ASTRAEA project - UAVs in civil airspace progress
 

Write up here on latest progress/issues with UK's ASTRAEA programme - incl using a Jetstream as a 'surrogate UAS'...

Drones of Peace | Aerospace | The Royal Aeronautical Society

The ambitious 'supplement police helos with UAVs for 2012 Olympics' timeframe (along with UAVs looking for smugglers on the South Coast) seems to have dissappeared...

But are we any closer to cracking 'sense and avoid'? Or will it forever be just 10-15years off?

(if I can get GPS, video etc on my smart phone - maybe in next decade there might be an auto-TCAS cheap/small enough that could go on a R/C model?)

A few year back I had a chat with the fine chaps at CAA research who had done the work on the low power, low cost collision alerting system. The great hope for the future was in the sort of tech that leads to mobile phone location services that can tell you when a "friend" is near.

Sort of a reverse mobile dating location app then?

"Searching for hot UAVs in your area? Click here to flirt, click here to perform separation manoeuvre..." :E

Makes me wonder actually for some of the smaller, lower flying UAVs, could they not tap into WiFi/mobile phone networks as an additional/emergency communication method? Ie if you fly BLOS and lose link, could the UAV ring home to txt you that it is 'diverting' or RTBing or is orbiting? Send it a text back to confirm maybe?

Obviously wouldn't work for Global Hawk or a primary comms link, but with the mobile phone coverage being everywhere, worth thinking about?

Not just Unmanned . .
 

Of course, the 'answer' will not just apply to Unmanned Aircraft. What's good for UAV's/UAS/RPAS will apply equally to any 'flying machine'.

Once the technology is cheap enough who would not invest in an extra 'box' to help detect/identify other aircraft in close proximity? Maybe even an iPad app?

BAE's Jetstream team have previously tested ADSB and IR Camera technology as part of a possible solution to aid 'sense and avoid', and that work is continuing (as we speak) under the Astraea 2 programme.