A California robotics firm has flown an autonomous cargo plane with no human on board, saying the flight marks a milestone in its work to bring advanced, safety-enhancing technologies to market in the United States.
Mountain View, California-based Reliable Robotics said the flight last month of a Cessna 208B Caravan with no one on board was a first for aviation. A remote pilot supervised the uncrewed aircraft from Reliable’s control center 50 miles away.
The Caravan in the test is the world’s most popular turboprop utility aircraft model, offering useful load of over 3,000 pounds, and a take-off performance to operate from shorter runways, Reliable said. Those attributes allow the Caravan, and other regional cargo aircraft like it, to connect communities and businesses around the globe by delivering time-sensitive shipments to many places that would otherwise not have next-day or same-day service.
Remote piloting will eventually allow even more areas to benefit from this critical service, the firm said. The plane was built by Textron Aviation, which includes the Beechcraft, Cessna, and Hawker brands, as well as the sustainable Textron eAviation line.
According to Reliable, its autonomous flight system enables an aircraft to be remotely operated by a pilot on the ground and improves safety by fully automating the aircraft through all phases of operation, including taxi, takeoff, and landing. The system is aircraft-agnostic and uses multiple layers of redundancy and navigation technology to achieve the levels of integrity and reliability necessary for uncrewed flight. The system will prevent controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) and loss of control in flight (LOC-I), which account for the majority of fatal aviation accidents, Reliable said.
The FAA formally accepted the certification plan for Reliable’s autonomous flight system in June of 2023. The certification plan leverages existing regulations for normal and transport category aircraft, and does not require any special conditions or exemptions.
