FutureFlight
Airbus Demonstrates Autonomous Flight with ATTOL Project
An Airbus A350-1000 widebody airliner achieved fully autonomous taxi, takeoff, and landings in a series of test flights.
A350 autonomous flight
Airbus's ATTOL project achieved several fully autonomous flights in which an A350 widebody taxied, took off, and landed without intervention by pilots in the cockpit. [Photo: Airbus]

Airbus has completed two years of flight testing for its Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off, and Landing (ATTOL) project. The work culminated in a fully automatic, vision-based flight of an A350-1000 widebody airliner, achieved through the use of on-board image recognition technology, which the manufacturer described as a world-first in a June 29 press statement.

More than 500 test flights were made as part of the project and around 450 of these were used to gather the raw video data that Airbus engineers needed to support and fine-tune the algorithms for the autonomous technology. There were six test flights to evaluate the autonomous flight capabilities, with each one including five takeoffs and landings in the airliner.

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