Month: October 2019

“Over the years, we’ve been adding things to our airplanes such as situational awareness tools and things that simplify control or lower pilot workload,” Bergwall says. “But now, for the first time, we actually have a safety system that is really just for the passengers.” It can also, of course, be used by pilots themselves if they suffer any medical emergency, or even disorientation or uncertainty while at the controls.

The technology is an upshot of the avionics Cirrus and Garmin developed for the Vision Jet, an “entry level” business jet introduced in 2016 that’s typically flown by the private owner rather than professional pilots. The Safe Return system, which can also be used in turboprop aircraft, works with Garmin’s G3000 avionics suite, which features integrated control of all airplane systems, including the engine management, landing gear activation, control-surface movement, and the navigation, weather, and traffic-monitoring systems.

When someone hits the button, the system selects the airport that has the best combination of runway length and a clear approach relative to the weather conditions. It then steers the airplane on a descent, alerting local traffic and air traffic control to the emergency via preprogrammed text and spoken-word messages it can voice itself over the radio. It deploys the landing gear, adjusts the flaps to maintain lift as the airspeed slows, and uses precision GPS, along with radar information, to bring it down at the exact right spot. Though the system can shut down the engine if necessary—important for aircraft with spinning propellers—Cirrus elected to keep its single engine running after the stop, since it is mounted on top of the aircraft and thus won’t hurt anyone approaching or exiting the plane. This keeps the climate control active inside and allows for taxiing if the pilot or passengers are able to do so or.

During the descent, the system uses the instrument panel monitors to give passengers instructions for preparing for landing, along with a play-by-play: aircraft climbing to reach a specific altitude, descending toward the airport, landing in however many minutes, and so forth. If someone accidentally hits the button during flight, the pilot can cancel the landing sequence simply by taking over the controls. If the system is deliberately engaged but someone accidentally turns it off, another touch of the button will reengage it.

The capability introduced by Safe Return—complemented by a rocket-deployed, whole-aircraft parachute in the Cirrus jet that can fire if the situation becomes even more dire—promise to make the Vision Jet one of the safest private aircraft in the world. But the system won’t be exclusive to Cirrus for long. Within a few months, Garmin will be able to offer it to other aircraft manufacturers that use Garmin avionics. Eventually, Bergwall says, systems like this could make aviation more economical, if they convince regulators that many mid-sized business jets can to drop the requirement for having two pilots in the cockpit.

Although many current auto-related technologies are focusing on taking the steering wheel out of drivers’ hands, a new project could potentially help to get more hands on the wheel. Born from Microsoft Research India, the research program is titled Harnessing AutoMobiles for Safety, or HAMS for short. Microsoft recently released a video that focuses on one part of project: automated driving tests.

Microsoft’s research page, found by Gizmodo, lists three people leading the charge: principal research program manager Satish Sangameswaran, deputy managing director of Microsoft Research India Venkat Padmanabhan, and senior researcher Akshay Nambi. At the core of this project is the desire to make roads safer, but not strictly by eliminating drivers. Here’s the overview straight from the source: 

“In the HAMS project, we use low-cost sensing devices to construct a virtual harness for vehicles. The goal is to monitor the state of the driver and how the vehicle is being driven in the context of a road environment that the vehicle is in. We believe that effective monitoring leading to actionable feedback is key to promoting road safety.”

Those low-cost sensing devices they’re referring to are off-the-shelf smartphones that have all sorts of sensors, cameras, and other useful technologies already built in. The smartphone is mounted to the center of the windshield with the main camera facing the road, and the screen facing the interior fo the car. This allows the phone to read the environment ahead, while the screen-side camera reads the driver. All the while, the phone’s gyroscopes or accelerometers are collecting data based on driver’s reactions to the commute. HAMS would then interpret the data and provide feedback of how to drive safely.

In addition to a business-oriented fleet-management dashboard, the HAMS developers have worked with the Institute of Driving and Traffic Research (IDTR) and Maruti-Suzuki to launch a pilot program for driver training. Specifically, HAMS has the idea of automating driving tests, meaning the smartphone could run the test without an instructor in the vehicle. 

Check out the video demonstrations of the technology below, and read more about HAMS at Microsoft.com.