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>>Flashing across California desert skies, the airplanes you see

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here are writing new chapters in the story
of man made flight....there she goes!

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>>This is my first opportunity
to greet you as deputy administrator

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of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration.

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>>Together, you and I must make our new agency

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>>A most unusual place

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>>An organization that can challenge
conventional wisdom.

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>>We can engineer anything we can write the requirements for.

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>>We're going to make your idea work.

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This particular idea is quite disruptive.

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>>A typical flight, of course, starts
under the wing of the B-52 mothership.

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>>This sleek, high speed machine
would have made Rube Goldberg proud.

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>>The manner in which we fly
reentry from space,

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on the space shuttle was
pioneered on the X-15.

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>>The X-31 pretty much wrote the book on thurst vectoring, along with its sister program, the F-18 HARV.

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>>An observation of an occulation is

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one of the more challenging
missions that SOFIA can do.

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[Music/Background sound]

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>>Right now, we are looking
at the dawn of a new era of aviation.

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[Music/Background sound]

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[Music]

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>>Something has now emerged

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that might make even
our most elegant theories workable.

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>>Scientists developed equipment
which would be able to think...

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>>...machines that do things and make choices
without human beings,

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that uncanny spectacle is automation.

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>>...capable of storing, processing...

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>>>...calculations that would ordinarily
take hundreds of man hours;

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unique ability
to check itself on possible errors...

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>>>...cheaper and quicker and better.

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>>...electric eyes, limit switches, servo mechanisms...

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>>...secretary, librarian,

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banker, teacher, medical technician, bridge partner...

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>>...volumes of changing data
into a continuous flow of interpretations.

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>>Aladdin's lamp
couldn't do more.

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>>...jaws, loading machines, electric drills...

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...it's all automation.

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>>Computers have taken wing.

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>>By the late 1960s, digital computers
had become more available...

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>>...using data
about the aircraft's performance,

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the computers vote on the correct amount
of control deflection

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to make in response to the pilot's
stick and rudder movements.

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>>This system

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could make air travel of the future
smoother and safer by reducing aircraft

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vibrations through automatic response
from the computer to the aircraft controls.

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>>We did the digital engine control, we had an early

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large digital computer that ran the engine
and the inlet and exhaust system.

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>>We did an integrated control study
to provide digital control

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of the inlets, autopilot,
throttle, air data, and navigation system.

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...a digital computer here...

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...major improvement in the capability of the airplane...

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>>Test pilots are flying a plane
without having to leave the ground

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It's a new way of flight testing advanced
aircraft that's both more economical

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and less hazardous.

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A research pilot
in a realistically recreated cockpit

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on the ground, complete with flight
controls, flies the remotely piloted

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craft using computers and television.

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[Music/Background Noise]

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>>The airplane includes computers...

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...those computers take stick commands
and...

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>>...continuously monitor what

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the airplane is doing and compares it to
what the pilot wants the airplane to do.

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>>The computer signals the

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control surfaces
to not only execute the pilot's maneuver,

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but also to counter
any attempt by the X-29

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to veer out of control.

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[Music/Background sound]

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>>Fly up! Fly up!

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>>Yikes! No doubt about it, we didn't get a roll through on that one...

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>>You've got it.

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>>...a new initiative in the artificial

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intelligence area
and it's called aircraft automation.

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The technologies that end up coming out of
this would be autonomous flight

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vehicle technology.

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>>ERAST stands for Environmental Research
Aircraft and Sensor Technology...

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...platforms that could fly higher and longer
than the current piloted airplanes...

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...do science missions
and other commercial applications...

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>>Primarily the dull, dirty, and dangerous.

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>>We can go all the way up
to where the airplane can fly itself

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completely autonomously
with no input from anyone on the ground.

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>>Fly up to 50, 60 thousand
feet, fly a circle loop

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perhaps over a city,
providing the capability that a satellite now does.

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>>Now that we can fly for
on the order of 8 to 10 to 12 hours,

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we can look at long duration processes- biogeochemical cycling,

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looking at carbon and nitrogen
moving through an ecosystem...

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>>...to sort of kickstart
a commercial UAV industry.

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>>The technology that we've seen here in

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this test is what would be the foundation
for a follow-on program to really address

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the issue of how can UAVs routinely
operate in the national airspace system?

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>>The primary benefit of this

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technology is the ability of it
to adapt to the unknown,

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whether it be a system failure,
battle damage, icing on the wing,

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or flying in an unknown

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atmospheric environment.

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>>The aircraft
may be able to be flown but the pilot may

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or may not be able to find a solution
to how to fly that aircraft.

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>>Neural net control systems where
the controls are going to teach themselves

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and keep being smarter
from flight to flight.

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>>It can reconfigure the airplane
in an optimal way in order to give you

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the best flying qualities.

