Researchers from NASA are developing a traffic management program for drones. The move is in response to the current focus of the tech industry in developing small delivery drones, with the industry's enthusiasm in the type of aircraft currently outpacing the thoughts on how to use them.
Dozens of companies are involved in drone development, including Google which recently revealed Project Wing. The project focuses on building drones that are half helicopter and half plane, and a video on its early versions show a drone dropping dog treats to a farmer in Australia. Amazon is also in the mix with an experimental product delivery service named Prime Air.
However, drone technology is not yet widely tested, and is currently banned from commercial use in the United States. In addition, using such high-tech machines may not be profitable when they are only delivering dog treats and other mundane items.
NASA's research is looking ahead and developing a way to manage the drones, through separate air traffic control system that monitors objects that fly at heights of only 400 feet to 500 feet, which is the altitude of most drones when flying.
"One at a time you can make them work and keep them safe," said NASA principal investigator Parimal Kopardekar, who is leading the development and management of the program. "But when you have a number of them in operation in the same airspace, there is no infrastructure to support it."
Just like the air traffic control systems for normal aircrafts, the system that NASA is developing will be able to monitor the air space for traffic and weather conditions. This is particularly important because, due to the light weight of drones, strong winds pose as a hazard to the machines.
NASA's system will also ensure that the drones will not collide into structures or other low-flying things such as news helicopters. The system will also enforce no-fly areas, such as locations near major airports.
In addition, similar to the unmanned flights of the drones, the air traffic control center that NASA is developing will also have no people managing it. Instead, the center will be run entirely by computers and human-generated algorithms.
Kopardekar said that his expectation for drone technology is that the first commercial applications would be for agriculture and asset surveillance, using the drones as moving security cameras that allows the owner of properties to check every corner of a location.
