The UAV community that will meet soon in Las Vegas for Unmanned Systems North America might draw some wisdom from the effort to introduce unmanned aircraft in UK civil airspace. In a July 12 briefing at the Farnborough Airshow outside of London, the director of the UK’s Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation & Assessment (Astraea) described an approach that differs in fundamental ways from the U.S. strategy of integrating UAVs.
According to the FAA, more than 50 companies, universities and government agencies in the U.S. are developing some 155 unmanned aircraft designs. In contrast, the UK effort has coalesced around a handful of major aerospace companies that are perhaps best able to crack the technical challenges to UAV airspace integration, foremost among them autonomous operation, secure communications and “sense-and-avoid” collision avoidance. Astraea is an industry-government partnership supported by the UK government through the Technology Strategy Board, a non-departmental public body, the Welsh government and economic development organization Scottish Enterprise. The industry partners are software firm AOS, which specializes in autonomous systems, joined by BAE Systems, Cobham, Cassidian, QinetiQ, Rolls-Royce and Thales.