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>>...rotate..

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[Music/Background sound]

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>>There is no operator

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of the vehicle itself on the ground.

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Basically, the role that the human plays is
more in managing the mission...

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an orchestra director,
not the instrument player.

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>>...the vehicle
will complete all the autonomous actions

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necessary to release the weapon
optimally positioned to hit the target.

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>>One of the next things

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that we'll be demonstrating in UCAV
is the collaboration amongst aircraft...

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How do sets of aircraft interact
together in almost a social form?

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[Music/Background sound]

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>>We're going to examine

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the feasibility and technical utility
of actually being able to fly

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two airplanes or multiple aircraft
in formation with each other.

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>>Now, the trick to this is to make sure
that they fly in formation closely enough

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that they can extract the advantage
without obviously running into each other.

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>>The station keeping would be fairly close

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proximity for hours; the work load on
the flight crew would be quite high,

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so we started to develop autonomous
algorithms to do the station keeping,

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so you basically would have an autopilot
that you can engage.

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>>The computers are flying the airplane
without your stick

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input even in the system.
...to allow a piloted airplane

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to take two, three or four unpiloted
vehicles on a long distance trip.

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>>We're just getting started on this
technology.

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We'll use this technology
to refuel unoccupied combat

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air vehicles.

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>>...the basket is slightly moving...looks like it's going high...

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...ok it detected a miss and it came back on it's own...

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I did not do anything.

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She's got it.

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Congratulations, guys. That was fantastic.

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[Music/Background Noise]

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>>The Autonomous Soaring

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Project has one simple goal; it's to program
a small UAV to soar in thermals similar

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to the way a glider pilot or birds
do; it has been reprogramed to automatically

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detect that it's in an updraft
and then use that updraft by circling.

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There's a wide variety of applications
for this technology

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to help you UAVs do things
like forest fire detection,

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police surveillance, border patrol,
and weather monitoring.

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>>If the aircraft was damaged,
you don't have to necessarily

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just rely on the pilot to compensate
and fly the airplane...

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...adaptive flight controls,
autonomous flight controls,

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different things
where we're using the airplane

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to assist the pilot.

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>>It would take over basically the controls of the airplane as far as flight stability.

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>>The Platform Precision Autopilot is capable

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of staying on a given path
within about 15 feet.

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It allows the synthetic aperture
radar system

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to fly over
essentially the same path more than once.

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This obviously
has some potential applicability

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when you're looking at Earth surface
movements such as after an earthquake

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or if you're looking
at an ice pack melting.

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>>The F-16,

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we went out and tested the system
and based them on actual mishap cases.

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It prevented every single mishap. What
we're developing here is merely an aid

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should the pilot get distracted
or disoriented.

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By automating it, we can take out
the pilot reaction time entirely.

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>>The computer takes full control away
from the pilot for a very brief

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period of time and redirects the trajectory
of the aircraft

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to save the human.

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[Music/Background sound]

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>>ADSB is Automatic

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Dependent
Surveillance Broadcast, it's equipment on board

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an airplane that transmits its position
and velocity information twice per second.

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>>We were really trying to prove
that we could use ADSB

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as a way to do coordinated flight
between multiple vehicles.

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>>This system is present
on a lot of manned aircraft but we were

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one of the first UAS to perform
testing of it in the national airspace.

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NASA has a project for integrating UAS.

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>>So one day, UAS could hopefully fly

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with other commercial airlines
and everybody will fly together safely.

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>>There's various benefits
to integrating unmanned aircraft,

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being able to monitor
specific weather systems, monitor

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fires, delivering packages
to your doorstep...

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>>...operations to deliver medical emergency

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supplies, infrastructure
surveillance and monitoring...

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>>The technical side is a big challenge,
but being able to integrate them safely is maybe even a bigger challenge.

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>>To have thousands of these vehicles

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flying at the same time,

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you're going to have to have

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a lot more automation on the vehicle
and in the airspace system.

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>>Regulations for operations

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of the vehicle, regulations for airspace,
regulations for infrastructure.

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>>These aircraft are going to be
highly autonomous, piloted,

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optionally piloted, unpiloted vehicle.

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>>It's not just looking at the
UAM, it's actually integrating the small

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UAS, the package delivery, or even the
larger cargo delivery.

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>>Subscale aircraft, we use those for a variety of reasons
to test things like new technology,

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which could be hardware or software,
or even a completely new vehicle.

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You can do almost anything you want
without much risk,

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and you can realize those gains
very quickly.

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We're researching some level of autonomy.

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The aircraft in most cases are capable
of taking off,

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flying around, and landing
without any human intervention.

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Things like, ArduPilots and multi rotors

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and flying computers are allowing kids

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to play with research type tools
that they never had access to before.

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So it's sort of driving