Drones are aircraft that are flown without a pilot or crew on board. Drones (also known as Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles or UAVs) are flown remotely by a ground-based human operator. Drones come in many different shapes, sizes and configurations, ranging in weights from a few grams up to a few tonnes. See Drone Taxonomy for more information.
As well as recreational use by hobbyists, the use of drones by commercial operators has been expanding in recent years. Commercial operators use drones for many, varied purposes because they can provide benefits such as speed, efficiency, safety, reduced energy consumption and emissions, and the ability to access hard-to-reach locations. Drone uses include: as platforms for video and photography; mapping terrain; agricultural purposes (e.g., crop spraying or inspecting crop emergence); inspection of infrastructure (e.g., inspecting pipe/power-lines or cell towers); environmental monitoring (e.g., detecting forest fires or monitoring air pollution); by the emergency response services (e.g., documenting accident sites or providing safe aerial views of fires); assisting with search and rescue missions; delivering humanitarian aid (e.g., disaster relief); and last-mile logistics (the subject of the E-Drone research project) making the final delivery of goods to consumers (e.g., parcel delivery).
Like large commercial airliners, drones are allowed to fly over residential areas because airspace is considered a national asset. Previous legal precedents have been set that a landowner does not own an unlimited height of airspace above their land [Lord Bernstein of Leigh v Skyviews & General Ltd]. This means that drones may fly over your house at reasonable heights in such a way as to not cause a nuisance or endangerment to you and your property. Obviously, a reasonable height for an airliner to pass over your house would be much higher than what is considered reasonable for a drone.
There is currently no consensus on the topic as this depends on the use cases for drones, particularly in urban areas. The E-Drone research project has explored these parameters.
Like vehicles on a motorway, there is a wide range of speeds that drones can achieve, which depend on many factors such as the type of drone, its payload and wind conditions. For example, drones that are carrying heavier payloads are likely to fly slower than those that are empty. Drones that have wings will need to maintain a certain minimum speed to ensure their wings keep them aloft, whereas multi-copter designs are able to fly at low speeds or even hover.
The weather, wind in particular, can have a great effect on the speed of aircraft over the ground, especially when flying into the wind as this can reduce the speed over the ground proportional to the speed of the wind. Drones being used for logistics are likely to pass quickly overhead when in mid-flight.
Within the logistics industry, drones are being used to carry various commercial payloads and several potential use-cases are emerging. Logistics drones are being trialled to deliver parcels ordered online as a replacement for the vans that currently dominate last-mile parcel deliveries, and even for the rapid delivery of take-away food orders. Logistics drones are being used in medical supply chains to transport payloads between health service sites (the subject of the E-Drone research project), particularly where fast delivery is of life-saving importance or where sites are in hard-to-reach locations. Examples of potential payloads for drones in medical logistics include items such as patient diagnostic specimens (e.g., blood, urine and stool samples sent to pathology laboratories for analysis), chemotherapy medicines, blood for transfusion, and organs for transplant.
Transport of larger consignments by logistics drones is becoming possible as a replacement for transport by lorry or train, utilising larger-scale drones that can carry payloads of several hundred kilograms over distances of hundreds of kilometres.
Logistics drones need to share existing airspace alongside traditional crewed aviation. However, the mechanism by which drones will be managed, controlled and integrated into shared airspace is yet to be decided. The concept currently under development worldwide (including in the UK) is known as UAV Traffic Management (UTM).
The UTM concept is designed to enable the management and co-ordination of drone operations within designated blocks of low-level airspace, integrated safely and efficiently with other users of the airspace. Therefore, logistics drones are most likely to be operated within designated blocks of airspace such as a corridor (or network of corridors) connecting particular locations. For more information on shared airspace and the UTM concept, please see Shared Airspace.
Specifically in the logistics sector, the main benefits that drones may be able to provide are three-fold: (1) speed of delivery (e.g., medical logistics where speed can be of life-saving importance); (2) replacing the use of vans and lorries for deliveries, potentially leading to reductions in energy consumption and road vehicle emissions; and (3) improving accessibility for deliveries to locations that are hard to reach by existing surface-based infrastructure (e.g., where road infrastructure is poor or across large bodies of water). Investigating and quantifying the benefits that could be realised by integrating drones into logistics systems were important aspects of the E-Drone project.
