Joby completes first autonomous flight across America: 3,199 miles, zero pilot takeovers
Scobleizer · x · 2026-09-19
Joby's J208, a converted Cessna Caravan, has completed the first fully autonomous flight across America, landing in Outer Banks, North Carolina — near where the Wright brothers first flew 122 years ago.
Key numbers:
- 3,199 miles flown, with zero takeovers by the safety pilot
- Supervised from as far as 2,323 miles away
- 100% of taxi, takeoff, cruise, and landing performed autonomously
- Integrated into Deer Valley, the nation's busiest general aviation airport, and re-planned its mission in real time for changing weather
A pilot commanded each mission remotely with a keyboard, mouse, and mic. The team breaks down the path to certified autonomous flight in a new Joby Recon episode.
Related event: Joby Completes First Fully Autonomous US Cross-Country Flight(2 posts)→
More from Embodied
- Nano-texture iPhone Duo display makes Apple Pencil feel like writing on paper — rudrank · 2026-11-04
- NEURA launches Neuron AI, but Europe's Physical AI test is whether the stack matures together — ingliguori · 2026-11-04
- Baidu's Apollo Go wraps two-week public robotaxi test rides in Tung Chung, Hong Kong — Baidu_Inc · 2026-11-04
- imec neural probe integrates photonics directly into 130nm CMOS backend — jwt0625 · 2026-11-04
- Chris Paxton: interactive robot sim is the future but glaringly data-limited — Scobleizer · 2026-11-04
- DreamX: video diffusion models as universal latent action learners for robots — kaist-ai · 2026-11-04