IN
WHAT has been called a world first, a Defence Science and Technology
Organisation-operated Unmanned Aerial Vehicle has achieved autonomous
flight.
A Codarra “Avatar” UAV was guided by software that directed the
aircraft’s autopilot in flightpath selection during a short mission
at Army’s Graytown range on July 6.
Though only of short duration and involving simple choices, this
“UAV first” demonstrated in-flight intelligent agent control
of the aircraft and fully autonomous mission selection capabilities.
David Graham, Research Leader Flight Systems from DSTO, said while
the task achieved by the UAV “was simple, it is the first step
in accomplishing far more complex autonomous flight control”.
“The hard part was probably the integration of all the components,”
Mr Graham said.
The achievement means that eventually one person would be able
to manage many UAVs, rather than the several people managing the
operation of one UAV. The testing will continue this year and
flight-testing will start in 2005 on multiple UAV teams.
