Autonomous navigation and control of unmanned aerial systems in the national airspace

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) have become smaller and less expensive making them accessible to businesses, law enforcement and the general public. Businesses have proposed ways to use these aircraft for commercial purposes. For unmanned aerial systems to be used on a large scale, an autonomous flight control system needs to be developed. However under current and proposed FAA regulations, all UAV's must be piloted by people to fly in the national airspace. In order for a system like this to be adopted it needs to minimize the amount of changes to the current air traffic control system to reduce costs and air traffic controller training. A system design for this purpose is discussed in this paper.