Abstract
Recent public discourse regarding unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) usage and regulation is focused around public privacy and safety. Most authorities have employed key guidelines and licensing procedures for piloting UAVs, however there is marginal consensus amongst regulators and a limited view towards unified procedures. This paper aims to analyze the key challenges that affect the use of UAVs and to determine if the current rules address those challenges. For this purpose: privacy, safety, security, public nuisance and trespass are tested. A set of criteria are developed to perform a comparative analysis against the existing UAV regulations to determine how they are meeting the specified criteria. Within this framework, five countries are selected: Australia, Canada, European Union (EU), United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA), with usage data and length of time between regulatory reviews ensuring any analysis is realized on updated protocols. The regulations of each country are then compared against the developed criteria. The findings show there are shortfalls with the majority of regulations failing to meet some criteria and the results confirm that key issues fail to be addressed. Finally, recommendations are suggested for filling the gaps in the regulations.
Highlights
The use of commercial and private unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is becoming increasingly ubiquitous
In the context of safety criterion, four points will be emphasized which are a minimum level of knowledge, collision avoidance, visual line of sight (VLOS) and impact, whereas in the security criterion, two points will be emphasized which are the loss of control and anonymity
This paper aimed to examine how the current unmanned aerial vehicle regulations are addressing the challenges and issues affecting the use of UAVs
Summary
The use of commercial and private unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. In 2018, the number of remote pilot licenses in Australia had increased by 53% over the previous year [1]. In 2021, approximately 22,000 remote pilot licenses had been issued, averaging 300 new licenses per month [1]. With the increase in the number of UAVs, there comes a greater need for regulation to ensure the safety and privacy of the public. On 19 December 2018, two drones were flown close to the Gatwick Airport perimeter resulting in the airport being shut down for 33 h and causing over 140,000 travelers to be affected [2]. The incident was the first time a major airport was shut down due to a drone incursion and demonstrated how it could disrupt the operations of a major airport and air traffic routes. The case remains unsolved, but the incident focused political attention on drone operations
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