The 2018 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS'18, will be held on June 12-15, 2018 in the Dallas Marriott City Center that is situated in the heart of a vibrant Arts District area. Detailed information about the Hotel and its facilities may be found here.

The Conference spans four days. June 12 will be a Workshop/Tutorial day, followed by a three-day technical Conference on June 13-15. Judging from the interest ICUAS has drawn over the past eight years and its growth, ICUAS'18 is expected to attract high numbers of participants from academia, industry, federal and state agencies, government, the private sector, users, practitioners and engineers, who wish to be affiliated with and contribute technically to this highly demanding and evolving and expanding field. ICUAS'18 is fully sponsored by the ICUAS Association, which is a non-profit organization. Information about the Association may be found at www.icuas.com.

The theme of ICUAS'18 will be twofold:

• UAS/RPAS design for assured autonomy
• Regulations, policy and law to enable UAS/RPAS technologies

The main novelty of ICUAS'18 is a separate track on regulations, policy, legal and ethical issues that are essential to allow for integration of UAS/RPAS in the national airspace. National and international organizations, agencies, industry, military and civilian authorities are working towards defining roadmaps of UAS expectations, technical requirements and standards that are prerequisite to their full utilization, as well as legal, policy and ethical issues. The next generation of UAS is expected to be used for a wide spectrum of civilian and public domain applications. Challenges to be faced and overcome include, among others, see-and-avoid systems, robust and fault-tolerant flight control systems, payloads, communications, levels of autonomy, manned-unmanned swarms, network-controlled swarms, as well as challenges related to policies, procedures, regulations, safety, risk analysis assessment, airworthiness, certification issues, operational constraints, standardization and 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'18 aims at bringing together different groups of qualified military and civilian representatives worldwide, organization representatives, funding agencies, industry and academia, to discuss the current state of UAS advances, and the roadmap to their full utilization in civilian and public domains. Special emphasis will be given to current and future research opportunities, and to 'what comes next' in terms of the essential technologies that need to be utilized to advance further UAS. Conference topics include:

ICUAS'18 topics of interest include, but will not be be limited to:

Unmanned system autonomy, collaboration and coordination, formation control, validation and verification and unmanned system design for assured autonomy, are topics of great interest to ICUAS'18.

Through Keynote addresses, round table panel discussions and presentations, it is expected that the outcome of the Conference will be a clear understanding of what industry, military, civilian, national/international authorities need, and what are the crucial next steps that need to be completed before UAS are utilized in everyday life applications.