NASA Building Air Traffic Control System for Drones

September 2nd, 2014

Via: The Verge:

NASA is developing an air traffic control system for drones. The New York Times reports the US space agency is working on creating a management system for vehicles that fly at around 400 to 500 feet off the ground — much lower than conventional aircraft — at its Moffett Field base around four miles from Google’s Mountain View headquarters. The system would check for other low-flying drone traffic, help the small unmanned vehicles avoid buildings, and scan for adverse weather conditions that might knock a drone out of the sky.

While the drone system would follow the same principles as full-fledged air traffic control, the NYT says its control center would be fully automated. Parimal H. Kopardekar, the NASA principal researcher managing the program, said that the first applications for the system would be in sparsely populated areas, performing such tasks as monitoring oil pipelines or crops. “In agriculture,” Dr. Kopardekar said, “I’m hoping we will see some action inside of the next year.”

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