Autonomous systems increase the robustness and safety of current aircraft and to support simplified vehicle, reduced crew, and single pilot operations. The autonomous systems aid air crews in their handling of non-normal, high workload, aircraft upset scenarios. The upset scenarios include the recovery from attitudes outside of the normal operating envelope that even the most robust automatic flight control systems currently in service today do not support.

A method for guiding an autonomous aircraft, the aircraft includes an automatic pilot, a plurality of sensors and an imaging unit, the aircraft being configured to fly over a geographic zone comprising overflight prohibited zones, the guidance method can advantageously comprise a phase of real flight of the autonomous aircraft by using a given guidance law, comprising the following steps: determining a current state of the autonomous aircraft; determining an optimum action to be executed by using a neural network receiving the current state; determining a plurality of control instructions compatible with the guidance law based on the optimum action to be executed; transmitting to the automatic pilot the plurality of control instructions, which provides a new state of the autonomous aircraft.

The disclosure relates to a battery driven flight vehicle. The battery-driven flight vehicle, comprising: a control unit; and a battery charged by a power supply device, wherein the control unit executes flight control in accordance with a charging speed of the battery. The disclosure also relates to a method of providing a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in which the flight vehicle is used.

Systems and methods are provided for landing site selection and flight path planning for an aircraft using soaring weather conditions. The methods may include, with one or more processors of a controller onboard the aircraft: receiving data indicative of terrain, airports, airspace, aerodynamics of the aircraft, real-time weather, and real-time status of the aircraft, determining a gliding range of the aircraft based at least in part on soaring weather conditions that include environmental regions of thermal draft capable of producing lift sufficient to extend the gliding range of the aircraft, determining a landing site for the aircraft based on the gliding range of the aircraft, and determining a flight path of the aircraft that uses the soaring weather conditions to extend the gliding range of the aircraft and land at the landing site.

Techniques to control flight of an aircraft are disclosed. In various embodiments, a set of inputs associated with a requested set of forces and moments to be applied to the aircraft is received. An optimal mix of actuators and associated actuator parameters to achieve to an extent practical the requested forces and moments is determined.

Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft can provide opportunities to incorporate aerial transportation into transportation networks for cities and metropolitan areas. However, VTOL aircraft may be noisy. To accommodate this, the aircraft may utilize onboard sensors, offboard sensing, network, and predictive temporal data for noise signature mitigation. By building a composite understanding of real data offboard the aircraft, the aircraft can make adjustments to the way it is flying and verify this against a predicted noise signature (via computational methods) to reduce environmental impact. This might be realized via a change in translative speed, propeller speed, or choices in propulsor usage (e.g., a quiet propulsor vs. a high thrust, noisier propulsor). These noise mitigation actions may also be decided at the network level rather than the vehicle level to balance concerns across a city and relieve computing constraints on the aircraft.

Aspects described herein may relate to aerial structures such as aircraft. An aerial structure may include a fuselage, a wing attached to the fuselage, and a plurality of propulsion systems configured to generate thrust. A propulsion system may include a plurality of propulsors, such as propulsor fans. A propulsor fan may be configured to be actuated between a conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) flight mode, a short take-off and landing (STOL) flight mode, a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) flight mode, and vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) operations.