Joby Aviation completed the first-ever autonomous flight across the United States using an aircraft equipped with its autonomy technology.
Manned with only an onboard safety pilot, the aircraft navigated 3,199 miles with no human control inputs as it finished its eastbound leg of a monthlong tour in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Joby announced on Sept. 18.
The aircraft’s first cross-country tour ended, coincidentally, near the Kitty Hawk monument, the site of the Wright brothers’ first powered flight in 1903.
The converted Cessna Caravan was able to take off, navigate, land, and taxi under remote supervision from Joby’s Santa Cruz, California, headquarters and Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, some 2,323 miles away….