Airbus DragonFly Is Jetliner Tech Impressed by Bugs

For some reason, European aerospace company Airbus turned to dragonflies to learn a thing or two about what it takes to fly smart. That’s because this insect is much more adept at coordinated flight than, say, the chaotic normal flies or mosquitoes (perhaps it’s the dragonfly’s 360-degree vision), but they also seem to have the ability to latch onto landmarks to remember and recognize them.

Airbus is so excited about this small flaw and its potential that even a new aircraft technology suite currently being tested has been named after it. It’s called DragonFly and was put together by Airbus offshoot UpNext to increase security.

DragonFly includes several autonomous technologies for ground and flight operations. The suite includes automated in-flight emergency rerouting and automatic landing and taxi assistance, but also allows aircraft to identify features in the landscape to safely navigate their surroundings.

In doing so, it not only takes into account data that is currently available on flying aircraft, but also flight areas, terrain and weather conditions. After looking at all this, it can create a new trajectory plan and report it to air traffic control (ATC) and the Airline Operations Control Center all about it.

Airbus announced this week that DragonFly is entering the final testing phase and will be put through its paces over the next three months. Tests have already begun, using an A350-1000 as the platform.

The maneuvers performed so far have proven DragonFly’s ability to fly and land on its own in a scenario where a crew member becomes incapacitated. If it detects such a situation, the system will immediately head for the nearest airport.

Once on the ground, it can give the crew audio alerts if it detects obstacles (and there have been several runway incidents of this nature in recent years), assisted speed control, and guidance to the runway based on a special airport map (see just look at National Geographic’s Air Crash Investigation and you’ll immediately know why this is necessary).

As DragonFly continues to be tested over the coming months, UpNext is already looking ahead to its next project, which will involve developing the “next generation of computer vision-based algorithms to accelerate landing and taxi assistance.”

At the time of writing, we have no indication as to when the DragonFly system might be implemented on commercial aircraft, or if it will be available on other brands of aircraft.