There is no reason to adopt this system for drones. We now have a chance to invent a decentralized, automatic, and scalable system for drone ATC. If drones are produced in the vast fleets I imagine they will be, then this will become the de facto ATC system and the old control tower system will just be background noise.
I have not designed a complete drone ATC system. However, here are a few attributes I think it should have:
- Distributed and Local. There's no reason a slow flying drone should worry about traffic hundreds of miles away. The air traffic the drone monitors should be self-limited in range depending on the drone's characteristics. The ATC system need not be centralized: local drones can figure out how to share airspace themselves.
- Cooperative. The drone behavior model should be: I'll head directly to my destination but will make small adjustments to avoid hazards and collisions.
- Anonymous. Much bandwidth in the current ATC system is dedicated to identifying aircraft, their class, their size, their cargo, and so forth. The purpose of this is to aid a human in a centralized ATC system to prioritize and manage air traffic. With swarms of drones flying, none of them cares about the others' name or ICAO registry number. All they should care about is how to get to their destination safely by sharing airspace, without centralized controller assistance.
- Negotiated. Much like a communications bus protocol, drones could negotiate for the use of the limited resource (airspace). A drone can reserve a slot in space and time (their trajectory) and make small concessions to allow other drones to pass. Drones that are unable to maneuver quickly could "insist" on the trajectory they need to use.
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