A 17-year-old Kerikeri High School student is attempting to transform global aviation by working alongside world leading aeronautical engineers in his home town of Kerikeri.
Braeden Leung will receive the Royal Aeronautical Society Award in Parliament this week.
The teen first went knocking on the Kerikeri doors of US company Merlin Labs labs last year. Impressed by his drive, they gave him a job sweeping floors.
Merlin is in the business of designing the world’s first non-human piloted plane and is funded by large venture capitalists, including Google. It has recently partnered with the US airforce.
It set up a base in Kerikeri to make the most of the Kiwi talent and flexibility offered by the CAA.
“Braeden ended up discussing coding with our software engineer, he ended up giving Braedon some coding to do on the simulator that were building and Braeden just took it from there and ran with it and eventually ended up building us this fantastic flight simulator,” said Merlin NZ chief executive Grant Crenfeldt.
The company has been test flying the AI planes in the States but plan to do its first certified flight in Kerikeri in 12 months’ time.
“As a human pilot is observing all the human information around them, the autonomous system does the same and it uses all that information that it’s gathered to start making decisions where the aircraft is in space and and where we want the aircraft to go,” Crenfeldt explained.
“As it goes through all those decisions, it flies the aircraft according to all the rules and regulations that all the various authorities have, communicates with air traffic control as if it was a human pilot.”
Its goal is to develop a fleet of robo planes that could help tackle a looming pilot shortage.
Braeden will go to Canterbury University next year to study mechatronics and hopes to eventually work for NASA.
“It was really surprising that that much prestige would come to Kerikeri. I guess it just shows that when opportunities come up, you just have to grab them,” Braeden said.
