By Evan Ackerman \u2014 IEEE Spectrum<\/p>\n
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Yesterday, DARPA<\/a> announced the four companies that\u2019ll be competing to develop a new experimental aircraft that combines the efficiency of an airplane with the versatility of a helicopter. It\u2019ll be something like a V-22 Osprey, except that DARPA is hoping for \u201cradical improvements in vertical and cruise flight capabilities.\u201d Three of the companies provided concept art to DARPA; Boeing\u2019s Phantom Swift<\/a> is pictured above. And the thing that every proposal has in common? They\u2019re all robots.<\/p>\n Robots weren\u2019t a specific requirement for the VTOL X-Plane, but DARPA says that the best proposals ended up being unmanned. It shouldn\u2019t be a surprise that this is the case; in a contest based on speed, efficiency, and payload, including a human pilot would be a significant disadvantage: humans are fragile and require a lot of maintenance, and it\u2019s becoming increasingly arguable that a human in an aircraft has the potential to be more of a liability than an asset, at least in some cases, which may include (say) cargo delivery into dangerous areas.<\/p>\n