Commercial Drone Use Research Articles

Mapping the Complexity of Legal Challenges for Trustworthy Drones on Construction Sites in the United Kingdom

Drones, unmanned aircraft controlled remotely and equipped with cameras, have seen widespread deployment across military, industrial, and commercial domains. The commercial sector, in particular, has experienced rapid growth, outpacing regulatory developments due to substantial financial incentives. The UK construction sector exemplifies a case where the regulatory framework for drones remains unclear. This article investigates the state of UK legislation on commercial drone use in construction through a thematic analysis of peer-reviewed literature. Four main themes, including opportunities, safety risks, privacy risks, and the regulatory context, were identified along with twenty-one sub-themes such as noise and falling materials. Findings reveal a fragmented regulatory landscape, combining byelaws, national laws, and EU regulations, creating business uncertainty. Our study recommends the establishment of specific national guidelines for commercial drone use, addressing uncertainties and building public trust, especially in anticipation of the integration of “autonomous” drones. This research contributes to the responsible computing domain by uncovering regulatory gaps and issues in UK drone law, particularly within the often-overlooked context of the construction sector. The insights provided aim to inform future responsible computing practices and policy development in the evolving landscape of commercial drone technology.

Transportation bridge infrastructure asset condition monitoring using uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs)

The optimal performance of a road transportation network depends on the serviceability and reliability of bridges connecting the pavements. Bridge performance depends on several geotechnical assets among which abutments play a key role as they support the bridge span, and transfer the vertical and horizontal loads from the superstructure to the foundation. Soil abutments are designed to be stable against overturning and sliding and prevent differential settlement and excessive lateral movements. In the United States, 42 % of bridges are observed to be over 50 years old. Department of Transportation (DOT) agencies periodically monitor and assess the bridge conditions typically every two years. Due to the costs and the time involved in conducting inspections using traditional data collection tools, DOTs are exploring innovative technologies to conduct inspections and realize benefits in terms of access, cost, and safety. They have widely adopted the use of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) for structural health monitoring of bridges. A few studies also conducted 360⁰ bridge inspections using camera sensors mounted on UAVs in the recent past. In this current study, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) guidelines for commercial use of drones were discussed and followed in field studies. Further, UAVs were demonstrated for conducting 360° bridge inspections and identifying the erosion near abutments using three-dimensional models. This paper presents the application of innovative technologies for geotechnical assessments of two bridges in the Alaska region, with a focus on assessing the need for rehabilitation measures. These new technologies have become essential for reliable condition monitoring post-disaster events as well. This approach is expected to benefit the agencies in managing the transportation geotechnical assets in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Drone-Related Agrotechnologies for Precise Plant Protection in Western Balkans: Applications, Possibilities, and Legal Framework Limitations

Modern agriculture necessitates the use of techniques and tools that pollute the environment less and improve the safety of food and feed production. In the field of plant protection, drones are attracting increasing attention due to their versatility and applicability in a variety of environmental and working conditions. Drone crop spraying techniques offer several advantages, including increased safety and cost effectiveness through autonomous and programmed operations based on specific schedules and routes. One of the main advantages of using drones for plant protection is their ability to monitor large areas of crops in a short amount of time. In addition to crop protection management, using drones for augmentative biocontrol facilitates the distribution of beneficial organisms to the exact locations where they are required, which can increase the effectiveness of biocontrol agents while reducing distribution costs. In this context, given the very limited commercial use of drones in the Western Balkans’ agri-food sector, the use of drones in the agri-food industry is a topic that needs to be elaborated on and highly promoted. Additionally, the specific legal regulations in Serbia that currently limit the use of drones in agriculture must be outlined. Conventional crop production is still significantly more prevalent in Serbia, but given the region’s continuous technological progress, there is no doubt that farmers’ education and future investments in precision agriculture will most likely increase the use of state-of-the-art technologies and drones in agriculture.

