Aspects of Equipping Transport Facilities with Systems for Controlling Routes of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Currently, the problem of ensuring safety of flights of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over the territory of transport infrastructure facilities (TIF), primarily airports, remains topical.In one of the previous works, the author together with the co-author proposed a method for increasing safety of movement of unmanned aerial vehicles and the system for controlling the routes of unmanned aerial vehicles (hereinafter – route control system, RCS) that implements it, which makes it possible to improve safety and security of UAV traffic at transport infrastructure facilities by limiting UAV traffic area strictly to a dedicated air corridor (DAC). The development of this system creates the prerequisites for removing the existing restrictions on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles at transport infrastructure facilities.For practical implementation of the proposed system, it is relevant to develop a method of placing RCS at transport infrastructure facilities. This condition can be justified by the fact that RCS, as a rule, will be located under conditions of dense infrastructural development, including dangerous technical elements of technical equipment, a collision of a UAV with which can lead to an emergency situation (ES); besides, the movement of air/ground vehicles will be carried out in the immediate vicinity of RCS along transport routes/corridors, and employees, passengers and visitors of TIF will move along the pedestrian paths.The objective of this study – to develop a methodology for placing systems controlling routes of unmanned aerial vehicles at transport infrastructure facilities.The study conducted with well-known scientific methods, including the basic routing problem posed by Dantzig and Ramser, modelling, analysis, and synthesis, made it possible to develop a method for placing RCS for unmanned aerial vehicles at transport infrastructure facilities. The practical application of the proposed methodology makes it possible to build routes for movement of UAV at TIF, to form a network of dedicated air corridors for UAV at TIF operated in relationship with the system, determine the optimal location of the RCS elements at TIF.