COLLISION-AVERSION TESTS START UNMANNED CRAFT COULD SHARE SKIES.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

MOJAVE - A collision avoidance system is undergoing tests as a preliminary step toward allowing unmanned aircraft to share the skies with small private aircraft.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration wants to use unmanned aerial vehicles for scientific and aeronautics search. But the craft must show they can operate safely and routinely within the same airspace as civilian planes.

``The demonstrations are steppingstones to getting to that point,'' said Glenn Hamilton, UAV subsystems project manager for NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. ``This is the starting point for getting to that goal.''

Hamilton said he believes that within five years, UAVs could be flying in general-aviation airspace. The U.S. military is also interested in technologies that will allow the growing number of UAVs - such as the Global Hawk and Predator spy planes used in Afghanistan and Iraq - to use the same airspace as manned aircraft.

The tests of the system called Detect, See and Avoid use an aircraft built by famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites. His spindly, odd-looking Proteus is fitted with a high-frequency radar designed to detect other aircraft within a six-mile range.

As a backup, the aircraft is equipped with a system that detects aircraft with transponders - a device that sends out aircraft identification signals - at a range of up to 35 miles.

Proteus is flown via remote control by a pilot on the ground for the tests, which involve a wide variety of ``intruder'' aircraft, ranging from hot air balloons to an F/A-18 fighter.

The flights, expected to be completed either today or early next week, are being conducted in restricted airspace north of California City.

For safety, the aircraft are forbidden to get within 500 feet of each other and they keep at least a 200-foot difference in altitude.

The testers are flying 22 different scenarios of aircraft flying in close proximity - some, but not all, on collision courses.

``We wanted to see if the ground pilot had enough information to determine whether there was a collision course,'' said Russ Wolfe, an engineer with Modern Technology Solutions, an Alexandra, Va., company working on the test program.

As of Thursday, 18 of the 22 scenarios had been flown and all were successful.

During the tests, as a safety measure, pilots were in Proteus' cockpit to take control if needed.

``Proteus is an ideal test bed,'' said Doug Shane, vice president of business development for Scaled Composites. ``It's nice to have two humans, four eyeballs, making sure the guy on the ground with the mouse - me - doesn't do the wrong thing.''

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- ran in Valley edition only) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's collision avoidance system is in the nose of a Proteus aircraft.

(2 -- 3; 2 color in AV edition only; 3 ran in Valley edition only) The collision avoidance system could allow unmanned aircraft, like this Proteus, above, to share air space with piloted planes. Design engineer/test pilot Pete Siebold shows how the computer-controlled collision avoidance system works.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer