It is very easy for researchers and academics alike to remain in their safe bubble happily programming their code, designing experiments or writing research papers. Not so easy though is getting out of the office to face the brutal honesty from some of the harshest critics—children.
Members of the Institute of Aerospace Technologies (IAT) took the opportunity to face this challenge at the Malta Robotics Olympiad 2017 to showcase some of the technology that the Institute is developing. The event, organised at the MFCC Ta’ Qali, was well-attended by school children and the general public.
Amongst its ongoing research projects, the IAT demonstrated its achievements in CLEAN FLIGHT 1 & 2, TOUCH FLIGHT 1 & 2, and SAGRO. These projects have been supported by national funds through the Malta Council for Science & Technology (MCST) R&I Fusion Programme over the last six years.
CLEAN FLIGHT 1 & CLEAN FLIGHT 2
CLEAN FLIGHT 1 (2011–2013) was funded by the MCST 2011 National R&I programme and worth nearly EUR 170,000. The project aimed to develop technologies, tools and procedures to allow aircraft to fly cleaner trajectories within the Maltese airspace, thus contributing to the reduction of emissions. The project design and produced recommendations of new routings to accommodate P-RNAV procedures to be flown in and out of Malta, and a flight management tool and associated concept of operation (the procedure that will be used to operate the tool in flight) to allow aircraft to be flown more advantageously in terms of emissions, fuel burn and operational costs. The technology has now been protected with the support of KTO, Patent US 14/802,624.
A follow up project CLEAN FLIGHT 2 (2015–2018) with a budget of ca. Euro 200,000 is underway and will be carrying out flight trials of the technologies developed and extend the fight management tool to handle multiple aircraft in descent and departure.
TOUCH-FLIGHT 1 & TOUCH-FLIGHT 2
TOUCHFLIGHT 1 (2012–2015) was funded by the MCST 2012 National R&I programme and worth just over EUR 180,000. The project developed novel concepts of human machine interface and interaction for flight guidance and navigation. As tablet technologies with touchscreen capability emerged, the project focused on their application to the aerospace industry. The technology developed throughout this project allows the pilot to interact with the aircraft systems directly without needing to reach out to the main instrument panel, glareshield, overhead panel and central pedestal areas. The research focused on the use of appropriate graphical display layouts coupled with gestures to carry out input functions of the pilot on the flight deck. The project has culminated in the development of a prototype that allows demonstration to industry. The technology developed has now also been patented US14/840,207.
A follow up project TOUCH-FLIGHT 2, (2016–2018)—worth just over EUR 190,000—is underway and will extend the concepts developed in TOUCH-FLIGHT 1 to propose the use of speech technologies as a means of interaction between pilots and avionics systems.
SAGRO
SAGRO (2015–2017) is funded by the National R&I Programme with a budget of ca. EUR 200,000 and has developed solutions for the automatic detection of aerial threats for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). As the popularity of UAVs continues to grow, recent reports of near collisions between UAVs and manned aircraft are increasingly worrying. By addressing this issue, SAGRO is contributing to a safer aerial environment where similar incidents can be avoided.
Engaging with the public during the Robotic Olympiad proved to be fun and satisfying. Many attendees were pleasantly surprised and were interested to learn more about our research activities and contribution to the aviation sector. It also proved a surprising lesson for us in how bad academics generally are at marketing their own technical achievements! It should serve us academics as a reminder to make use of similar events to engage more with the public. Meanwhile, the flight simulator set up at the event proved to be a huge success particularly with children and teenagers. While some children were initially concerned that crashing the simulator aircraft might result in a real crash elsewhere in real life, following reassurance that the role of a simulator is exactly to avoid that, they were happy to have a go at an attempted take-off or landing—over and over again!
As the researchers and IAT members all return to their comfort zone, programming their code or preparing their next research project we like to think that for some students this was the first step in a long road towards the making of a future aviator or an aerospace researcher.