The U.S. Air Force’s innovation arm has conducted the first autonomous test flight of the Osprey MK III unmanned aerial system at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida under a testbed demonstration for autonomous technologies and capabilities.
Test operators launched Osprey MK III before the aircraft switched control to onboard autonomy and independently flew around designated airspace located at Duke Field as part of AFWERX’s Autonomy, Data and AI Experimentation Proving Ground effort, Air Force Materiel Command reported Wednesday.
The onboard autonomy was designed to fly MK III outside the user-defined airspace boundary constraints. It disengages and sends the UAS to a safe remediation point each time it is about to violate the airspace boundary.
The autonomy watchdog feature is part of the Test of Autonomy in Complex Environments, the software component of the Autonomy Prime Environment for Experimentation, which is a subset of ADAx.
ADAx is a joint venture between AFWERX and the Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and AI Office.
