No one has its own air pipe system.

With the emergence of an unmanned aerial vehicle that subverts the future, how can we ensure the safety of small drones in airspace and airspace itself? As on the ground, traffic control is unavoidable. Recently, NASA has established a partnership with the unmanned aerial Vehicle System application development platform start-up, Airware, to develop an unmanned air traffic control system for 4 years.

Founded in 2011, Airware main industry is not unmanned aircraft development, but unmanned aerial Vehicle System application development platform, it can be based on UAV chip development, such as path optimization navigation applications, but also provide logic board, brakes, sensors and other unmanned aircraft control components. Last year Airwave was selected for Y Combinator Winter 2013, and last year received a 10.4 million dollar financing from Andreessen Horowitz and received a 25 million dollar B-round financing from Kleiner in late July.

The development of UAV air control system is also the continuation of its main business. The basic idea is to give the UAV a wireless communication device, use the wireless network to return the data, and then give the UAV air traffic control system for processing. The pilot site for the project was selected in the world's busiest airspace-California, during which a series of prototype air control systems will be established. Both sides will be under the same interface to the UAV, sensors and other hardware, as well as the separation of aircraft and collision avoidance software testing, but also the 4D track Technology Modeling (4D track technology after the aircraft can through the Air Pipe Center interactive data, realize the computer networking).

It is reported that the first prototype of the project is an internet-based system. As in commercial flight, the drone operator would need to submit a flight plan for approval, which would then emit signals based on other physical obstacles such as flight information, climate forecasts and antennas. Airware plans to launch a series of flight and laboratory tests at NASA's California base for different types of drones (four-rotors, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft), which could begin this year at the fastest. The objective of the first phase of the test is to understand how different aircraft respond to air duct systems.

In the future, however, the project will consider developing more sophisticated systems that dynamically manage unmanned drones in flight by sending instructions. For example, when the drones of multiple carriers fly through the same airspace, the control system will steer the drones away from each other, or take action in the event of an error, such as when the drone is out of contact with the operator. For example, when the drone is lost outside the approved airspace, the system automatically sends an order for the drone to return to the specified airspace or to land immediately. What orders to give depends on the circumstances, such as the distance between the drone and the residential area, the size and weight of the drone. NASA hopes the system will eventually be able to perform some automatic control functions, such as when a helicopter swarm is suddenly out of date to take over the drone's flight control.

However, to do so requires a reliable means of communication between the UAV and the air traffic control system. But traditional aircraft and air traffic control systems to communicate or send digital signals is too cumbersome to be used to small unmanned aircraft. So Airware chose the way to connect to the wireless data. The UAV remote Sensing system developed by the China new map company not long ago adopted the remote flight transmission device based on Beidou Short message communication technology, which can be connected with the air traffic control department, and has the technical basis of a certain UAV air pipe system, However, it remains to be seen whether the communication efficiency of Beidou Short message can effectively support the Air-to-ground communication when the number of UAV is large.

The Federal Aviation Administration has not yet established rules for the use of commercial drones in airspace in the country. But many companies in fields such as agriculture, logistics and surveying have a strong interest in drone applications, and it is predicted that by 2018 the United States will have 7500 unmanned aircraft weighing 25 kg and below. The increasing number of unmanned opportunities poses a threat to airspace security. Therefore, the development of UAV air control system is a rainy day.

Standardization is particularly important in view of the growing number of companies that are developing drone technology. Not long ago, a Dronecode project was launched under the auspices of Linux Foundation, which aims to build an open-source platform for unmanned aerial systems, providing a vast open source code base for developers of systems and tools such as unmanned aerial operating systems and navigation tools. The maturity and growth of such projects can also provide a foundation for the establishment of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) air duct system.