A specially equipped Black Hawk was recently used to demonstrate the helicopter's ability to operate on its own.

In the first such test of its type, the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research's Development and Engineering Center, based at Redstone Arsenal, flew the Black Hawk over Diablo Mountain Range in San Jose, Calif. Pilots were aboard the aircraft for the tests, but all flight maneuvers were conducted autonomously: obstacle field navigation, safe landing area determination, terrain sensing, statistical processing, risk assessment, threat avoidance, trajectory generation and autonomous flight control were performed in real-time.

"This was the first time terrain-aware autonomy has been achieved on a Black Hawk," said Lt. Col. Carl Ott, chief of the Flight Projects Office at AMRDEC's Aeroflightdynamics Directorate and one of the tests pilots.

The 2-hour tests was conducted on the Rotorcraft Aircrew Systems Concept Airborne Laboratory, or RASCAL, a JUH-60A Black Hawk equipped with the H.N. Burns 3D-LZ laser detection and ranging system for terrain sensing.

"The RASCAL aircraft was the ideal platform upon which to demonstrate this technology, as it provides a unique, fully programmable fly-by-wire flight control system and advanced sensor interfaces for rapid prototyping of new concepts, while maintaining the standard UH-60 hydromechanical flight control system as a safety backup," said Jay Fletcher, RASCAL project manager.

The aircraft flew at an altitude between 200-400 feet about ground level. As part of the field navigation tests, the aircraft's system was able to autonomously identify a safe landing spot within a forest clearing and then hover 60 feet over the identified landing spot. It achieved this goal within 1 foot of accuracy.

"A risk-minimizing algorithm was used to compute and command a safe trajectory continuously throughout 23 miles of rugged terrain in a single flight, at an average speed of 40 knots," said Matthew Whalley, the Autonomous Rotorcraft Project lead. "No prior knowledge of the terrain was used."

Joining Ott on the test were Army experimental test pilots Lt. Col. Mike Olmstead, RASCAL System Operator Dennis Zollo and Dr. Marc Takahashi.

(Link to video www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoCFE8xVhKA&feature=em-share_video_user)