I can’t find a transcript of the recent address by NASA’s Parimal Kopardekar at an unmanned aerial systems conference at the Ames Research Center, but there’s some coverage of it by Elizabeth Weise at Stuff.co.nz. The aviation expert thinks we’ll all soon–very soon–have a drone to do our bidding, conducting research and running errands. Of course, once they’re ubiquitous, it will be easy to introduce mayhem into the system, easier than it is with the traditional postal system. That’s something we’ll have to work on.

Weise’s opening:

Forget getting the latest, greatest cell phone. The next indispensable tech tool may be a drone of your own. And daily life may never be the same.

“I see a time when every home will have a drone. You’re going to use a drone to do rooftop inspections. You’re going to be able to send a drone to Home Depot to get a screw driver,” said Parimal Kopardekar, manager of Nasa’s Safe Autonomous System Operations Project at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

And this won’t happen in some long-distant future. “This is in five or 10 years,” Kopardekar said.

Kopardekar gave a keynote talk at a conference on Unmanned Aerial Systems Traffic Management hosted by Nasa and the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International last week.

“We can completely transform aviation. Quickly,” said Dave Vos, lead of Google’s secretive Project Wing, which is working with Nasa – as are some 100 other companies – on an air traffic control system for small, low-altitude drones.

An effective air traffic system – needed to keep the skies under 500 feet from turning into a demolition derby – will play a major role in turning drones from a plaything into an engine of the economy, one affecting package delivery, agriculture, hazardous waste oversight and more.•