Dec 18, 2019
Would you board a plane knowing that one of the flight crew wasn’t human? This may be a valid concern for those working in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) ALIAS program. ALIAS, in this case, stands for Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System – a robot designed to take part in the control of a plane along human pilots. ALIAS takes the form of a mechanical arm that can control a conventional flight ‘stick’ while monitoring the aircraft’s gauges and sensors, just as a real pilot would do.