Air Force research aimed at allowing one human to fly multiple UAVs

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WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE — The Pentagon’s drive to deploy increasing numbers of remotely piloted, unmanned aircraft in war zones is causing a manpower crunch, as the military moves to train the additional human pilots needed to operate the craft.

There are often two operators for every unmanned aerial vehicle deployed, one to fly the UAV and the other to operate its sensors for intelligence and surveillance purposes. Air Force and Wright State University researchers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where key UAV programs are managed, are trying to effectively automate many of the operating functions so the UAVs can fly themselves and allow a single human operator to oversee multiple craft at once, concentrating on examining objects of interest seen in video feeds from the aircraft’s cameras.

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