A tremendous amount of focus and effort is required to ensure the safety of the passengers and crew traveling on a manned aircraft. Every preflight and flight includes multiple checks to verify the proper procedures are followed. The aircraft include numerous redundant systems with automated features to identify and diagnose even the slightest deviation from predetermined parameters of operation. These manned aviation safety systems are regulated for performance consistency and can be extremely expensive to design, test, procure and implement. Unmanned aviation faces many of the same challenges of ensuring safety of flight. One major difference is that in an unmanned aircraft there are no passengers or crew at risk. Unmanned Aircraft systems can be a low cost solution for flights or missions that are dangerous or monotonous. The inherent risk of injury in an unmanned aircraft is significantly lower than that of a manned aircraft. For a safety incident to occur the unmanned aircraft would have to interfere with another aircraft or impact an individual on the ground. A significant constraint on this lower cost solution is that it is only of value if the associated safety risk is deemed worthy of sharing manned airspace.
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