Czech unmanned flights system to be tested by FAA
The American Federal Aviation Administration, responsible for the safety of air traffic in the United States, has reportedly been looking into an unmanned flights system designed by the cybernetics department at the Czech Technical University. The system, called AGENTFLY, has been designed to programme pilotless aircraft to react independently in unexpected situations.
Jan Velinger spoke to the university’s Michal Pěchouček about Agentfly’s potential in both domestic and military situations.
“The purpose of the system we developed was to be able change the way unmanned airplanes, pilotless vehicles, often used for surveillance purposes are run. Instead of having to book a corridor for every individual plane and each individual flight, we developed the concept of ‘free flight’ – a flight without corridors, where planes are given a trajectory, and their own goals and plans. If there is potential or danger of a collision, that is solved by ‘negotiation’ between those planes’. We have designed little intelligent agents controlling the airplanes themselves.”
If I understand you correctly, that means that more such vehicles operating at the same time within one vicinity will be able to adapt their trajectory?
“Exactly. They can exchange full-flight data with each other and they can, in collaboration, suggest a most optimal evasion manoeuvre for those planes. Or, they can reason about each other, even if they aren’t in communication. Which might be in the case, for example, with hostile aircraft.”
How might the system be used in domestic areas?
“Unmanned flights are often used, for example, to monitor fires. In some instances it can be very difficult to analyse the exact shape and size of a fire. Civilian authorities send the vehicles out around such fires and those vehicles negotiate and exchange partial data to be able to reconstruct the exact shape of a fire and its progression. ”
And, this obviously has potential military uses as well.
“This is very true, especially in the case of non-cooperative collision avoidance. There, there is the need for technology so that collisions won’t arise.”
What are the next steps?
“Currently we are finalising the contract: we have been in contact with the FAA for almost a year now and the FAA is now finalising the final clauses in the contract. The reason why the FAA is working with us is because they want to extend their own research capabilities and they would like to test the system and experiment. It is preliminary to say that AGENTFLY will be deployed in the air traffic sphere in the near future. The FAA wants to test and experiment and will not be buying AGENTFLY at this stage of experimentation.”
But you can’t rule something like that out in the future?
“Sure, sure, yes.”
