2 days ago
Autonomous planes being developed by Boston company aiming to fix pilot shortage
Most people have heard of autonomous cars. But what about autonomous planes? A Boston company is now working to put the pilotless planes in the sky.
"The air is still quite dangerous, so if we can get humans out of harm's way, particularly for our [Department of Defense] customers, that's a really important mission for us," Merlin CEO & founder Matt George said.
The Boston-based company develops cost-effective takeoff-to-touchdown airplanes.
"Merlin is the leading developer of autonomy for very large airplanes like this! The best way to think about what we're building is a pilot, just not a human one, to enable our customers and partners to go fly their airplanes in pretty new and interesting ways including some, eventually, uncrewed stuff in the future," George said.
Inside the Merlin Pilots lab on South Street in Boston, folks are busy developing new state-of-the-art technology that takes the skills of a human pilot and translates them into AI software. George said the goal is to help tackle the pilot shortage in America.
"The Air Force is our largest customer, they're short about 2,000 pilots a year of seats that they wish they can fill but can't fill. And now we're transitioning in the age where autonomy and AI is going to play a really important part in aviation and in aviation safety and allowing folks to use the sky in some new and novel ways," George said.
They have 170 employees working at the frontier of aviation and are proud to be here in Boston.
"Historically Boston was the tech hub. So, I'm really proud of the fact that we're starting to bring some of these frontiers, really hard technologies both in biotech, in aerospace and nuclear with Commonwealth Fusion back to Boston," George said.
So with all this high tech does not mean you will go to Logan and see any autonomous planes anytime soon. In fact, George said there's no telling when folks will come to the airport and board a plane without a pilot.
"I wouldn't put a number on it. I am certainly not betting on showing up to my Delta or American Airlines flight and seeing nobody aboard the flight deck. Human pilots are still a really important part of that future. We're just bringing autonomy in to augment those folks," said George.
