ROBOT PLANE PILOT

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 September 1934, Page 2

ROBOT PLANE PILOT

PRESS-THE-BUTTON FLYING. PARIS. August 5. A new system of controlling aeroplanes automatically has been publicly revealed here following a year s official tests on all designs of plane at Istres aerodrome, near Marseilles. In describing it to-day the “Matin” asserts that it places French aviation decisively in the front rank. The inventors are four French engineers, Squadron-Leader d’Aiguillon and Messieurs Aveline, Bernady, and Grenier. They have reduced the piloting of an aeroplane to a simple matter of pressing half a dozen buttons. It is claimed not only that the pitch, roll and direction of a machine are controlled automatically, but that by simply pressing the appropriate button, the pilot can take off, land, ascend, descend, fly horizontally, turn, to left or right and even perform such evolutions as a spiral dive. “A child could do it,” it is confidently declared. Stabilisation of the plane is secured by a system of pendulums linked up with auxiliary motors which' move the various controls. Gyroscopes are used for the direction of the plane, and the wind gauge comes into play when taking .off automatically. The installation of the apparatus does not make it impossible to pilot by the ordinary method. Scientific tests showed that on a machine fitted with automatic steadying devices oscillation was 10 times less than when the same machine was piloted by hand. The possibility of working the switches connected with the buttons by means of wireless and of thus realising the dream of an easily manageable, pilotless aeroplane has already been envisaged, and it is stated that the problem has actually been solved in the laboratory.