AI gliders learn to fly using air currents, just like birds

Birds don't always flap their wings to fly; sometimes they soar by taking advantage of rising columns of warm air known as thermals. With large wingspans, they can stay aloft for hours while expending minimal energy. Exactly how they do it -- navigating tiny changes in unpredictable air currents -- isn't well-known. But scientists are now using artificial intelligence to learn their tricks, and hopefully, they can teach our aircraft to do the same. As described in a paper published this week in the journal Nature, researchers from universities in the US and Italy used machine learning to train an algorithm to control a glider to navigate thermals. It's not the first time artificial intelligence has been used for this task (Microsoft published similar work with gliders last year), but it's the first time that data from real flights has been used to update and improve an AI's performance in the field.