A group of researchers has made the dream of everyone who has seen the movie Airplane come true: a humanoid robot that can pilot airplanes.
Known as the PIBOT, the robot is designed to sit in existing cockpits and operate them manually. Conventional autopilots installed on airplanes are software and lack limbs to move flight instruments. The advantage of PIBOT, according to the team behind it, is that it can adapt to different cockpits and flight systems without the need to modify the aircraft.
The robot learns to fly the aircraft using natural language processing to read the manual and can view the cockpit status using a camera or respond accordingly. The team says they have demonstrated that PIBOT can safely control the aircraft, even during severe turbulence. They also plan to start commercial sales of the robot soon.
“We expect them to be applied to a variety of other vehicles, such as cars and military trucks, as they can control a wide variety of equipment,” said Professor David Hyunchul Shim, the project’s research chief, in a press release.
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