ICUAS is the successor of UAV' 08-10

Since its debut in 2008, the annual UAV Symposium has grown tremendously. To better reflect this growth and embrace the attention the field of unmanned systems receives globally, this annual meeting will be renamed “INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS”. ICUAS’11 will be held in Denver, CO, during the week of May 23, 2011. ICUAS’11 will host representatives from academia, industry, federal and state agencies, government, the private sector, users, practitioners and engineers, investors and venture capitalists, as well as businessmen and lawyers, who wish to be affiliated with, contribute technically, administratively, financially and legally to this highly demanding and rapidly evolving and expanding field.

UAS related research and development has reached the level of maturity that allows national and international organizations, agencies, industry, military and civilian authorities to speak openly about their upcoming integration into the national airspace, the need for well defined roadmaps of UAS expectations, the need for technical requirements and standards that are prerequisite to their full utilization, as well as legal and perhaps ethical issues. Although military applications of UAS have dominated the field thus far, a significant percentage of future applications will focus on the civilian and public domains. Already UAS are being used for environment protection and climate monitoring. Challenges to be faced and overcome include, among others, see-and-avoid systems, robust, fault-tolerant flight control systems, payloads, communications, levels of autonomy, manned-unmanned swarms, networked-controlled swarms, as well as challenges related to policies, procedures, regulations, safety, risk analysis assessment, airworthiness, certification issues, operational constraints, standardization, frequency management, all of paramount importance, which, coupled with ‘smart’, ‘environmentally friendly’ cutting edge technologies will pave the way towards full integration of UAS with manned aviation and into the respective national airspace.
ICUAS’11 aims at bringing together different groups of qualified military and civilian representatives worldwide, organization representatives, funding agencies, industry and academia, private sector and investment group representatives to discuss the current state of UAS advances, and the roadmap to their full utilization in military and integration in civilian domains. Focused interests of diverse groups involved in UAS research and development will be discussed. Special emphasis will be given to current and future research opportunities, and to ‘what comes next’ in terms of the essential technologies that need be utilized to advance further UAS.