Looking for Tangibility

Today, drones (i.e., autonomous or remotely piloted flying machines) are being built and start to be used. Military operations using drones are now becoming better established. However, drones are still under-regulated in the civilian world. Main questions are about safety and security. Therefore, drone operations have to be seriously considered by commercial and general aviation regulatory institutions, such as ICAO at the international level, FAA in the USA, and DGAC in France. More generally, this kind of issue always comes into play when new life-critical technology is integrated in our everyday life. In other words, this new technology has to be tangible for use (i.e., we need to demonstrate that use of technology makes sense from various relevant points of view). Something is tangible when it is graspable in the physical sense, but also believable in the figurative sense (e.g., an idea or a concept that cannot be grasped by the mind). In the case of drones, they will become operationally tangible when they will be safely, efficiently, and comfortably usable and useful for tasks, such as package delivery, image capture for news purposes (e.g., television), and disaster management support. In addition, new technology brings new properties that need to be explored. For example, drones become birds that can see what people cannot see. They create new supports to situation awareness and other functions that were impossible before. In addition to regulatory framework (the safety issue), important concerns that need to be taken into account are privacy (the ethical issue), unfair competition (the economic development penalization issue), and the toy effect (the use-for-fun issue). Technology design has shifted from mechanical engineering to information technology. For example, mechanical and aerospace engineers created and developed aircraft the way they are today; information technology specialists, who do not have professional aviation training, already started to be the designers and developers of a new generation of drones (e.g., for 3D movie making). Some of