La Agencia estatal DARPA y la empresa Sikorsky, han anunciado que en el marco del Proyecto CONVERGENCE, realizar\u00e1n pr\u00f3ximamente el vuelo final de su Sistema A\u00e9reo Aut\u00f3nomo, desarrollado sobre una plataforma UH-60 Black Hawk. El sistema denominado ALIAS (Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System) durante el mes de Octubre ha realizado 3 ensayos de vuelo aut\u00f3nomo de UH-60. Uno de ellos fue un ejercicio sanitario, en el cual el helic\u00f3ptero deb\u00eda transportar una carga vital de uso m\u00e9dico (sangre) de 250 kg a una distancia de 130 km. Un revolucionario desarrollo en curso, con extraordinarias posibilidades de uso en diferentes \u00e1reas y que otorga nuevas capacidades de gran inter\u00e9s tanto en el \u00e1mbito militar como civil.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Sikorsky<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0DARPA<\/a>\u00a0officials at this year\u2019s\u00a0Project Convergence<\/a>\u00a0flew what was most likely the final flight of an autonomous system outfitted on a UH-60\u00a0Black Hawk<\/a>, now leaving it up to the Army to determine if it will officially transition the capability into the service, according to a DARPA official.<\/p>\n The Army used the Black Hawk\u00a0Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS)<\/a>, which began under DARPA with software developed by Sikorsky to fly the helicopter with no pilot onboard, during last year\u2019s annual sensor-to-shooter campaign and\u00a0continued to experiment\u00a0<\/a>with the program this year.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, this is an old program from a DARPA perspective, but we really feel like we\u2019ve created an inflection point, and it\u2019s a large value proposition,\u201d Stuart Young, DARPA program manager for ALIAS, told reporters Wednesday. \u201cAnd so we\u2019re really trying to set the conditions at this phase of the program for optimal opportunities for transition to the services and to [the] commercial sector\u2026 This is probably our last experiment under the ALIAS program label, but we do have some other opportunities that we\u2019re continuing to pursue with the services on how they can adjust it most effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n During this year\u2019s Project Convergence demo in October at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., pilots flew and landed a Black Hawk before activating Sikorsky\u2019s MATRIX autonomy system, a key component of ALIAS, to perform three missions without a pilot on board. According to a Nov. 2 Sikorsky press release, one of those was a medical exercise in which the helicopter flew 83 miles with 500 pounds of real and simulated blood. Another involved a human operator interrupting a heavy-load supply flight mid-mission to redirect the chopper for a simulated casualty evacuation.\u00a0Video of that mission, published by Sikorsky parent company Lockheed Martin, showed two people loading a dummy on a stretcher into the pilotless Black Hawk before it took off again.<\/p>\n