“It's extremely costly to certify new aircraft, even when you're certifying it for a well-established use and with well-established rules,” said Steve Wallace, a former FAA official who oversaw accident investigations and also worked in the agency’s certification branch. “Here we're trying to open up a whole new use where there aren't any rules. That's an enormous task.”Muilenburg, 54, is aerospace engineer by training and enjoys the challenge of thinking through the sense-and-avoid systems and other technologies to prevent airborne mayhem. “We are making investments there,” he said. “The autonomous car ecosystem is making investments there.”
Given Boeing’s traditional retirement age of 65, he will more than likely be around to deal with the aftermath of product strategy plotted today—from an all-new jetliner family nicknamed the '797' by analysts to the autonomous vehicles he expects to reach the market in large numbers by the mid-2020s.
Since Muilenburg took over as CEO in mid-2015, Boeing has expanded its line-up of futuristic planes and created a venture capital arm called HorizonX to foster promising technologies such as hybrid-electric propulsion. The largest U.S. industrial company is also investing in digital design tools and three-dimensional printers that can quickly turn aircraft concepts into working models.
Take the battery-powered flying platform that Boeing unveiled in January, a prototype cargo drone with the muscle to haul 500-pound loads over 20 miles. It was developed in just three months by the planemaker’s Phantomworks unit, but the multi-copter vehicle could evolve into the airborne equivalent of a pick-up truck.
One of HorizonX's investments is in a Pittsburgh company called Near Earth Autonomy. The spinoff from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute has developed sensing technology that makes driverless aircraft a lot smarter. A company YouTube video shows a drone zipping over a country lane dodging trees and adjusting its course, on its own, without the aid of a global positioning system.
The possibilities of using the technology to improve safety are intriguing, said Steve Nordlund, a Boeing vice president in charge of HorizonX. “We’ll leverage their technology potentially inside the company,” he said. “It’s early but that’s plan.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.