![]() Army Air Corps aircraft on a true heading and altitude for three hours. Elmer Sperry Jr., the son of Lawrence Sperry, and Capt Shiras continued work on the same autopilot after the war, and in 1930, they tested a more compact and reliable autopilot which kept a U.S. Sperry demonstrated the credibility of the invention by flying the aircraft with his hands away from the controls and visible to onlookers. Lawrence Sperry, the son of famous inventor Elmer Sperry, demonstrated it in 1914 at an aviation safety contest held in Paris. ( Ailerons were not connected as wing dihedral was counted upon to produce the necessary roll stability.) It permitted the aircraft to fly straight and level on a compass course without a pilot's attention, greatly reducing the pilot's workload. The autopilot connected a gyroscopic heading indicator and attitude indicator to hydraulically operated elevators and rudder. The first aircraft autopilot was developed by Sperry Corporation in 1912. An autopilot is designed to perform some of the pilot's tasks. As aircraft range increased, allowing flights of many hours, the constant attention led to serious fatigue. In the early days of aviation, aircraft required the continuous attention of a pilot to fly safely. First autopilots Ī World War II-era Honeywell C-1 autopilot control panel The etymology of the nickname is unclear: some claim it is a reference to inventor George De Beeson, who patented an autopilot in the 1930s, while others claim that Royal Air Force pilots coined the term during World War II to symbolize that their aircraft technically belonged to King George VI. When present, an autopilot is often used in conjunction with an autothrottle, a system for controlling the power delivered by the engines.Īn autopilot system is sometimes colloquially referred to as "George" (e.g. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems). Autopilots do not replace human operators. The autopilot control panel of a Boeing 747-200 aircraftĪn autopilot is a system used to control the path of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator.
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