Natilus unveils pilot ops desk for autonomous freighters

San Diego-based autonomous aircraft developer Natilus today launched its pilot operations desk control station, from which pilots will remotely manage and monitor the autonomous cargo aircraft. The company prioritized a simple user interface when it designed the pilot operations desk (POD), co-founder and Chief Executive Aleksey Matyushev told Cargo Facts . And, in an effort to reduce costs, Natilus designed the POD to be a single-interface system that will control all the cargo aircraft variants it is developing. [caption id="attachment_56866392" align="aligncenter" width="2302"] Each POD will eventually be able to manage up to three aircraft. (Photo/Natilus)[/caption] The POD will enable pilots on the ground to manage Natilus’ cargo aircraft operating in controlled airspace while maintaining communications with air traffic control. Each pilot will eventually be able to manage up to three aircraft. “We have a keyboard, mouse, a couple of other tactile switches and things like that to help aid the pilot,” Matyushev said, adding that Natilus hopes the POD will eventually eliminate the need for pilots to have multi-engine commercial ratings and enable pilots with remote operator drone experience to manage flights. Ameriflight in the loop The company started testing the POD with Dallas-based Ameriflight, which in January of this year placed an order for twenty Kona autonomous, blended-wing body cargo aircraft. Ameriflight has been working closely with Natilus on the POD design, Matyushev said. “Ameriflight is one of our flagship customers,” he said. “So, getting them involved in the loop early on and helping them shape their own experiences from an operational perspective, along with our technology … I think is really important.” In the past nine months, the engineering team wrote and implemented programming language for the POD station, outsourcing nothing, Matyushev said. The POD’s outer shell took about two and a half months to complete. “There are a lot of iterations that we’re going through,” Matyushev said. “But I think the key challenges that we’ve identified are small, as far as how it actually fits into [Ameriflight’s] operation.”

Pilot POD controls The role of pilots working at the POD control station will be to simply manage the cargo drone during flight operations. In fact, pilots assigned to the POD will not be able to assume physical control of the cargo drone during flight to make real-time decisions. All emergency decision-making abilities will be executed autonomously by the aircraft based on preprogrammed protocols and failure cases. “The latency between satellite communication is so much that you can’t physically hand-fly the airplane, especially during critical phases of flight,” Matyushev said. However, the pilot will have oversight of the aircraft and can change its heading, altitude and air speed, he added. Natilus has also taken learnings from initial tests with Ameriflight and tweaked the design and interface. “We don’t actually give the pilot the capability of having a camera looking out of the front of the airplane,” Matyushev said. The video takes up too much bandwidth and most pilots are familiar with flying under instrument flight rules, so the screen space can instead be used to show something more useful, he explained. [caption id="attachment_56866391" align="aligncenter" width="1408"] The outer shell for the first POD took two to three months to produce. (Photo/Natilus)[/caption] Certification requirements With the first variant of the POD complete, Natilus has entered the initial stages of the certification process with the FAA, which is still evaluating the POD proposal. The FAA is focused on identifying and troubleshooting any single mode of failure points in the control station, Matyushev said. Fail-safe mechanisms Natilus built to address these concerns include: Separate computers to monitor the POD system and its power supply; Use of simplified hardware; and An ability to transfer control to another pilot if the system fails. “We have multiple remote pilots in the room able to access the same assets,” Matyushev said, adding that this not only builds redundancy but also lowers acquisition costs for customers. After several discussions, the FAA said that pilots at the POD initially must have their multi-engine and airline transport pilot license, and be “qualified to exactly the same standards as if they were in the cockpits [of conventional aircraft].,” Matyushev said. Pilots looking to work closer to home could operate the Natilus drones from a POD control station and also be able to fly in the cockpit of other aircraft. The airline could maximize the time of the flight crew assigned to the POD since pilots can simultaneously operate more than one cargo drone, Matyushev said. “I think a lot of pilots look at these platforms as a replacement, but we view it as an extension of their jobs,” he said. Cargo Facts EMEA 2024, the essential event for stakeholders in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, will take place Feb. 5-7 in Amsterdam. Register today to take advantage of early-bird pricing .

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