Joby Aviation, a company that would dearly love to handle flying taxis, has been fairly rigorous about its testing lately. Its newest feat, according to the company, was to fly a plane across the United States without a pilot at the yoke.
See, plenty of airplanes spend time in the air without a human controlling them. Pilots still take over when there are hazards or when it’s time to land the plane, though. Joby’s latest excursion still had a pilot onboard, but “autonomous taxiing, takeoffs, route navigation, and landings” were remotely handled throughout.
Get a Joby
It doesn’t appear that the company used an electric plane — its eventual target — for this milestone. Instead, a Cessna Caravan was converted to fly autonomously across the 5,150-kilometre trip. A human pilot was on hand in case things went pear-shaped, but they mostly appear to have caught up with their reading.
“The aircraft flew 3,199 miles with zero control inputs from its onboard safety pilot, concluding the eastbound leg of its month-long tour in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, near the site of the Wright brothers’ first powered flight.”
This converted aircraft, the company says, “offers a scalable path to autonomous air logistics.” It also serves the company’s ambitions to operate electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing craft in and around cities. The point of those is to deliver people from place to place like an aerial Waymo autonomous taxi. It’s significantly harder to get permission to do that over populated areas. Joby has to prove itself for a fair while first.
There are bound to be more tests on (and beyond) the horizon for Joby Aviation. For now, the converted Cessna Caravan is heading back to where it started from, taking in several stops along the way. Doubtless, this second extended flight will be added to the company’s storehouse of data as well.
