The advent of drones has the potential to change the nature of the use of the lower airspace at a time when the whole of Air Traffic Management itself is in the process of change.
The US has been considering this for some time and interesting research and development has been conducted by NASA on the concept of Unmanned Air System (UAS) Air Traffic Management (ATM) i.e. 'UTM'. Details of their work so far can be found at the NASA hosting site:
https://utm.arc.nasa.gov/
In the top left had corner of the opening page can be found the link to a whole series of documents and presentations:
https://utm.arc.nasa.gov/documents.shtml
The first reaction to the issue of drones was to segregate them - a short sighted policy doomed to failure as their capability and potential started to become apparent. Clearly, the wise policy is one of integration; moves to that end, for RPAS sharing the IFR airspace, have been developing in ICAO and elsewhere for some time as well as the conditions under which Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations can be conducted. As we are seeing with other autonomous vehicles, progress on that front has a certain inevitability.
As John has indirectly pointed out, the essence of inter-operation - between drones, and drones and aircraft, rests with the ability to 'sense and avoid' and 'Collision Detection and Resolution'. For, as has been evident for some time in VFR conditions, 'see and avoid' has limitations which have to be addressed.
That there is an issue with 'see and avoid' is evident in the advent to the market of non-regulatory solutions such as FLARM and PilotAware; systems that were ahead of the move in the US for mandating of ADS-B by 2020 (check out the FAA dual frequency ADS-B solution (1090 MHz and UAT 978 MHz)). These proprietary systems have the functionality of ADS-B
Out and In and collision detection and avoidance - elements of which are only just being trialled by the Airlines under SESAR. FLARMS can make use of its Terrain and Obstacle Database (eTOD) for a more integrated approach to collision avoidance - another initiative that is just becoming an ICAO Standard.
However, this issue is not going unnoticed in our world as the RAeS Specialist Rotorcraft Group have made it a subject of their July conference 'Technology Friend or Foe - operations in an increasingly complex environment' along with leveraging Performance Based Navigation (PBN). Subjects which are of particular interest to the Para-public and GA communities:
https://www.aerosociety.com/events-c...friend-or-foe/
These are subjects which are important to all of us and are worthy of continued debated on these pages and elsewhere. It is noticeable that our voice has not yet been heard on these issues which have the potential to 'eat our lunch' in Aerial Work and see us squeezed out of an increasingly crowded lower level airspace by an activity with a more important financial imperative.
Jim