Autonomous helicopter trials open new re-supply line for US Marines

The autonomous helicopter system has been developed by Aurora under the US Office of Naval Research’s Autonomous Aerial Cargo Utility System (AACUS) program.

Held on December 13, 2017, at the US Marine Corps’ Urban Training Center in Quantico, Virginia, the AACUS-Enabled UH-1H (AEH-1) conducted multiple flights and demonstrated its ability to autonomously execute re-supply missions.

According to Aurora Flight Sciences, AACUS is an aircraft-agnostic hardware and software suite that gives Marines the ability to request a supply delivery via helicopter from a handheld tablet. No advanced training is required to operate the system.

The Manassas, Virginia headquartered company added that AEH-1 is fitted with onboard lidar and camera sensors that enable it to detect and avoid obstacles and evaluate the landing zone. The system processes this information to perform onboard mission, route, and path planning to enable autonomous mission execution.

Previous demonstrations have showcased the system’s autonomous capabilities and interactions with trained operators, but this is the first demonstration in which the aircraft performed cargo and utility missions in an operationally-relevant training environment with Marines.