The University of Texas at Arlington will be assisting the federal government with drone testing by helping to design rules regulating how unmanned aircraft can share airspace with airplanes and other manned flying machines, The Associated Press reported.

The North Texas state university is a part of the Lone Star Unmanned Aircraft Systems Initiative, one of six programs nationwide picked to assist the Federal Aviation Administration in drone testing. The Lone Star Unmanned Aircraft Systems Initiative is led by Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

University officials learned Friday that their program had been granted an FAA certificate of authorization allowing researchers "to fly unmanned aircraft on the property surrounding its research institute, near Handley-Ederville Road and Randol Mill Road, up to an altitude of 400 feet," The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

The university's research institute will focus on how to install "detect and avoid" technology in flying machines to prevent them from running into each other, as well as avoid obstruction on the ground - a building, an animal or a person.

Students and professors at the university are conducting "cutting-edge" research for the FAA, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. Researchers want to get the flying machines programmed so that they "talk to one another."

"Our focus is on the safe operation of unmanned aircraft," Atilla Dogan, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The FAA hopes is to complete its work on unmanned aircraft rules by 2015, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.