Civil aviation authorities on three continents are mapping strategies for integrating a surge of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into civil airspace, preparing to designate research sites where the vehicles will be permitted to operate and examining safety and privacy concerns.
As the systems have advanced, the terminology used to describe them has changed. Previously known as unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) refers to them as UAS, while the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the European Commission (EC) have begun calling them remotely piloted aircraft or remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS).
ICAO, in the 2013 revision of its Global Aviation Safety Plan, says the notion of having RPAS fully integrated into shared airspace will soon be a reality and that related information and data will evolve rapidly.
An earlier ICAO document predicted that the integration process would be “a long-term activity with many sta…
