Would you get into a plane with no pilot? Tests begin on next-generation of civilian 'drone' aircraft flown by remote-control

• Civilian aircraft would use same pilotless technology as military drones
• It could slash costs of air travel and make possible new airborne services
• Government-backed £62m project begins testing over Scotland next month
  

By Damien Gayle

Published: 04:46 EDT, 27 November 2012 | Updated: 12:10 EDT, 28 November 2012

The passenger aircraft of the future could one day be flown by remote by pilots sitting in a control room hundreds of miles away.

Tests on a new breed of civilian aircraft which use the same pilotless technology currently found in military drones begin next month in the UK.

The consortium behind the project hopes it will dramatically slash the costs of air travel, make possible new airborne services, and free pilots from potentially dangerous but essential missions.

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Would you get in? A Jetstream aircraft like this one will be used in the first tests of pilotless, remote-controlled civilian aircraft set to begin in the skies over the UK next month

A twin-engined Jetstream commuter jet will take off from Warton Aerodrome, Lancashire and head north entirely under remote control towards Scotland within a few weeks, The Economist reports.

Staged by government-backed consortium Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation and Assessment (ASTRAEA), the test are will look at how well communications links operate with pilotless aircraft.

It will also test failsafe systems that will allow the aircraft's computers to take autonomous control of the flight should contact with the ground be broken.

ASTRAEA is a £62million programme backed by the British government and seven aerospace companies including UK firms BAE, QinetiQ and Rolls-Royce.

Modern planes are already capable of taking off, flying to a destination and landing with no human interference whatsoever.

But the Jetstream test will see whether they are able to do those things safely without a pilot - while at the same time complying with the rules of the skies.

VIDEO: See the ASTREA system in action!

Death from above: A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone takes off from Kandahar, Afghanistan

The unmanned aircraft will need to be able to 'sense and avoid' other planes that may cross its path. In the case of large-scale commercial aircraft this is easy. In most cases these are equipped with transponders warning of the plane's presence - and sometimes its course, altitude and speed.

THE GLASSES THAT STOP JET LAG

It’s one of the drawbacks for anyone setting off for far-flung places: How bad will the jet lag be when you get there?

Those feelings of tiredness and disorientation could become a thing of the past, however - thanks to what are claimed to be the world’s first ‘time-control’ spectacles.

The high-tech glasses emit a soft green glow which is said to work on the human body clock to change our sleep patterns.

Using the device, called the Re-Timer, means long-haul air passengers can step off the plane feeling fresh, even after a flight from Britain to Australia, say the sleep researchers who created it.

Inventor Professor Leon Lack said the glasses could also help insomnia sufferers, keep shift workers more alert and get teenagers out of bed in the morning.

‘The light from Re-Timer stimulates the part of the brain responsible for regulating the 24-hour body clock,’ said Professor Lack, of Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.

‘Using a light device allows you to transition your body clock to a new time zone in small steps. This eliminates the sudden change people experience after flying and reduces the symptoms of jet lag.’

However, light aircraft and gliders are not legally required to be equipped with such beacons, meaning that ASTRAEA's Jetstream must also be able to 'see' through video cameras attached to image-recognition software.

In other tests, to be carried out over the Irish Sea, aircraft will be flown near to the unmanned plane, with some following a deliberate collision course to see whether the drone can recognise the danger and take evasive action.

'The results to date suggest you can do sense-and-avoid as well as a human,' Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal, director of ASTRAEA, told The Economist.

The market for such a technology is potentially huge, and lucrative. In the U.S., Congress has asked aviation regulators to make unmanned aircraft work with the existing air-traffic control system as soon as 2015.

Small drones are already used commercially for things like aerial photography, but in most jurisdictions they must remain within sight of their pilot on the ground.

With the costs of pilotless aircraft much lower than manned aircraft or helicopters, such commercial drones could make tasks like road traffic monitoring, border patrols, police surveillance far cheaper.

They also have potential applications in environments which pose a risk to pilots, including monitoring forest fires or accidents at nuclear power plants.

They even have the potential for providing temporary airborne Wi-Fi or mobile phone services.

By 2020, the global market for civilian unmanned aircraft and services could, according to some analysts be worth more than $50billion, The Economist reported.

Commercial freight and postal flights could one day also lose on-board pilots, but questions remain as to whether airlines could persuade customers to board pilotless passenger aircraft - no matter what the discount.

The hope is, rather, that such flights will have just one pilot in the future, rather than the team of two found on most modern airliners.