Google’s Vos Says Industry Should Leverage Existing Technology to Take to the Air
Dave Vos of Google[x]. Photo: AUVSI.
One day after Amazon unveiled its image of what future airspace could look like for unmanned vehicles, shopping and delivery rival Google laid out its own plan that calls for leveraging existing technology and going light on regulation.
Dave Vos, leader of Google[x]’s Project Wing, said at the Unmanned Traffic Management Convention at NASA’s Ames Research Center that the cell phone industry has solved a lot of communications problems, and the unmanned aircraft industry should take advantage of them to allow small UAS to file flight plans online and have them approved or altered nearly immediately.
The proposed flight plan would be sent via cellular communications to an airspace service provider, which would analyze them, see if there is a potential conflict with other vehicles and then either approve the flight or suggestion alterations.
All small UAS would carry cheap Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) transceivers — Vos had previously announced that Google plans to bring these systems to market — to show their location.
“Let’s work with the cell phone industry. This is a great opportunity … to move up into the third dimension. Join us, you can make a ton of money and so can we, and we can have fun doing it,” Vos said at the convention, which is cohosted by NASA and AUVSI’s Silicon Valley Chapter.
“If I know where I am and I know where everyone else is and I know what they’re going to do, then we won’t run into each other,” he said. Google will make ADS-B systems so affordable that “if you can’t afford it, you kind of can’t afford to fly, in my opinion.”
ADS-B would be the first step, but the unmanned aircraft industry should work with the cell phone industry to make vehicle-to-vehicle communication simple and prevalent, Vos said. The same technology that is behind the Internet of Things — devices that can connect to networks, such as a refrigerator that can alert you that you’re out of milk — could be used for this, he said.
“Let’s work with the cellular industry; let’s work to make device-to device happen. It’s really simple; it’s really obvious. Let’s just go and do it,” he said.
Manned aircraft would have the right of way of any airspace they pass through, and small UAS would use the same ADS-B communication to know they’re coming and get out of the way.
For this to work, Vos said there would need to be a regulatory change. Helicopters don’t currently have to carry ADS-B systems, but they would need to if they are going to fly below 500 feet in the same airspace as unmanned aircraft, he said.
However, he said they could use the same cheap ADS-B systems as small UAS, so it wouldn’t be a costly addition.
Vos said knowing the identity of each aircraft in the airspace is key to making the system work. When a flight plan is filed, the airspace service provider would use a software key to validate who owns the aircraft.
Air traffic control officials, already overburdened with work, wouldn’t need to be notified of the small UAS flight plans unless there is an emergency, he said.
“If we just do these [actions], we could literally be up and running in single years,” Vos said. “From here on out, the world is going to be our playground.”
