Yeovil engineers building ‘helicopter that flies itself’

Engineers in Somerset are building a helicopter that is set to fly itself – without the need for humans to operate it remotely – in a research project for the Royal Navy.

There have been helicopters without onboard crew before, but they have all been flown by pilots using remote controls from a ship or command base.

The Proteus experimental helicopter is designed by a team at Leonardo Helicopters UK, in Yeovil, to fly autonomously – carrying out a mission all by itself. It is believed to be the first of its kind in the world.

“It’s about not putting people in harm’s way,” said Nigel Colman, managing director of Leonardo Helicopters UK, the UK’s main full-scale helicopter manufacturer.

Mr Colman knows his helicopters. As a navigator for the RAF, he flew for 30 years, ending up as an air vice-marshal, running the UK’s Joint Helicopter Command.

Many think of helicopters in daring combat missions, shooting tanks or dropping special forces behind enemy lines. But many more flights are routine, moving cargo from one ship to another, from ship to shore.

“People like me spend decades flying dull, dirty and dangerous missions,” Mr Colman explained.

“If we don’t have to risk life, we can fly this for eight hours, it doesn’t need feeding, it doesn’t need a bed. There is so much the Navy can do with it.”

So what kind of missions might the new autonomous aircraft be given?

A typical task would be to drop sonar buoys in the sea, used to listen for submarines. Pilots fly these jobs constantly at the moment, and every flight carries a risk.

The team sees the Proteus taking off from a Royal Navy frigate, flying to pre-set co-ordinates, dropping the high-tech buoys, then returning to the flight deck.

All without any human crew controlling the helicopter.

Mr Colman explained: “It’s going to operate itself. Nobody is stood there with a remote control round their neck, pressing buttons.”

And what if the mission situation changes? A storm brews up, an unexpected ship appears?

“It will have all the information it needs to re-route,” says Mr Colman. “To avoid threats, to avoid collisions, whatever is necessary.”

Upstairs, software engineers are simulating how the aircraft will operate. I watch as the helicopter sees an oil rig, identifies it, and takes a route around it.

In another example, Mr Colman imagines the aircraft dropping sonar buoys and flying over a small fishing boat. An optical camera under the helicopter would identify the craft, and choose a new position to drop the buoy.

They have been making helicopters in Yeovil at this factory for 80 years. Today, the company is owned by Leonardo. In all, more than 50% of the helicopters flown by the British armed forces were built in this factory.

People working on the new ground-breaking project are clearly proud of it.

Alongside some very high-tech electronics and digital work, there are still plenty of screwdrivers and spanners. I meet Tom Spencer, an aircraft fitter, attaching some steel plates to the airframe.

He says: “It’s something different from your usual work, it’s a new project for our company, so it’s something that no-one else has worked on before.”

Victoria Thorpe had a chance to join the project, in procurement, and “jumped at it”.

She said: “It’s great to work on something so new and exciting, and we are collaborating with lots of local companies who supply us.”

The Proteus is a research programme for the Royal Navy, designed to see what is possible. It is unlikely this exact aircraft will be produced in large numbers, but experts say all countries are exploring uncrewed aircraft urgently.

David Gailbraith, Prof of War and Technology at Bath University, said: “Militaries are increasingly relying on automation and machine learning in order to really do the job that would be particularly dangerous, so trying to remove the individual risk.”

The team hopes to fly the new aircraft “in the summer”. It will be at a secret location, far from any towns or villages, I am told. But they are confident it will be a success.

“We’ll programme it, it will do it’s thing, it will complete its mission, simple as that,” Mr Colman says.