Emulating underdogs: Tactical drones in the Russia-Ukraine war

ABSTRACT Early studies on state drone proliferation argued that it would be temperate, constrained by high financial, technical, and infrastructural requisites and fielded according to the logic of scarce, exquisite airpower. While this rationale has held for limited conflicts, the high attrition and massive demand of a total war compelled strong standing armies to follow a different model of adoption: emulating weaker violent nonstate actors leveraging low-cost commercial platforms. The Russia-Ukraine war has captured this trend. Despite earlier expectations of armies maintaining advanced airpower for strategic ends, underdog Ukraine, followed by Russia have developed heavy reliance on commercial drone technologies for tactical aims. Framing this in military and battlefield innovation literature and drawing on studies on commercial drone use among violent nonstate actors, we argue that this constitutes a new trajectory involving mixed military arsenals enhanced with dual-use commercial platforms.

Nove perspektive u pogledu borbene upotrebe komercijalnih dronova u kontekstu rusko-ukrajinskog sukoba

The use of combat drones is gaining momentum. In recent years, the phenomenon of the use of commercial drones for the realization of military tasks increased signifificance. The aim of this paper is to provide an answer to the possible directions of further use of this technology, as well as to the effects and dimensions of the existing application, by analyzing the current military conflict in Ukraine as a lesson for the defence system of the Republic of Serbia. Possible dimensions of the application of commercial drones in local conflicts are analyzed through a situational SWOT analysis. The derived conclusion provides a realistic picture of the position reached through the analysis and gives a view of dimension of its use from two opposite angles.

The Use of Drones in the Area of Minimizing Health Risk during the COVID-19 Epidemic

Despite their general availability, drones are not currently widely used in emergency medicine, distribution of medication and other medical products, as well as in epidemiological emergencies, in which limiting interpersonal contact is crucial for minimizing the public health risk. Given the current epidemiological situation, it is pertinent to consider, whether implementing activities with the use of drones can significantly contribute to minimizing health risks, and whether such initiatives are acceptable in the light of applicable legal regulations. The main objective is supported by an analysis of the usefulness of applicable provisions, indicating the direction of possible changes in existing legal regulations. Additionally, the article aims to demonstrate the feasibility of drone use in activities related to combating epidemics, as well as to emphasize their practical importance. Reports on the commercial use of drones in the distribution of goods and services have also been used as material for comprehensive analysis. Simultaneously, the article also includes data on quantities of equipment available to healthcare units in Poland for saving life and health. The present work uses the method of analysis of applicable legal regulations, as a criterion for the usefulness of existing solutions in the area of improving the quality of medical services, including preventive measures and combating the effects of an epidemic.

Robot Operating Systems (ROS): The Fundamentals of ROS and Its Remarkable Performances in the World of Drones

Abstract: A structured communication mechanism is offered by the open-source operating system ROS. With the integration of its framework and toolkits, and a sophisticated operating system for software development, robot deployment is effective. The development of the unique robotic drone applications and a thorough description of how to program the drone using Ros are covered in this paper's brief discussion of the evolution of the Robot Operating System (Ros). Later in the article, the implementation of using a motion controller to control a drone's motion with basic hand motions is shown. However, there has been a significant increase in the commercial use of drones recently, and many drones have invaded public spaces, potentially invading people's right to privacy. To correct this mistake, we have used the ROS to deploy a drone that does not intrude in forbidden places.

Utilization of drones for innovative development of infrastructure and agriculture in Azerbaijan

Today, the market for civil and commercial use of drones is actively developing, while the risks associated with their use are also increasing. At the same time, according to market research data from leading foreign companies, the rapidly developing market for civil and commercial use of drones has the greatest growth potential. Therefore, drone legislation is developing rapidly and is being improved every year. However, now it has come to a state of relative stability, allowing us to assert those general rules that will apply for a long time. The proper implementation of laws on the usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, is proposed for the successful innovation and development of infrastructure and agriculture in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Through the clear enforcement of laws and guidelines of UAVs, involving registration, certification, and regular surveillance of UAVs by the National Aviation Academy, the implementation of drones will be systemized, paving the way for further innovative development of Azerbaijan.

Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) Simulation of Drone Delivery Models in 2030 Japan

An unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) system to support flights beyond visual line-of-sight is considered necessary for the promotion of commercial drone use. In the research and development of UTM systems, cost and time constraints make it difficult to actually fly a large number of drones in the same airspace, so research is mainly conducted using a simulator. This paper presents details of a UTM simulator named the “scalable simulator for knowledge of low-altitude environment” (SKALE) developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with respect to the construction of a model case of drone delivery model set in 2030 in Japan. Moreover, UTM concepts for airspace safety and efficient airspace utilization (parcel transport) are proposed and evaluated using JAXA’s UTM simulator and drone delivery model cases. Simulation results are discussed, and the knowledge gained for the improvement of airspace safety and airspace utilization (parcel transport) efficiency is documented.

Improved delivery policies for future drone-based delivery systems

It is expected that commercial use of drones in the near future will involve delivery service operations by e-commerce companies. We consider relevant strategic and tactical decisions that these retailers will face in drone-based delivery operations, and derive policies on when to offer drone delivery, what delivery capacity to maintain, and what amount to charge for such deliveries. To this end, we develop a Markov decision process (MDP) framework, and introduce two heuristic procedures, through which near-optimal closed-form solutions can be obtained. The results are aimed at helping online retailers to determine in real time whether and to what extent to offer drone-based delivery for given product categories in different service zones. In addition, we study delivery fee structures and identify drone-based delivery pricing strategies under two widely used delivery pricing schemes. For capacity planning decisions, we describe an algorithm to identify the fleet size to utilize to fulfill uncertain demand in a given service region. We also identify structural characteristics on how these decisions and the expected profit are affected by changes in various problem parameters, which can generate generic insights on drone-based delivery operations for e-commerce companies. We find that retailers should prioritize more profitable items when allocating drone delivery capacity, and invest in adding more drones when per order opportunity costs are higher and promised delivery time thresholds are shorter. Retailers can potentially boost their net profits by increasing the effective promised delivery time threshold and/or decreasing the effective delivery delay costs and per order opportunity costs.

Commercial drone use in the context of governance, ethics, and privacy: A techno ethical review

Commercial drone use in the context of governance, ethics, and privacy: A techno ethical review

Behavioural responses of non-breeding waterbirds to drone approach are associated with flock size and habitat

ABSTRACT Capsule: Non-breeding waterbirds are more likely to respond to drone approach when in larger flocks, and responses are more likely in arable and coastal habitats than at inland lochs. Aims: To investigate the extent to which drones are a potential source of disturbance to non-breeding waterbirds. Methods: Using a commercially available quadcopter drone, we approached waterbird flocks of varying sizes in coastal, freshwater, and arable habitats following a standardized protocol. Results: Waterbirds at coastal sites and in arable fields were more likely to respond to drone approach than those at inland freshwater bodies. Larger flocks were more likely to respond to drone approach and responded at a greater distance than smaller flocks. Conclusion: Repeated drone use at coastal and arable sites with large aggregations of feeding or roosting waterbirds could cause energetically costly flight responses, increased stress, and effective loss of available habitat. At such sites, it may be beneficial to regulate recreational and commercial drone use to minimize potential disturbance effects.

DopplerNet: a convolutional neural network for recognising targets in real scenarios using a persistent range–Doppler radar

In the past few years, the commercial use of drones has exploded, since they are a safe and cost-effective solution for many kinds of problems. However, this fact also opens the door for malicious use. This work presents a novel system able to detect and recognise drones from other targets, allowing the police and security agencies to deal with this new aerial thread. The proposed system only uses a persistent range–Doppler radar, avoiding the restrictions of the optical sensors, usually required for the recognition part. The processing is based on constant false alarm rate detection stage, followed by a convolutional neural network that performs the recognition. This network takes as input raw range–Doppler radar data and predicts their class (car, person, or drone). For this purpose, an extensive controlled trial test campaign has been performed, resulting in a novel dataset with more than 17,000 samples of drones, cars, and people, acquired in real outdoor scenarios. As far as authors’ knowledge, this is the first range–Doppler radar database for the recognition of drones and other targets. The high-accuracy results (99.48%) suggest that this system could be successfully used in security and defence applications to discriminate between drones and other entities.

