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Leonardo, Daedalean Complete Flight Testing of AI Capabilities for Advanced Navigation in Rotorcraft Sector 

Daedalean, a devel­op­er of safe­ty-crit­i­cal and cer­ti­fi­able arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) sys­tems for sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness and flight con­trol, announced this week the com­ple­tion of flight test­ing of Daedalean’s visu­al aware­ness sys­tem pro­duced by Leonar­do, reports a press release.

Leonar­do, a leader in aero­space, defence and secu­ri­ty, is com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing and adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies for the impend­ing green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion. The release explains, “The Leonar­do Labs serve as tech­nol­o­gy hubs, con­nect­ing emerg­ing tal­ent from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties with Leonardo’s vet­er­an experts to dri­ve inno­va­tion and iden­ti­fy prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions.” This includes research in areas from mate­ri­als and quan­tum tech­nolo­gies to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and applied AI.

Mat­tia Cavan­na, Head of Tech­nol­o­gy and Inno­va­tion at Leonar­do Heli­copters, com­ment­ed, ”We are work­ing to inte­grate AI into prod­ucts and ser­vices via both in-house and out­side coop­er­a­tions. By col­lab­o­rat­ing with emerg­ing com­pa­nies on pre­de­fined use cas­es, we keep matur­ing our tech­nol­o­gy roadmaps towards a safer, afford­able and sus­tain­able flight expe­ri­ence.”

He con­tin­ued, ”Improv­ing sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness through the sys­tem like Daedalean’s could con­tribute to fur­ther pre­vent avi­a­tion acci­dents and pro­gres­sive­ly enable high­er degrees of auton­o­my to our plat­form.” 

Dr. Luuk van Dijk

Sit­u­a­tion­al Intel­li­gence refers to the abil­i­ty of under­stand­ing and mak­ing sense of the envi­ron­ment and sit­u­a­tion, while antic­i­pat­ing and react­ing to poten­tial threats. This visu­al aware­ness sys­tem employs a form of AI called machine learn­ing, which employs improved com­put­er pow­er to car­ry out more quick­ly and effec­tive­ly what before could only be done by peo­ple. 

Dr. Luuk van Dijk, CEO of Daedalean, remarked, “Our com­pa­ny is proud to bring our expe­ri­ence of cre­at­ing machine-learned algo­rithms for avi­a­tion to such a promi­nent glob­al play­er. It shows there is increas­ing inter­est in and under­stand­ing of the ben­e­fits machine-learn­ing can bring today to increase flight safe­ty.” 

The release con­tin­ues, “Under a Eure­ka Eurostars grant, the two com­pa­nies col­lab­o­rat­ed on a year-long project, equip­ping Leonar­do heli­copters with Daedalean’s sys­tem, com­prised of air­craft-mount­ed cam­eras, com­put­er, and inter­face dis­play, capa­ble of iden­ti­fy­ing aer­i­al traf­fic includ­ing birds and drones, deter­min­ing loca­tion in GPS-denied envi­ron­ments, and offer­ing land­ing guid­ance.”

Test­ing took place at Leonardo’s PZL-Swid­nik facil­i­ty in Lublin, Poland, from last July to Sep­tem­ber with Leonardo’s SW4 and SW4 Solo RUAS/OPH heli­copters.

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Daedalean has con­duct­ed joint research with reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies includ­ing the FAA and EASA, to prove its AI-based sys­tem is cer­ti­fi­able to their strin­gent safe­ty stan­dards. 

Dr van Dijk, con­tin­ued, “Daedalean pub­lished mul­ti­ple stud­ies with reg­u­la­tors to evi­dence the fact that our machine-learned algo­rithms are capa­ble of pro­vid­ing func­tions meet­ing and exceed­ing human capa­bil­i­ties. As fly­ers and pas­sen­gers become more famil­iar with AI-enabled sys­tems, a future with autonomous flight becomes more attrac­tive for the high­er safe­ty, low­er cost and increased capac­i­ty it will deliv­er.” 

Back­ground

Found­ed in 2016, Daedalean is build­ing machine-learn­ing-based avion­ics sys­tems for present civ­il air­craft as well as future advanced aer­i­al mobil­i­ty. The com­pa­ny has offices in Switzer­land, the EU and U.S. The team of over 150 peo­ple includes 17 PhDs and 18 pilots.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://daedalean.ai/

https://helicopters.leonardo.com/en/home

(Top image: Leonar­do)

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