17 January 2020: Airbus has successfully carried out the first fully automatic vision-based take-off using an Airbus Family test aircraft at Toulouse-Blagnac airport. The test crew consisting of two pilots, two flight test engineers and a test flight engineer took off initially at around 10h15 on 18 December and carried out a total of 8 take-offs over a period of four and a half hours.
"The aircraft performed as expected during these milestone tests. While completing alignment on the runway, waiting for clearance from air traffic control, we engaged the auto-pilot," said Airbus Test Pilot Captain Yann Beaufils. "We moved the throttle levers to the take-off setting and we monitored the aircraft. It started to move and accelerate automatically maintaining the runway centre line, at the exact rotation speed as entered in the system. The nose of the aircraft began to lift up automatically to take the expected take-off pitch value and a few seconds later we were airborne."
Rather than using the existing ground equipment technology, the Instrument Landing System (ILS) which is currently used by in-service passenger aircraft in airports around the world where the technology is present, this automatic take-off was enabled by image recognition technology installed directly on the aircraft.
Automatic take-off is a significant milestone in Airbus' Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off & Landing (ATTOL) project. ATTOL is one of the technological flight demonstrators being tested by Airbus in order to understand the impact of autonomy on aircraft. It was launched in June 2018.
The next steps in the project will see automatic vision-based taxi and landing sequences taking place by mid-2020.