A small Maryland company took first place in last week's AlphaDogfight Trials Final event, a three-day competition designed to demonstrate advanced algorithms capable of performing simulated, within-visual-range air combat maneuvering – commonly known as a dogfight. Heron Systems' F-16 AI agent defeated seven other companies' F-16 AI agents and then went on to dominate the main event – a series of simulated dogfights against an experienced Air Force F-16 pilot – winning 5-0 through aggressive and precise maneuvers the human pilot couldn't outmatch. "The AlphaDogfight Trials were a phenomenal success, accomplishing exactly what we'd set out to do," said Col. Dan "Animal" Javorsek, program manager in DARPA's Strategic Technology Office. "The goal was to earn the respect of a fighter pilot – and ultimately the broader fighter pilot community – by demonstrating that an AI agent can quickly and effectively learn basic fighter maneuvers and successfully employ them in a simulated dogfight." The trials were designed to energize and expand a base of AI developers for DARPA's Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program.

German sports car maker Porsche and US aircraft manufacturer Boeing are teaming up to assess whether they can bring the dream, or nightmare, of a flying car to reality. The two companies announced this week that they're planning to make a concept vehicle with a "fully electric" vertical takeoff and landing (EVTOL) capability. The companies have created a mockup of a vehicle that looks like a sleeker version of the Batmobile from The Dark Knight Rises – exactly what you might expect from Porsche designers. The project will involve engineers from Boeing, Porsche, and Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences, which makes unmanned aerial vehicles. The companies are exploring whether there's a market for premium vehicles.

It's going to take us a healthy dollop of faith in technology to accept autonomous vehicles at some point on our roadways. The thought of robot-driven planes ferrying hundreds of people overhead to their destinations conjures images of metal, fire, and passengers raining down from the skies. Still, proponents of such systems believe autonomous transport of all kinds, including commercial flight, will be less prone to error when humans are removed from the equation. Once the bugs have been worked out, of course. The U.S. military believe automated aircraft may improve mission safety and success rates, and their Defense Advanced Research Agency, or DARPA, has just announced the successful simulated flight and landing of a Boeing 737 by an AI-driven robot co-pilot named ALIAS.

DARPA's'robot pilot' kit is one-step closer to transforming military planes and helicopters into autonomous flying machines. Called Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS), the Pentagon's research agency announced that the technology has now completed Phase 2 of development. During testing, the kit was successful in ground and flight demonstrations and showed it is capable of quickly tailoring to new platforms. DARPA's drop-in, removable'robot pilot' kit (pictured) is closer to reality. Called Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS), the Pentagon's researcher agency announced the technology has completed Phase 2 of development For example, an array of cameras allows the robot to see all the cockpit instruments and read the gauges.

ALIAS can fly a military helicopter and then move into another aircraft and fly that too-- and ALIAS is not human. Driverless cars may have been making headlines of late, but DARPA's ALIAS program has also been making great strides in the development of "digital pilot" technology. The brainchild of the legendary institution DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), ALIAS easily drops into an aircraft and becomes an invisible, automated co-pilot for a human pilot. And ALIAS is so good that it has the potential to eventually fly all sorts of military aircraft on its own-- and it could even fly commercial jets like the ones Americans take to visit family or go on vacation. Two teams are currently joining forces with DARPA to make ALIAS a reality: Aurora Flight Sciences and Lockheed Martin Sikorsky.

Aurora Flight Sciences' Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automantion System (ALIAS), is mounted in the co-pilot seat of a Cessena Caravan aircraft which is preparing for take-off at Manassas Airport in Manassas, Va., Monday, Oct. 17. Government and industry are working together on a robot-like autopilot system that could eliminate the need for a second human pilot in the cockpit. But inside the cockpit, in the right seat, a robot with spindly metal tubes and rods for arms and legs and a claw hand grasping the throttle, was doing the flying. In the left seat, a human pilot tapped commands to his mute colleague using an electronic tablet. The demonstration was part of a Defense Department and industry collaboration that is attempting to replace the second human pilot in two-person flight crews with robot co-pilots that never tire, get bored, feel stressed out or become distracted.

Yesterday, a turboprop plane took off from a small airport in Virginia that from the outside, looked fairly unremarkable. But inside the cockpit, in the right seat, a robot with spindly metal tubes and rods for arms and legs and a claw hand grasping the throttle, was doing the flying. The demonstration was part of a government and industry collaboration that is attempting to replace the second human pilot in two-person flight crews with robot co-pilots that never tire, get bored, feel stressed out or become distracted. The Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) project envisions a day when planes and helicopters, large and small, will fly people and cargo without any human pilot on board. For example, an array of cameras allows the robot to see all the cockpit instruments and read the gauges.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your stigmergic Automaton bloggers. We're also posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. "Academy Award -nominated director Orlando von Einsiedel, Executive Producer J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot and Epic Digital have joined forces with Google and XPRIZE to create a documentary web series about the people competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE. The Google Lunar XPRIZE is the largest prize competition of all time with a reward of 30 million and aims to incentivize entrepreneurs to create a new era of affordable access to the Moon and beyond, while inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers." "DARPA's Vertical Takeoff and Landing Experimental Plane (VTOL X-Plane) program seeks to provide innovative cross-pollination between fixed-wing and rotary-wing technologies and by developing and integrating novel subsystems to enable radical improvements in vertical and cruising flight capabilities.