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Federal regulators want to make sure that drones operating beyond sight — such as delivery drones — stay away from manned aircraft, which many experts expect will involve using existing satellite technology.
The Wall Street Journal reports that preliminary plans call for relying on what is known as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast technology, or ADS-B, a system that manned aircraft use to determine their location via satellites and periodically broadcast that data to air-traffic controllers. Eventually, the data also will be broadcast directly to other aircraft.
Federal Aviation Administration official Don Walker said at a public meeting that drones flying beyond sight of operators ultimately "are likely to have ADS-B receivers." The receivers would enable drones to sense manned aircraft and automatically avoid them. The receivers wouldn’t broadcast the drones’ location, which could confound air-traffic controllers’ view of the airspace.
Walker said ADS-B likely wouldn’t be used for
drones within sight of the operator, which include virtually all drones flying today, because that would
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overwhelm the system’s capacity.
An FAA official said Walker wasn’t expressing agency policy, because the FAA "has not taken a position regarding" the issue and isn’t currently drafting any regulations mandating any particular technology or approach.
Nonetheless, the concept Mr. Walker sketched out also is under consideration by various RTCA and industry advisory groups.
The deliberations are still at an early stage. Reaching industry and government consensus on a detailed regulatory framework is expected to take at least several years, and finalizing regulations could stretch years beyond that.
But WSJ posits the principles outlined by Walker underscore efforts to pave the way for automated drone flights that would unlock a series of new commercial applications, including deliveries, pipeline inspections and large-scale crop monitoring.
For more of the Wall Street Journal story: www.wsj.com
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