Joby Completes First-Ever Fully Autonomous Flight Across the United States | Joby Aviation
www.jobyaviation.com
Aircraft equipped with Joby’s autonomy technology completes first-ever autonomous flight across the United States, arriving in North Carolina’s Outer Banks Aircraft covered 3,199 miles with zero control inputs from onboard safety pilot, including autonomous taxi, takeoff, cruise, and landing, supervised remotely from up to 2,323 miles away Milestone demonstrates real-world operational maturity, safety, and dual-use utility of Joby’s autonomy technology for commercial freight, emergency response, and defense logistics Historic low pass over Kitty Hawk honors the birthplace of modern aviation while validating flexible, low-cost autonomous access to remote and regional communities

“The aircraft, a converted Cessna Caravan, performed autonomous taxiing, takeoffs, route navigation, and landings under remote supervision from Joby’s Autonomy Headquarters in California and Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, up to 2,323 miles away. The journey demonstrated the operational capabilities of Joby’s autonomy technology across a range of environments, supporting applications in commercial freight, medical transport, disaster response, and defense logistics.”

We can see 2 ways future air travel may get much cheaper now that electric powered flight is becoming a reality for smaller/mid-sized planes. Cheap fuel (electricity) & much lower staffing costs thanks to self-flying tech.

Will there one day be an airline that is 100% electric and only self-flying? Probably. This strikes me as a great option for people who live in more sparsely populated areas. They are not economical for the big airlines, but they may be for an all-electric self-flying airline.

Joby Completes First-Ever Fully Autonomous Flight Across the United States

  • Fallibilist@feddit.ukEnglish
    12·
    21 hours ago

    It’s only a matter of time until AI will be a better driver, pilot, captain and operator of any other machine you can think of. These systems are already good and they will only keep getting better. This is the worst they’ll ever be. It doesn’t mean that they’ll ever be flawless but the bar to reach is better-than-humans and that’s not a very high bar. Waymo and Tesla FSD are probably past that already or for the very least will soon be.

    Of course one can still refuse to step in a vehicle not operated by a human but at some point this becomes equivalent to knowingly stepping into the objectively more dangerous vehicle purely out of stubbornness.