The Use of Drones in Spain: Towards a Platform for Controlling UAVs in Urban Environments

Abstract

Rapid advances in technology make it necessary to prepare our society in every aspect. Some of the most significant technological developments of the last decade are the UAVs (Unnamed Aerial Vehicles) or drones. UAVs provide a wide range of new possibilities and have become a tool that we now use on a daily basis. However, if their use is not controlled, it could entail several risks, which make it necessary to legislate and monitor UAV flights to ensure, inter alia, the security and privacy of all citizens. As a result of this problem, several laws have been passed which seek to regulate their use; however, no proposals have been made with regards to the control of airspace from a technological point of view. This is exactly what we propose in this article: a platform with different modes designed to control UAVs and monitor their status. The features of the proposed platform provide multiple advantages that make the use of UAVs more secure, such as prohibiting UAVs’ access to restricted areas or avoiding collisions between vehicles. The platform has been successfully tested in Salamanca, Spain.

A Comparative Analysis of the Legislation Evolution for Drone Use in OECD Countries

“…For example, Cracknell [22] presented an analysis on the legislation of drone use in Australia, USA, other countries (UK and China), and the EU. Cunliffe et al [15] analyzed the safe growth of lightweight drones in UK, whereas Chamoso et al [12] discussed the use of drones in Spain with reference to Spanish and European legislation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the legislative framework for the use of drones in so many countries is examined, highlighting major similarities and differences.…”

“…Recently, drones have become an important enforcement tool. Except for weapon machines [8][9][10][11][12][13][14], they are also employed for commercial purposes [2,8,10,11], research [15], and other purposes [16]. Drones have been used by the police in order to deal with illegal immigration [17], for border surveillance in USA [17][18][19], and in Europe by Frontex [16,20].…”

Sky-Farmers: Applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in Agriculture

“…These are staggering numbers, hence monitoring and daily head counts of these large number of animals can be challenging. UAVs can thus find application here and be used to perform headcounts of livestock across these large grazing areas [31][32][33]. Animal counting can be done either by using image recognition [31] or using heat detecting infra-red cameras [34].…”

“…UAVs can thus find application here and be used to perform headcounts of livestock across these large grazing areas [31][32][33]. Animal counting can be done either by using image recognition [31] or using heat detecting infra-red cameras [34]. For image processing, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has emerged in recent times as the most widely used [35].…”

“…There is therefore the need to draw up legislation to regulate the new possibilities and application areas of UAVs. Countries such as the USA, the UK, Germany and Spain [31] are leading the way in this direction by drafting guidelines for the use of UAVs and areas over which they can be flown. Other countries of the world are however still some way behind.…”