Birds have been doing this for millions of years. They sense turbulence before it arrives and adjust their flight patterns to avoid it. Now, thanks to a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and of Nvidia, even airplanes will be able to develop this ability. A new artificial intelligence called FALCON promises to make flying safer than ever by predicting and managing turbulence just like our feathered friends do.
The challenge of air turbulence
As someone who until last year was gripping the armrests of the seat at every little jolt, I can assure you that the turbulence are one of the most stressful aspects of flying. Luckily, a course on how airplanes work has helped me overcome this fear: but soon we may have even more concrete help.
The FALCON (Fourier Adaptive Learning and CONtrol) system represents a leap forward in turbulence management. Using the reinforcement learning, an advanced form of artificial intelligence, learns to predict how turbulent winds might change over time.
The need for this technology is more urgent than ever. As the Professor Mory Gharib, project manager, climate change the frequency of extreme weather events is increasing which cause turbulence.
Disasters like the deadly Singapore Airlines flight last May, in which more than 100 passengers were injured after the plane encountered severe turbulence, could be avoided with such a system.
How FALCON works
Unlike previous systems, FALCON It does not simply react to turbulence: it seeks to understand and predict it. It uses mathematical methods based on sine waves (Fourier methods) to represent wind conditions.
Extreme turbulence manifests itself as a noticeable change in the frequency of these waves.
I like to think of FALCON as a skilled musician who can read the “score” of the wind. Just as a musician can anticipate the next notes by looking at the score, FALCON can predict the arrival of turbulence by analyzing wind patterns.
Wind tunnel tests
To test FALCON, the researchers created an extremely challenging environment in the John W. Lucas Wind Tunnel from Caltech. They used a fully equipped wing system with pressure sensors and adaptive control surfaces.
The setup included a large cylinder with a movable mount that, when hit by wind, created random and significant fluctuations. After just nine minutes of learning (the time of a short home flight) The FALCON-assisted system managed to stabilize in this extreme environment.
The Future of Turbulence-Free Flight
Anima Anandkumar, a Caltech professor and co-author of the study (what a great name) explains that the system improves with each new observation. But the researchers' vision goes further: They imagine a future in which airplanes can share information about weather conditions with each other in real time.
As a former flight angst-ridden person, I find this prospect incredibly reassuring. A network of airplanes working together to make every flight safer seems like the perfect way to combine technology and safety.
The challenge now is to make the system increasingly faster at adapting. With the increase in extreme weather events, this technology could become not just a convenience, but a necessity for air safety. And who knows, maybe one day we will look at turbulence with the same nonchalance with which a pigeon faces a gust of wind.
