Collision course: fear of crashes keeping drones out of U.S. airspace.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Unmanned Vehicles

Imagine that for your next trip out of town that you could drive to the nearest airstrip, climb into a small robotic aircraft, push a button and then sit back and relax as it flew to your destination. Sound too much like science fiction? Not if David Vos gets his way.

As senior director of unmanned aircraft systems and control technologies at Rockwell Collins, Vos and other industry representatives are advocating a push for the development of automation technologies that will make it possible for piloted aircraft and drones to fly safely in the same airspace.

Federal regulations prohibit unmanned aircraft from flying in civilian airspace. But as the number of drones in war zones has skyrocketed, there has been some discussion about operating such aircraft in national airspace. The Federal Aviation Administration has balked on the issue because of safety concerns. But with the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies beginning to fly more drones for stateside missions, the debate about incorporating them into commercial airspace has taken off.

"There's a big dialog, but it's a dialog in which the boat has already left the harbor," Vos tells reporters during a briefing at the annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International symposium in Washington, D.C. "For anyone saying, 'We cannot do this,' get on the boat, because it's not turning around."

Vos contends that technologies that currently allow many of the military's unmanned aircraft to automatically take off, fly and land can be applied to conventional airplanes and will help to speed up the airspace integration process.

Rockwell Collins outfits many of the military's drones with automation technologies. Vos is quick to point out a statistic: Every 20 minutes, an unmanned aircraft with its onboard flight controls completes a successful automatic landing.

The company has initiated some demonstrations to prove that the automation technology is feasible. Working with Aurora Flight Sciences, it integrated flight control technology aboard a Cessna and completed an autonomous take-off and landing demonstration in Scotland.

"All we've done is change the parameters to accommodate the different vehicles," Vos says. The demonstrations prove the transportability of these capabilities across all manned aviation, he adds. "They're all aimed at a future where we don't need to stand in big lines at local airports to fly short-hop flights. We want to go to our own airport with our...