Passenger flight soon without human pilots ?

Airbus UpNext tests assistance technologies

Safety is a top priority, especially in passenger traffic. It is therefore all the more gratifying that AI can also provide support in the air and, in the event of an emergency, bring Airbus jets safely back to earth.

By Thomas Schröter
•1 min. Reading time
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Robotic systems, AI assisted processes, autonomous courses of action. All these future technologies are mostly associated with ground operations, at most drone technology. And when one speaks of autonomous driving, one is clearly referring to automotive transport. Engineers at UpNext, a subsidiary of the European Airbus Group specializing in testing new technologies, have now officially announced that they are now working on fully autonomous landing processes, taxiing operations and autonomous communication protocols.

A special variant of the A350-1000 is being used to test and refine a variety of test scenarios under real-time conditions, including on-site orientation, obstacle detection, weather evaluation, automatic speed adjustment, and so on.

If "Dragonfly" one day becomes part of the Airbus fleet in service as an active system, it will be able to contribute greatly to safe flight operations and, in emergency situations, bring the vehicle independently and accident-free to the ground and back "home".

To the press release >>

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