The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has completed the first ever flight of an unmanned Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter using its Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS).
A 30-minute flight of the aircraft was initially conducted on February 5 over the US Army installation at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, with a second unmanned flight taking place two days later, the agency announced on February 8.
With Sikorsky’s Matrix autonomy technologies at its core, ALIAS “is a flexible, extensible automation architecture for existing manned aircraft that enables safe reduced crew operations, which facilitates the addition of high levels of automation into existing aircraft”, DARPA stated in its news release.
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