The pilot who is a mere mortal handles this flaming machine with all of its powers of speed and destruction.

飞行员是唯一能操作喷火机器的人，这个机器充满了速度和破坏力。

youdao

Huge machines designed to defend the machine city, 18 of these war machines launch a barrage of sentinel tow bombs at the Logos when Trinity and Neo pilot towards the city.

巨大的机器被设计出来保护机器城，Trinity和Neo在驶向机器城的时候，有18架这样的战船向Logos发射了很多炸弹。

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He taught himself to be a pilot. During World War II, he designed a machine used to train military aircraft crews to fire guns at enemy aircraft.

VOA: special.2009.01.14

As the passage implies, even something as seemingly simple as an airplane flying in the sky is actually just one part of a large sociotechnical system composed of various human and machine elements, from the pilot and airplane to a series of airports, communication and navigation systems, bureaucracies, regulations, rules and norms of flight, and more.

FORBES: A Domain Like Cyberspace

The "pilot" controls the aircraft at a safe distance, directing the machine to hover over the water where whales are surfacing.

BBC: How do you breathalyse a whale?