Google Research has committed to using AI to build cost-effective and scalable ways to mitigate aviation’s climate impact.
“Project Contrails” is a partnership with American Airlines to build the first contrail avoidance model for commercial airlines.
Google’s engineers have spent tens of thousands of hours collecting satellite imagery and labeling contrail images collected by the geostationary satellite, GOES-16.
These data sets have allowed Google to train a state-of-the-art computer vision model to detect contrail formation within 30 minutes. Google then combined this model with large-scale weather data, flight data, and satellite images to develop a contrail prediction model.
Next, American Airlines’ pilots will fly 70 test flights over a six-month period using Google’s AI-based predictions to avoid flight routes that would create contrails.
Google will then evaluate the prediction model’s performance using satellite imagery and compare the number of contrails created by pilots using contrail avoidance routes to the number produced by pilots who did not.
We look forward to seeing the results!