Commercial Use of Drones: Commercial Drones Facing Legal Turbulence: Towards a New Legal Framework in the EU

Commercial Use of Drones: Commercial Drones Facing Legal Turbulence: Towards a New Legal Framework in the EU

Grounding Innovation: How Ex-Ante Prohibitions and Ex-Post Allowances Impede Commercial Drone Use

Unmanned aerial vehicles — “UAVs” or “drones” — are increasingly becoming a mainstream commercial phenomenon and tool for a vast range of commercial consumer, prosumer, and professional activities. Given advances in automation and miniaturization generally — and flight control stability and autopilot systems specifically — anyone can now fly in any airspace at any time by operating hand-held fixed-wing aircraft or quadcopters with little more than an ordinary smartphone or tablet. As such, sales of store-bought drones number in the millions, corresponding to the wide range of civil applications and value propositions that UAVs offer. Though civil drones are an attractive business investment, substantial regulatory headwinds confront the drone industry as startups endeavor to get to market and scale quickly. This is so notwithstanding — or perhaps even because of — the celebrated abilities of most small UAVs to fly boundlessly and collect and record information from nearly any vantage point. Drones are a classically disruptive technology of social, economic, and legal norms. Their operations raise novel and valid concerns in many of these areas, particularly in terms of safety and privacy. Consequently, regulators have responded — and they should. But federal, state, and local lawmakers alike have responded with policy interventions that are too often premature (or untimely) and overly rigid, discouraging the many beneficial uses of UAV technology. In fact, on the basis of ephemeral fears rather than data, regulators initially put in place overbroad and permission-based restraints that were tantamount to a de facto ban on all drone operations. This Article critiques the underlying thinking and approach that federal regulators have taken with respect to civil drones and argues that commercial UAVs should be a “permissionless innovation.” This Article posits that a better alternative to a top-down, ex-anteregulatory scheme is to broadly allow commercial UAVs and to deal with careless or reckless or nefarious operators and operations on a case-by-case, ex-postbasis. In doing so, this Article aims to present lessons learned in the context of commercial UAVs so that inefficiencies and paternalistic rulemaking can be avoided in the regulation of other innovations associated with the Internet of Things, including urban air mobility and electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing technologies — otherwise known as flying cars — that are just around the corner.

Contributions from the Drone Delivery System in Thailand to Environmental Pollution

In recent years, the great development of science and technology together with social movements and commerce has shaped the design and use of commercial drones. This particular emerging technology has boosted the speed and ability of online shopping systems to provide customers ever faster delivery. In addition, Global Warming Potential (GMP) is the most serious impact to people and environment. Carbon dioxide (CO2) from transportation is one of the main contributors contributing to GHG emissions which result in higher number of GWP. Drones should have a reduced GWP impact and other environmental impacts in which these help reduce the number of delivery trucks or other transportation options traveling on roads. In addition, as road infrastructure challenges especially in rural areas, drone delivery systems are able to transport freight across remote supply chain. The use of drones appears to be an important approach because they are not only inexpensive and easily available but can also travel on individual direct routes. In this study by establishing a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework, all emissions from a drone delivery system in rural areas in Chiang Mai, Thailand will be evaluated. The results show that the drone’s part production is the main contributor of all impact categories.

Drone technology for last-mile delivery in Russia: a tool to develop local markets

As the popularity of online shopping increases, last-mile delivery is gaining more and more attention of e-commerce companies. One of the viable solutions to maximizing the benefits of such delivery and cutting its costs is the usage of the rapidly developing drone technology. However, drone delivery is associated with a number of safety and privacy, which makes legislators uneasy about permitting the commercial use of drones. In this paper, we compare the drone regulations applied in various countries with those of Russia and analyze the criteria used to develop such regulations. Six general approaches are thus outlined: officially banning commercial drone operation; making it virtually impossible for drone operators to acquire the necessary registration and license; allowing to fly drones in exceptional cases over restricted areas; prohibiting to fly drones beyond the pilot’s line of visual sight; allowing to fly drones if standard requirements are met; and, finally, following the substantial precedent principle. This analysis shows us the possible strategies Russia could adopt to regulate commercial drone usage. It is thus suggested that Russia should follow the example of Rwanda and China and allow to experiment with drone delivery in rural areas, where the risk to people’s lives and property in case of drone malfunction are lower than in urban areas.

