Robotic Nation Evidence

NASA working on integrating robot craft into nation's airspace

From the article:

NASA said Thursday it is launching a program that could have robot planes and conventional piloted aircraft routinely and safely sharing civil airspace by 2008.
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are now limited primarily to restricted test or military airspace.

"The fundamental underpinnings of this program are how can we safely introduce this class into the national airspace system?" said Jeff Bauer, manager of the $360 million program for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

See also this article

$360 million is a lot of money to spend, and 2008 is a very agressive goal considering that there are no robotic planes flying in commercial airspace right now.

Predictably, the article mentions nothing about robots flying passenger aircraft. Having "robot planes and conventional piloted aircraft routinely and safely sharing civil airspace by 2008" is a necessary step, however, if we are going to eliminate human pilots from airplanes.