U-2 Spy Plane With AI Equipped ARTUµ Co-Pilot

New technology emerged to tackle the need to have a co-pilot on U-2 Spy Plane. Before this any U-2 spy plane needs to have 2 man operating it. One's is piloting it while the others will manage all the electronics and reconnaissance services.

Now.. things have changes.

The United States Air Force just hit a major milestone involving the intersection of artificial intelligence and human-controlled flight. A mission yesterday with a U-2 spy plane out of California saw an onboard AI system working together with a pilot. 

The Air Force said in a statement that this partnership represents the very first moment that AI has served as “a working aircrew member onboard a military aircraft.” The AI system, which the Air Force calls ARTUµ, handled the operation of a sensor, while the pilot did other duties. “During this flight, ARTUµ was responsible for sensor employment and tactical navigation, while the pilot flew the aircraft and coordinated with the AI on sensor operation,” the Air Force said. 

The military notes that the AI that controlled the sensor had trained by learning from data that represented more than 500,000 “simulated training iterations.” Its goal was to look for missile launchers using the radar.

U-2 spy planes are known as complex crafts to fly—the aviators within them must wear spacesuits—and if the AI performed well, it would mean that a busy pilot would have fewer tasks to do while operating the high-altitude, intelligence-gathering aircraft.

Connected Vehicle Cloud on top of Microsoft Azure platform

Ericsson’s Connected Vehicle Cloud is a popular connected car platform that is already powering 4 million vehicles across more than 130 countries. Today, Ericsson announced that it will be building Connected Vehicle Cloud on top of Microsoft’s Connected Vehicle Platform.

Microsoft’s Connected Vehicle Platform is not a car operating system, but rather delivers the back-end to allow automakers to address key scenarios such as predictive maintenance, improved in-car productivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and help building autonomous driving capabilities, leveraging Microsoft’s computing cloud to ingesting huge volumes of sensor and usage data from connected vehicles, and then helping automakers apply that data in powerful ways.

Ericsson said that its Connected Vehicle Cloud solution on top of Azure will allow automakers to deploy and scale global vehicle services such as fleet management, over-the-air software updates and connected safety services much easier and faster while reducing costs. It also offers flexibility through modular design and multiple deployment options.

“The Ericsson and Microsoft partnership will deliver a comprehensive connected vehicle platform at scale to the market. Our integrated solutions will help automotive manufacturers accelerate their global connected vehicle solutions and offer a better experience for drivers and passengers,” says Åsa Tamsons, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Technologies & New Businesses. “This is an exciting new offering with great benefits for the automotive industry, leveraging Ericsson and Microsoft’s technology leadership in connectivity and cloud.”

Peggy Johnson, Executive Vice President, Business Development at Microsoft says: “Together with Ericsson, we intend to simplify the development of connected vehicle services to help car makers focus on their customers’ needs and accelerate the delivery of unique, tailor-made driving experiences.”