Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI) has begun testing potential commercial aircraft applications for autonomous take-off and landing technologies developed for its fast-growing unmanned air vehicle product line, including a new vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAV for situational awareness missions.
At Japanese Aerospace, FHI introduced a model of the VTOL flying forward observation system (FFOS) UAV, which entered Japanese military service this year. FHI also displayed a Diamond H36 Dimona with a FABOT autonomous take-off and landing experimental aircraft system.
The general manager of Fuji's engineering and development centre, Kazuki Amaoka, says the GPS-backed FABOT system was installed last year and the Dimona has since been flight tested on numerous occasions. Fuji has shown that the aircraft can fly with a back-up pilot only monitoring the controls and is working on developing the technology for potential applications on larger aircraft. "A transport aircraft has two pilots and the idea is we can eliminate one pilot using this system," says Amaoka.
He says Fuji has no firm plans yet to test the robot co-pilot concept on other aircraft and is focusing on refining the system. Fuji so far has no direct relationship with NASA's small aircraft transport system, which is demonstrating a similar concept.
Fuji began developing UAV technology in 1980 and has been working on the FABOT system for three years. It now has four UAVs in production - the J/AQM-1 air force target drone, the BQM-34AJ navy target drone, the RPH2 agricultural UAV, and the new FFOS UAV. The first FFOS was delivered to the Japan Defence Agency last year but details of the programme have until now been kept under wraps. Fuji still cannot reveal the UAV's size, but says it is being used for situational awareness missions and to assess damage to field artillery.
Source: Flight International
