Review of the Current State of UAV Regulations

By Claudia Stöcker, Rohan Bennett, Francesco Nex, Markus Gerke, Jaap Zevenbergen. Remote Sensing, 2017

515 citations recorded by the source corpus.

UAVs—unmanned aerial vehicles—facilitate data acquisition at temporal and spatial scales that still remain unachievable for traditional remote sensing platforms. However, current legal frameworks that regulate UAVs present significant barriers to research and development. To highlight the importance, impact, and diversity of UAV regulations, this paper provides an exploratory investigation of UAV regulations on the global scale. For this, the methodological approach consists of a research synthesis of UAV regulations, including a thorough literature review and a comparative analysis of national regulatory frameworks. Similarities and contrasting elements in the various national UAV regulations are explored including their statuses from the perspectives of past, present, and future trends. Since the early 2000s, countries have gradually established national legal frameworks. Although all UAV regulations have one common goal—minimizing the risks to other airspace users and to both people and property on the ground—the results reveal distinct variations in all the compared variables. Furthermore, besides the clear presence of legal frameworks, market forces such as industry design standards and reliable information about UAVs as public goods are expected to shape future developments.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b7f54ee6eb2518cb37af1b8628454d35ebb4464

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Aerospace Engineering

In Environmental Engineering

Citations in the corpus

A Tutorial on UAVs for Wireless Networks: Applications, Challenges, and Open Problems (2018, background): “In general, five main criteria are often considered when developing UAV regulations [31], [32]: 1) Applicability: pertains to determining the scope (considering type, weight, and role of UAVs) where UAV regulations are applied, 2) Operational limitations: related to restrictions on the locations of ”
Survey on UAV Cellular Communications: Practical Aspects, Standardization Advancements, Regulation, and Security Challenges (2018, background): “Current UAV regulations are mainly based on six criteria, as explained below [165].”
What Will the Future of UAV Cellular Communications Be? A Flight From 5G to 6G (2021, background): “Though hurdles like safety regulations [92], noise concerns, and infrastructure needs could prolong projected launch dates, over 100 cities are already targeting urban air mobility solutions, with several companies planning to lift air taxis and a”
Thermal Infrared Imaging from Drones Offers a Major Advance for Spider Monkey Surveys (2019, background): “Full implementation of the use of drones for population monitoring is technologically feasible, but at present, the regulatory framework in most countries does not allow for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights [46] nor flying at night and thus poses a challenge for surveys of large remote ar”
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Remote Sensing for Field-Based Crop Phenotyping: Current Status and Perspectives (2017, background): “In addition to the regulations based on risk management, there are regulations based on certification for UAVs, which are similar to those for manned spacecraft (Stöcker et al., 2017).”
UAV assistance paradigm: State-of-the-art in applications and challenges (2020, unknown): “[30] • UAV Regulations.”