This AI startup is putting a fleet of airplanes in the sky without human pilots Fully-autonomous flight, take-off to touchdown
Meet the pilot of tomorrow, today:
Credit: Merlin Labs
Look ma, no pilot
AI startup Merlin Labs today deactivated stealth mode to announce a $25 million funding round and a partnership with Dynamic Aviation to put a fleet of 55 King Air planes in the sky without humans aboard.
Merlin Labs CEO and founder Matthew George told Neural:
What weâre building is software that creates a think-for-itself-pilot ⦠fully-autonomous flight take-off to touchdown.
The big idea: See a need, fill a need. Merlin Labs is taking autonomous software technology and building an artificially intelligent pilot. Autonomous fixed-wing flight might sound familiar, but thereâs a huge difference between designing a remote or hybrid-controlled drone from the ground up and building a system that can fly nearly any fixed wing aircraft.
When Merlin Labs founder Matt George was learning to fly in Vermont, he had a close call with a Jet Blue aircraft that was coming into Burlington airport. It was “an unsettling experience,” he told TechCrunch, but one that stuck with him. A few years later, after the transportation company he founded Bridgj was acquired […]
Lufthansa Lockheed Starliner Moves to Paderborn Airport in Germany
Lufthansa Lockheed Starliner Moves to Paderborn Airport in Germany
Photo via KTL Transporte GmbH
After our most recent report from Constellation connoisseur Ralph Pettersen concerning the status of President Eisenhower’s executive VC-121 Constellation transport,
Columbine II, presently under rebuild with Dynamic Aviation in Bridgewater, Virginia, a number of questions arose regarding what happened to Lockheed L-1649A Starliner N7361C which Lufthansa spent vast sums restoring, only to cancel the project at the last hurdle. Oddly enough, breaking news emerged about this airframe just a short while later, and Pettersen kindly gave us permission to republish his report here…
Wheeling Columbine II out of her old hangar in Bridgewater, Virginia. (photo by Michael Sheeler via Dynamic Aviation)
Following the profound shock and sadness we all felt in learning of Karl Stoltzfus untimely passing last November, there was an understandable concern over what his death might mean to the continuation of various historical aviation projects he had initiated. Such questions are never easy to articulate without seeming self-serving or callous, but Stoltzfus had been such a driving force in the restoration of
Columbine II, President Eisenhower’s Lockheed VC-121 Constellation, that it was only natural for changes to occur. However, following staff-reductions on the project a couple of weeks ago at Dynamic Aviation, wild speculations began to spread on social media, which is never a healthy scenario, so we felt the need to help tamp down such nonsense.