Can Unmanned Aircraft Mix With Commercial Planes?

coondoggie writes "The Federal Aviation Administration this week signed a research and development agreement with GE Aviation to come up with a way to safely mix the burgeoning amounts of unmanned aircraft with commercial aviation. With this research the FAA and GE hope to accomplish an aviation first by completing the research to facilitate flight of an Unmanned Aircraft System with an FAA certified, trajectory-based flight management system. Integrating unmanned aircraft into the national airspace will be no easy task. The Government Accountability Office last year laid out the difficulties stating that routine unmanned aircraft access to national airspace poses technological, regulatory, workload, and coordination challenges."

Comments

Where's the issue?

[Ryukotsusei]

I don't see the problem in this. As long as you give the aircraft a simple AI (planes practically fly themselves anyway), and a pre-set route, they should be fairly predictable. A simple in-the-air navigation system for collision avoidance and you're set.

Re:No.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I like the comforting feeling of knowing there's a pilot in the cockpit.

I like the comforting feeling of knowing there's a pilot in the cockpit of the planes flying OVER me when I'm down here on the ground.

Pilots Union/Lobby?

[Nethemas the Great]

Some how I think the technological aspects will be the least burdensome to implement...

Auto Pilot

[Drakin020]

Heck with the way things are now, the Auto Pilot can nearly land a plane by itself.

The idea isn't too far off, but to an extent, we already have an "Auto flying" system currently in use.

ATC...

[Omega Hacker]

I'd love to have them get a proper air-traffic control system in place that can safely handle the load of piloted planes we have, first. Only after that would it be prudent to look at bringing UAVs into the mix.

Re:No.

[qwijibo]

Do aircraft have fully autonomous co-computers that can recognize an unexpected fault and take full control of the plane? That's why commercial aircraft have co-pilots. A secondary system running the same code with the same flaws as the first doesn't cut it in this context.

Re:Not sure what the BFD is

[MartinSchou]

The ATC there [Baghdad] does this every day. Why is flying one UAV in the US that big a deal?

Because if something goes wrong in the USA, the airplanes in question will be landing on US citizens and not Iraqi ones.

Re:No.

[Deadstick]

Computers don't get heart attacks or fall asleep at the stick.

Or figure out how to make a successful landing in a river when the engines fill up with birds...

rj

Re:No.

[jamstar7]

TFA: "Because unmanned aircraft have never routinely operated in the national airspace system, the level of public acceptance is unknown. One researcher observed that as unmanned aircraft expand into the non-defense sector, there will inevitably be public debate over the need for and motives behind such proliferation."

I'm wondering why there's a need for drones to interfly commercial airspace here in the US, especially when that blog also had an article about the Air Force wanting to give drones enough machine intelligence to decide for itself whether deadly force is warranted. What could possibly go wrong with that? Are the new drones gonna be used in the much-publicised 'War' On Drugs or something?