Unmanned air vehicles will soon be flying in civil airspace, believes Rockwell Collins (hall 4, B17). The company is laying the groundwork for this through a series of activities to further the technical and cultural viability of flying UAVs safely alongside manned aircraft.

"UAVs will fly with manned aircraft in commercial airspace soon," says David Vos, senior director of control technologies. Vos joined Rockwell Collins in April 2008 when the company acquired automated guidance and control specialists Athena Technologies, where he had been chief executive and chief technology officer.

To help "push industry from a cultural perspective", Rockwell Collins has launched a new website that will be a one-stop shop for the various UAV activities happening worldwide. Much of that activity is aimed at figuring how to fly manned and unmanned aircraft in the same airspace safely on a routine basis. Vos says this process has been taking place regularly at Balad air base in Iraq for several years with a variety of UAVs operating in concert with manned military and commercial aircraft.

Rockwell Collins provides navigation and control systems for at least four popular military UAS, including the AAI Shadow and General Atomics Sky Warrior. Beyond that, Vos says automation technologies will lead to variably manned aircraft, pending public acceptance. "To step into a plane and no one is flying it? There's no question that this is coming in the future," he says.

The technology is being moved forward by several test programmes due to take flight later this summer. Rockwell Collins yesterday announced it will provide its Athena 411 flight control and navigation system for the Canadian CQ-10A SnowGoose cargo UAV, a multipurpose gyrocopter that will autonomously deliver up to 261kg (575lb) of cargo to up to six individual locations, including medical aid, food and water. First flights are planned for late summer.

Late summer will also mark the start of test flights in the third phase of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency damage tolerance programme, which, among other tests, will demonstrate recovery and autonomous landing of a subscale Boeing F/A-18 model after losing 80% of one wing as well as horizontal and vertical tail surfaces. Phase two of the programme included demonstrating autonomous aircraft recovery and landing after the F/A-18 model lost 60% of a wing.

Source: Flight Daily News

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