Xwing Aims To Usher In The Era Of Autonomous Flight Sooner By Robotizing Small, Old Cargo Planes

Adam Shelly (left), an Xwing software engineer, stands with CEO and founder Marc Piette (center) and ... [ ] CTO Maxime Gariel in front of a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan the startup has retrofitted to fly autonomously. Scores of companies are working to develop pilotless robot aircraft that are electrically powered and takeoff and land vertically. That's an awful lot of change to pull off at once. Xwing is among a handful of aviation startups that are aiming to get to market sooner by taking on just one piece of that puzzle, in its case, making aircraft fly autonomously. The San Francisco-based company claims to have pulled off the first fully autonomous flight of a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, a small workhorse cargo plane, and it's hoping to win approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch commercial cargo deliveries with unmanned Grand Caravans over unpopulated areas in 2022.