Grounding Innovation: How Ex-Ante Prohibitions and Ex-Post Allowances Impede Commercial Drone Use

Unmanned aerial vehicles—”UAVs” or “drones”—are increasingly becoming a mainstream commercial phenomenon and tool for a vast range of commercial consumer, prosumer, and professional activities. Given advances in automation and miniaturization generally—and flight control stability and autopilot systems specifically—anyone can now fly in any airspace at any time by operating hand-held fixed-wing aircraft or quadcopters with little more than an ordinary smartphone or tablet. As such, sales of store-bought drones number in the millions, corresponding to the wide range of civil applications and value propositions that UAVs offer. Though civil drones are an attractive business investment, substantial regulatory headwinds confront the drone industry as startups endeavor to get to market and scale quickly. This is so notwithstanding—or perhaps even because of—the celebrated abilities of most small UAVs to fly boundlessly and collect and record information from nearly any vantage point. Drones are a classically disruptive technology of social, economic, and legal norms. Their operations raise novel and valid concerns in many of these areas, particularly in terms of safety and privacy. Consequently, regulators have responded—and they should. But federal, state, and local lawmakers alike have responded with policy interventions that are too often premature (or untimely) and overly rigid, discouraging the many beneficial uses of UAV technology. In fact, on the basis of ephemeral fears rather than data, regulators initially put in place overbroad and permission-based restraints that were tantamount to a de facto ban on all drone operations. This Article critiques the underlying thinking and approach that federal regulators have taken with respect to civil drones and argues that commercial UAVs should be a “permissionless innovation.” This Article posits that a better alternative to a top-down, ex-anteregulatory scheme is to broadly allow commercial UAVs and to deal with careless or reckless or nefarious operators and operations on a case-by-case, ex-postbasis. In doing so, this Article aims to present lessons learned in the context of commercial UAVs so that inefficiencies and paternalistic rulemaking can be avoided in the regulation of other innovations associated with the Internet of Things, including urban air mobility and electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing technologies—otherwise known as flying cars—that are just around the corner.

The Commercial Use of Drones in U.S. National Parks

Motivated by current reports showing potential socioeconomic benefits, this research investigated the use of civil drones in national parks and discussed the implications of this use, taking the United States as an example. Relying on literature about concessions in national parks, we have discussed several historical, conceptual, and legal aspects of concessions. In addition, the paper discusses the concerns of several stakeholders including the parks’ management and visitors about privacy and safety. Research findings show that establishing various concession ideas in national parks is profitable and will contribute to increasing the revenues of tourism sector as well as to job creation. The research also shows that the ideas are relatively safe, and should not raise any concerns about using drones in national parks, especially when our recommendations are followed. Research limitations and future research recommendations are discussed at the end of paper.

Legal Issues: The Internet of Drones

Under circumstances that seem reminiscent of the rise of the Internet as a mainstream platform 20 years ago, the rise of recreational and commercial drone use is creating a confused and possibly dangerous tangle of competing interests that the law is having a difficult time keeping up with. The FAA has reported over 600 illegal drone sightings through mid-August of 2015 compared with less than 240 through all of 2014. Pilots of commercial airliners at Newark, Minneapolis, Austin, Tex, and Raleigh-Durham airports have reported sightings and near collisions at altitudes as high as 12,000'. Drones have also been reported to have interfered with firefighting aircraft attacking this summer’s wildfires in California. WiFi and cellular enabled drones (that can be controlled from mobile devices) have been hacked and made to crash. Drone-based photography has raised privacy concerns with reports of drones being attacked or even shot down by property owners and persons being photographed. And questions about the limits of drone use by law enforcement agencies are being raised.