to solve autonomous driving you basically need an AGI. Putting aside his extremely optimistic forecasts regarding Tesla's own "AGI" project, it's the edge cases (e.g. double engine failure due to inhaling a flock of Canadian geese) that will cripple these operations from full autonomy.

The only vehicles that are currently fully autonomous (with a standby support mechanics/crew) are rail vehicles in certain applications. Even these are far from fully autonomous. Note that these are linear vehicles which should be by far the easiest to automate, and their failure modes are extremely forgiving compared to aircraft.

At most, autonomous aircraft will be limited to low value cargo where the carrier calculates that the extremely marginal cost of hiring a flight crew is worth the risk of losing the entire payload. Pilots are not expensive, because on a per hour basis, they are a rounding error compared to fuel, maintenance, hangar costs, etc. This is why large, heavy payload vehicles will be the last to be automated. It simple isn't worth the risk of losing a hundred million dollar vehicle plus cargo in order to save a thousand bucks on a pilot's wages.

Don't listen to the nonsense you hear from some that pilots are "overpaid". Do a bit of digging to see exactly how much aviation costs, and you'll find that per hour, pilots are by far the cheapest component of an aircraft.

Don't sweat anything except full sci-fi AGI. Once that arrives, the human era is over, and we're not in Kansas anymore.

[goldeneagle]

The only vehicles that are currently fully autonomous (with a standby support mechanics/crew) are rail vehicles in certain applications. Even these are far from fully autonomous. Note that these are linear vehicles which should be by far the easiest to automate, and their failure modes are extremely forgiving compared to aircraft.

AS long as you dont count a mine running driverless haul trucks, or the Waymo taxi cabs running around Pheonix area, that would be true. ofc, if you do count those real world deployments currently in use, you would be completely wrong.

You should check this out. the part about accident statistics is very interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjztvddhZmI

[photofly]

Don't listen to the nonsense you hear from some that pilots are "overpaid".

Let me guess... you're a pilot, aren't you?

[Red_Comet]

Here come the internet Einsteins and Shylocks.

Yes aviation work is over, the CEOs and boards are laughing and paying themselves all that cash they used to waste on dumb, useless, overpaid and whiny pilots.

REJOICE fellow...uhh...billionaires?

I don't think many of you wiseguys have thought through these scenarios. Aviation will be the last transportation mode to be automated for all the reasons I mentioned. This means that by this point, all other transport will have already been automated. This means a lot of very angry, unemployed men worldwide. Maybe the billionaires will also have terminator bots to put us all into our MAID pods by then?

Hey, enjoy the dystopian fever dreams to your hearts content! Don't let me harsh your buzz. In the meantime, you might want to read up on personal carbon credit limits, which are actually the most likely culprit for severely curtailing or shutting down the civil aviation market in the western world. I wouldn't sweat the autobots so much.

[Meatservo]

I hope any professional pilot who helps these guys get through the "safe single pilot operation" phase of their project has a hard time getting work as a pilot once they move to the completely uncrewed phase. That way they can pioneer the next step too: being made redundant by machines.