Netters, I know it's a little early for Fun-Friday, however we just recieved news about our X-45A Program Progress, and thought you all would like to hear:
This morning at Dryden Flight Research Center, the X-45 team taxiied both air vehicles in formation on the dry lakebed at Edwards AFB, CA. A single operator controlled both air vehicles through a series of maneuvers, including 90 degree turns and turnarounds, at speeds up to 20 knots. The two air vehicles autonomously maintained their positions relative to each other through the Inter-vehicle communication link between the two air vehicles. Initially AV2 followed 1000' behind AV1, then was slowly brought up to taxi 500 feet behind. Several failure modes were introduced by the operator and the air vehicles responded autonomously as designed to ensure the proper separation was maintained. This was the first time, two unmanned air vehicles have moved under their own power in a coordinated formation. Congratulations to the entire X-45 J-UCAS team! This is a critical step along the path towards multi-vehicle flight. ===== Scott Cable KR-2S # 735 Wright City, MO s2cab...@yahoo.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/
