Practiced Robot

Practiced Robot

Year and a half ago Eastern Air Transport equipped one of its passenger planes with the Sperry "robot" pilot, a gyroscopic device which automatically keeps a plane on a set course (TIME. Oct. 19, 1931). In principle it was a success. But just as a human novice may fly a plane safely but clumsily, the robot pilot was awkward. Its worst fault was the same as the common fault of the human: slamming the controls this way & that. Besides jerking the ship about, it strained the controls. Since the robot first appeared, Sperry engineers and airline operators have been busy improving it. Last week the robot was presented again, this time by United Air Lines. Two years of practice had given it the feather-touch of the expert pilot. Instead of jerking the controls by direct mechanical force, the new robot eases them by hydraulic and pneumatic action. Also it is lighter and more compact than the old robot, since it utilizes the same gyroscopes that actuate the artificial horizon and directional gyros on the instrument board. It weighs 75 Ibs., occupies a box about 1 ft. square.

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