Air Force Wants Technology That Will Let Drones Sense and Avoid Other Aircraft

coondoggie writes "With an eye toward letting drones share the nation's common airspace, the Air Force has set out to find the technology that will let unmanned aircraft sense and avoid other airplanes in flight. The ability to sense and avoid — common on all manned aircraft that fly the national airspace — is one of the trickier issues for drones which do not support such technology. It will be a major hurdle to jump as drone vendors and others press for common drone access to national airspace."

Comments

Re: A radar?

[sabri]

You seem to think all aircraft fly above 30,000 feet. GA fliers spend a great deal of tine between 1,000 and 10,000 AGL. These fliers generally are flying under VFR (visual flight rules) where they are expected to see and avoid other aircraft visually.

You are right. However, a lot of airspace requires, and a lot of airplanes have, transponders. With the roll-out of ADS-B, all aircraft will be visible in the future.

When I fly GA, I have a little device called a PCAS in my cockpit. It passively monitors the transponders from other aircraft and will alert me if someone is nearby. This is a very light weight piece of technology, about the size of my cellphone. Easy to use in a drone...