SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Reliable Robotics, a leader in bringing autonomous capability to airplanes, today announced that they have achieved historic firsts for global commercial aviation by completing successful test flights of remote-piloted passenger airplanes in United States airspace. In the first flight, the pilot pressed a button on a remote user interface and the unmanned four passenger Cessna 172 Skyhawk (C172) automatically taxied, took off, and landed. Most recently, the company demonstrated fully automated remote landing of an even larger aircraft, the Cessna 208 Caravan (C208), capable of carrying 14 passengers.

“Automated aircraft are going to fundamentally shift the entire airline business, and Reliable Robotics is well positioned to be a key player in this new market. The progress their team has demonstrated in a short amount of time is very impressive,” said David Neeleman, Founder of five commercial airlines including JetBlue Airways.

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Leadership:

Reliable Robotics was founded in 2017 by engineers who believe aircraft should fly themselves. The leadership team includes Co-founder and CEO Robert Rose who led flight software at SpaceX and the Autopilot program at Tesla, launching the Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft and the first consumer automobile with fully unassisted self-driving capability. Co-founder and VP of Engineering Juerg Frefel led the team developing the compute platform for the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft. Other senior members of the team have played key roles in the development of the Boeing 787, Airbus A380 and other major commercial aircraft and avionics systems.

The path to deploying commercial aircraft that can handle all aspects of flight without a pilot is long, winding, expensive and riddled with regulatory and technical hurdles. Marc Piette, the founder of autonomous aviation startup Xwing, aims to make that path to pilotless flight shorter and more cost-effective.

Instead of building autonomous helicopters and planes from the ground up, Xwing is focused on the software stack that will enable pilotless flight of existing aircraft. Now, the company is sharing details of its go-to-market strategy several months after raising $10 million in new funding and following successful autonomous test flights in a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. Xwing said it has completed since July more than 70 hours of engine time for ground and flight tests, and more than 40 hours of automated flight time.