In the UK, drones are subject to varying levels of regulation depending on the risk associated with their category of operations. In order of increasingly rigorous regulation, these categories are: (1) Open; (2) Specific (where most drone logistics operations take place); and (3) Certified. For more information, please see Drone Regulations in the UK.
In the UK, where drones can fly depends on their category of operations. For more information, please see Drone Regulations in the UK. In addition, drones are not to be flown near airports, and there are other examples of restricted airspace, along with local bylaws preventing drone operations in particular locations.
Ultimately, anyone can own a drone as they have seen widespread adoption in consumer markets, however the kind of drones available directly to consumers are usually classed as toys. Larger drones that can be used for logistics are usually owned and operated by drone operations companies. These companies typically provide the aircraft, use trained staff in the operation, and work with companies looking to procure drone services.
In the UK, who can fly a drone depends on the category of operations, with no age limit to fly drones in the lowest risk sub-category of the ‘Open’ category (please see Drone Regulations in the UK). More comprehensive training and qualifications are required to fly drones in the ‘Specific’ and ‘Certified’ categories of drones.
Drones in the ‘Open’ category of operations do not have a minimum height below which they should not fly, but must not be flown within 150 m of residential, commercial, industrial or recreational areas, or within 50 m of uninvolved persons. Logistics drones fall into the ‘Specific’ or ‘Certified’ categories, with parameters relating to minimum heights to be determined for each use case. For further information, please see Drone Regulations in the UK.
Drones in the ‘Open’ category of operations must not fly above 400 ft (120 m). Logistics drones fall into the ‘Specific’ or ‘Certified’ categories, with parameters relating to maximum heights to be determined for each use case. For further information, please see Drone Regulations in the UK.
It is possible to purchase small drones that do not have an integral camera, however many are still equipped to enable camera equipment to be attached. Aerial photography represents a key attraction of drones in the hobbyist sector and is a common purpose for which drones are being used commercially. There is a requirement to register drones with cameras where the drone is heavier than 250 g or where the drone weighs less than 250 g but is not considered a toy. Drones flown in the ‘Open’ category of operations must remain within Visual Line Of Sight (VLOS) of the operator, making it easier to identify the drone user.
Logistics drones flying Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) of the operator in the ‘Specific’ or ‘Certified’ categories of operations are typically equipped with camera equipment to assist with navigation, although more advanced drones use GPS to follow waypoints and operators may only refer to live video footage for parts of the flight.
When a drone is in the cruise phase of flight, you are unlikely to hear it while indoors. If you are outdoors, it will be a very faint and brief sound as it flies past. While a drone is taking-off or landing, it makes a noise similar to that of a lawnmower. Typically, a drone is much quieter compared to a car driving past.
In general, safety requirements in the aviation industry are very high, with an average fatality rate for passengers carried by UK operators of 1 in 287 million. In comparison, in the UK there is a 1 in 17,000 chance of being killed in a road accident and a 1 in 19 million chance of being killed by a lightning strike.
Despite this excellent safety record, the UK is very proactive in identifying causes of aviation accidents so that safety can be continuously improved. An assessment by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) found that the drones most likely to end-up in close proximity to crewed aircraft, potentially leading to collisions, are smaller drones (<2 kg) flown by operators who are either unaware of drone regulations or have chosen to ignore them. For this category of smaller drones, the CAA analysis indicated that the likelihood of a drone being in proximity of a passenger aircraft was 2 per 1 million flights. There have been no known collisions between small drones and crewed aircraft in the UK, and only seven confirmed cases of direct in-flight contact between drones and civil or military crewed aircraft worldwide. For more information on risks associated with drones, please see Ground and Air Risk Estimation.
The extent of drone safety features depends on the type of drone. To find out more about the safety features of logistics drones, please see Drone Safety Features.