My understanding was that the autonomous part is not really the barrier at this point. After all, military drones fly around the world already (for 10 years) a

My understanding was that the autonomous part is not really the barrier at this point. After all, military drones fly around the world already (for 10 years) and there are strong analogues in civilian flight/aircraft. The problem is "airspace integration", i.e. how does an unmanned aircraft communicate with other pilots, ground, etc. and what are the rules (right of way, visual separation, etc) with planes in lower classes of airspace. That problem has also been around for 10 years, and I would say nearly no progress has been made on that front. If there were progress on that (some kind of regulatory solution/certainty), it would unlock a whole lot of activity here.