Transcript:

UAV Mission Remote Control

Music
Ambience: UAV control and UAV takeoff

You might think of it as a video game that saves lives. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Robert Navarro is a project manager at Dryden Flight Research Center. He recently worked on a project where a new fire-sensing instrument was flown on a UAV, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. These aircraft are piloted from the ground in a way that might seem familiar.

“If you’ve ever used a simulator on the ground, for example, on your personal computer. And all you have is your joystick and your controls. And all you see is basically what's on that screen. It is very similar to how the pilot flies a UAV. And in front of him he has basically two screens. One, where it's basically a camera looking out through the nose of the aircraft seeing what's in front of him. And the other screen is just showing almost like a map, with a little airplane of what area he's flying over with. That gives him a reference. And then of course he has all these other data coming in that's put on the screen. For example altitude and speed. So it's almost like flying a simulator. The only thing that that's very challenging is, you talk to the pilots, is that they have to always keep in mind that's there's an actual airplane flying in the sky. They have to keep that in mind that they are actually flying in an airplane, not just playing a game.”

One of the main advantages of a UAV is that it isn’t limited by the endurance of a single human pilot. Over the course of a mission, multiple pilots take their turns manning the UAV controls.

“You can fly the airplane on the other side of the world if you wanted to. And beaming the signal through satellites. Pretty much as long as you have fuel you can fly just about anywhere and have enough fuel to come back. The range is limited only by fuel.”

Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from NASA. I’m Jim Metzner.