In the early days of aviation, aircraft required the
continuous attention of a pilot in order to fly safely. As aircraft range
increased allowing flights of many hours, the constant attention led to serious
fatigue. An autopilot is designed to perform some of the tasks of the pilot.
The first aircraft autopilot was developed by Sperry
Corporation in 1912. The autopilot connected a gyroscopic heading indicator and
attitude indicator to hydraulically operated elevators and rudder (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.
Lawrence Sperry (the son of famous inventor Elmer Sperry)
demonstrated it in 1914 at an aviation safety contest held in Paris. At the
contest, Sperry demonstrated the credibility of the invention by flying the
aircraft with his hands away from the controls and visible to onlookers of the
contest. Elmer Sperry Jr., the son of Lawrence Sperry, and Capt Shiras
continued work after the war on the same auto-pilot, and in 1930 they tested a
more compact and reliable auto-pilot which kept a US Army Air Corps aircraft on
a true heading and altitude for three hours.
In 1930 the Royal Aircraft Establishment in England developed
an autopilot called a pilots' assister that used a pneumatically-spun gyroscope
to move the flight controls.
Further development of the autopilot was performed, such as
improved control algorithms and hydraulic servomechanisms. Also, inclusion of
additional instrumentation such as the radio-navigation aids made it possible
to fly during night and in bad weather. In 1947 a US Air Force C-54 made a
transatlantic flight, including takeoff and landing, completely under the
control of an autopilot.
In the early 1920s, the Standard Oil tanker J.A. Moffet
became the first ship to use an autopilot.
source:wikipedia
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Ali Alshaqaq
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