The popular image of pilotless aircraft may be of predator drones on bombing runs in Afghanistan, but nonmilitary uses for unmanned aerial vehicles are fairly common, and commercial applications are just around the corner.

As we reported in this week’s Business Courier , Wilmington is vying for selection as one of six test sites for UAVs. The Federal Aviation Administration has just begun a selection process. Economic development officials in Clinton County think a test site would attract new research and manufacturing businesses that create local jobs.

While FAA the now bans virtually all commercial operation of UAVs, many industries are eager to begin using them, said Ben Gielow, general counsel for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International in Washington, D.C. Future uses will include crop monitoring and spraying, inspecting pipelines and power lines, disaster relief, and wildlife monitoring and land management, he said.

Current timelines call for the FAA to release final rules for UAVs weighing 50 pounds or less by mid-2014. Uses are mainly determined by the sensors they can deploy, and that’s where much research is focused.

“The platform itself doesn’t care why you’re flying. We refer to it as the truck. It’s the thing you put on the truck that makes it what it is,” Gielow said.

There are still significant technology hurdles ahead before UAVs can share airspace with piloted aircraft, Gielow said. The most important one is improvements in “sense and avoid” technology that can do what human pilots do – anticipate trouble and get out of the way when another aircraft is in the vicinity.

“There’s still a lot of debate about how that’s going to progress,” he said.