Gadgetory

chanita rain I'm sitting in the flight deck of the future this is an experimental dasa falcon we're honeywell tests out displays and warning systems to help pilots see what they can't eventually pilots will be able to use their voice to control a plane and even take off and land vertically like flying cars the point of all this is to make air travel safer and more efficient for pilots and passengers we visited Honeywell in Phoenix Arizona to see this tech at work 3d representation of the airport in front of us now there's no air liar out there that has this there's no actually even this is no ordinary flight display it's what Honeywell calls Smart View synthetic vision or a virtual representation of the world outside the cockpit pulled from a database terrain runway information and obstacles are all shown on the pilots primary flight display and we could turn on our infrared camera I can see it search to fill in details and it gives you it's all about situational awareness it's all about knowing where you are with respect to train in this case but also traffic small indicators like this arrow can help reorient a pilot if they Bank the plane too far to one side so this is 45 degrees a bank here so I've got a recovery you know that helps me know which way I need to roll back some of this follow me oh it's amazing if they roll the wrong direction you know instead of pool you can be over speeding the airplane over Jean the airplane faster than you probably anticipate an extended center line helps pilots land on the right runway with audible safety alerts when needed once the plane is on the ground 2d and 3d maps make it easier to navigate an unfamiliar Airport rather than just following the signs coming up to a taxiway like this you can see it's hard to figure out which one is which if you were given clearance to go on Charlie 6 that's that one there and it makes it easy for us to see it could even be possible for air traffic control to enter a taxi path for the pilot then it automatically shows up on the display that's where we're we're wanting it to go right now those the infrastructure doesn't necessarily exist for that but we're set up for that all these tools can help reduce a pilots workload during the busiest flight periods of taxi takeoff and landing synthetic vision is already on some business jets from Gulfstream but the first commercial jet to be certified should be the Embraer e 2 then it's up to the airline to adopt it Honeywell is also looking to develop technology that might remove the need for a runway altogether this 280 pound megawatt generator is designed for vertical takeoff and landing to power flying cars so the first application or the application we're working on now is for DARPA we're team with Aurora flight sciences and rolls-royce it's called a lightning strike vehicle and we're hopeful to get this technology mature enough by-the-bye about the april/may timeframe to to go off and then demonstrate that flight further down the road this generator can support a vehicle carrying around five people engineer's estimate around five to ten years before this technology is mature enough to be put into production before departure voice assistants are already in our homes and cars but they're also coming to cockpits brakes landing gear it's all there yep it understands Australian pretty soon you can take off unlike Alexa this pilot assistant won't respond to general questions pilots have to use a specific cockpit control language to minimize misunderstandings as we build larger and larger vocabularies and put into the neural Nets we can go up and get up into you know maybe 10% word error rate which is about 90 percent accuracy it also has to work are the loud cockpit and engine noise which is simulated here in the test lab so it's a little noisy in here Oh noise-canceling yeah that's much myself okay wonderful let's try and seize it understand focus map yeah we've got it software is not the only tool that's being worked on at Honeywell at the additive manufacturing lab engineers are making aircraft components cheaper lighter and quicker than before in some cases a part that might take six months to make in a traditional caste process can now be produced in two weeks with 3d printing where we want to go with our additive product line is where you take multiple parts and assemble them in the printing process so typically on a tube like this you would take a tube you would bend it you would smash it here along this and then weld this on and this on but with additive I can print them all as one homogenous part for some components like this rear engine mount the 3d printed version removes 62% of the weight but because each part has to be approved by the FAA this technology is currently used to print existing components but testing is underway for new engines and concepts to reduce weight and fuel consumption potentially all these developments could mean fewer flight delays cancellations and most importantly accidents Honeywell isn't the only company working on these technologies Boeing and NASA are testing synthetic vision in 787 Dreamliners simulators and voice control is also being trialed at another avionics company Rockwell Collins the flight deck of the future could be landing sooner than you think you