Will self-flying planes transform the skies?

ByZoe Corbyn Technology Reporter, Reporting fromSan Francisco.

Key points

• Pyka intends to scale up production from around two dozen planes a year at present to 1000 by 2030.
• Based in a converted Second World War hangar overlooking San Francisco Bay, the start-up makes self-flying aircraft without cockpits, designed either to spray crops or deliver cargo.
• Over an alfalfa field in California's San Joaquin Valley, a small crop-spraying plane is flying scarily low to the ground.
• I've come to one of Pyka's crop-sprayer test sites, regarding 80km (50 miles) east of the company's factory and reached by a bumpy dirt road.
• Though British firm Windracers is seeking permission to launch an autonomous cargo service in Shetland and Orkney, the UK has yet to approve any such longer-term operations.

Over an alfalfa field in California's San Joaquin Valley, a small crop-spraying plane is flying scarily low to the ground. As the plane is pilot-free, there's little risk to humans though.

As the aircraft skims over the crop, "We can actually go lower than a human pilot can, " notes Russ Marotzke.

Flying lower means less spray drift and therefore less chemicals are needed than in conventional manned crop-dusting, he notes.

Notably, the pilotless plane belongs to Pyka, where Marotzke works as a flight test engineer.

It is among a small group of firms racing to bring autonomous fixed-wing aircraft into commercial service.

Flying urban air taxis, so called electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, have captured much of the attention around autonomous aviation.

But a quieter race is additionally under way to deploy self-flying planes, first for jobs like crop spraying and cargo delivery – and eventually, numerous of their makers hope, carrying passengers too.

"A fully scaled, ubiquitous passenger operation is the holy grail, " notes Michael Norcia, Pyka's co-founder and CEO. This person envisions a substantial fleet of minibus-capacity Pyka planes ferrying passengers up and down the US east and west coasts.

"There's a decent chance we'll get to that point before the eVTOL industry."

Today, Marotzke and a colleague are trying out a software update on a demonstration aircraft.

Regarding a dozen Pyka aircraft are already in Brazil where they are employed to spray crops such as cotton and soybeans, work previously carried out by human pilots.

Notably, the crop-spraying plane is fully electric, with its battery in the nose. It can fly for regarding 35 minutes and carries up to 300L of spray in a tank in its middle.

Pyka's planes are sometimes called sizeable drones, but it seems an understatement: they all have 11.5m wingspans.

Inside a shipping container beside the field, the engineers highlight on a computer the area they want the aircraft to spray. The software then intends the route, taking account of obstacles such as nearby power lines that have already been mapped.

For context, the take-off, down a runway beside the field, is seamless. After sensing that it is running low on spray – water for today's purposes – the aircraft lands itself for a manual refill and demonstration battery swap, regarding 15 minutes afterwards. It then takes to the air again to resume spraying precisely where it left off. Autonomous flight is different from autopilot.

Autopilot assists, much like cruise control and lane-keeping functions in a car.

Autonomous systems aim to handle the entire flight, including take-off and landing, with little or no human intervention, using algorithms to process sensor data and control the aircraft.

Self-flying planes have been slower to emerge than self-driving cars, despite operating in what is generally considered a more structured and predictable environment.

That is partly since sizeable tech firms "doubled down" on cars, pouring vast sums into the technology, states Mykel Kochenderfer, an expert in safe aviation autonomy at Stanford University.

But it is additionally as aircraft are held to stricter safety standards than cars, creating a much higher bar for deployment.

"The consequences for air accidents can just be so severe, " notes Kochenderfer.

Military interest has been helping propel the technology. Plenty of of the businesses have defence contracts to demonstrate and trial their systems, often with fewer regulatory hurdles than on the civilian side, and some are even already supplying military customers, external.

In the US, the largest autonomous fixed-wing aircraft approved for commercial civilian employ so far is Pyka's crop sprayer. It won authorization last year.

Though operations are limited to a tightly defined agricultural setting and require a ground operator and visual observer. It earlier secured similar approval in Brazil, where rules are more permissive.

Pyka intends to scale up production from around two dozen planes a year at present to 1000 by 2030. Each sells for $550, 000, with customers trained to operate them.

Though British firm Windracers is seeking permission to launch an autonomous cargo service in Shetland and Orkney, the UK has yet to approve any such longer-term operations. Its aircraft, designed to carry goods to remote areas, are additionally flying missions in Ukraine.

"It would be the first heavy-lift air cargo service by drone certainly in the UK and probably anywhere, " notes Stephen Wright, Windracers founder and chairman.

Supporters say autonomous aircraft could address pilot shortages, remove individuals from dangerous work such as crop spraying, improve efficiency – for example, by allowing aircraft to carry more cargo – and cut costs if one operator can oversee numerous planes.

They additionally argue automation could produce flying safer, pointing to past declines in accidents as more automated systems have been introduced. Pilots' groups remain wary.

Meanwhile, the US Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) calls removing pilots "a serious gamble with safety and a step too far".

Notably, the US National Agricultural Aviation Association. It represents crop dusting pilots, notes small uncrewed aircraft can be hard for its aviators to see. Piloted planes, it adds, can spray a much larger area faster.

Pyka and Windracers are building aircraft from scratch, arguing this allows autonomy to be designed in from the outset and the aircraft tailored to the job. Others are retrofitting existing larger planes.

Backed by Boeing's investment arm, US-based Reliable Robotics is at present testing its system on the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, a single-pilot cargo plane that can carry concerning 1360kg of payload over hundreds of kilometers.

Retrofitting on certified aircraft lets the firm focus exclusively on proving the autonomous system's safety rather than additionally having to seek approval for a new aircraft, notes Robert Rose, its co-founder and CEO.

Merlin Labs, additionally US-based, has been working its way up through progressively larger military aircraft and is now applying its system to the two-pilot Lockheed Martin C-130J military transport plane, with commercial multi-crew cargo planes next.

"It is a common autonomy brain that can transition between different aircraft, " explains Matt George, Merlin's founder and CEO. The firms additionally differ in their approach to AI. Reliable is avoiding it altogether, arguing it would complicate certification. Merlin, meanwhile, is taking a far more AI-centric approach. Notably, the divide is evident in so-called detect and avoid systems.

One of autonomous flight's biggest challenges is replicating a pilot's ability to spot and maneuver safely around other aircraft and obstacles, and there is virtually no margin for error.

In short, will self-flying planes transform the skies? Is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.