PRE2020 1 Group3

Group members

Name	Student ID	Department	Email address
Roel den Hoet	1248170	Computer Science and Engineering	r.d.hoet@student.tue.nl
Rick Peeters	1021754	Mechanical Engineering	r.peeters@student.tue.nl
Mayra van der Pol	1010569	Psychology & Technology	m.h.e.m.v.d.pol@student.tue.nl
Emmy van der Ree	1244223	Biomedical Engineering	e.m.v.d.ree@student.tue.nl

Problem statement and objectives

From being used by consumers solely for entertainment, as a more environmentally friendly alternative to fireworks, by videographers to capture spectacular footage otherwise impossible to achieve, to autonomous drones being used for military purposes, drones are becoming increasingly common in all parts of society. It stands to reason that in the future they will be deployed to aid with the currently already extremely high demand for package- and food delivery services, which is only expected to increase. Furthermore, in the Netherlands there is a growing number of complaints from and about human deliverers, problems which will probably be eventually resolved with autonomous delivery drones.

Due to the high number of different companies which offer these services it is likely that there will not only be a high number of drones in general but that these will also have differing operating systems. In order to prevent collisions and the destruction of wildlife and the liveability in residential zones it is necessary to create a single overarching control system which can track and command all autonomous drones in a designated airspace.

In order to design a functional system we have set the following objectives:

- The system needs to be able to function independently of drone operating systems.

- The system needs to be able to track other airspace users as well as wildlife.

- The system needs to take into account restricted zones like airports, nature reservations, power lines.

- The system needs to keep drone flight over residential zones which is audible and visible from the ground to a minimum.

- The system needs to comply with all other legal requirements.

Users

User

Clearly, the main users of the traffic control system would be the delivery companies, irrespective of what they are delivering; parcels, food or other goods. But the people on the receiving end of the delivery also form a user group, as they also want their packages to be delivered without defects.

Society

For society, there are different stakeholders to be recognized. Firstly the government, who is in charge of the legislation of the delivery drones. Inhabitants of high-density delivery areas are another group of interest here. Animal rights and environmental organizations will also play a role, as they seek to protect sensitive areas from this type of technology damaging it. Lastly, connected to the last group of stakeholders, are the other users of the airspace - mainly birds and other flying wildlife.

Enterprise

This group is formed by the company developing the air traffic control system and its stakeholders.

User needs

Users

- Delivery without defects: both delivery companies and the people on the receiving end want their packages delivered without damage to either the package or the drone.

- Fastest delivery as possible: both the user groups benefit from getting the package as soon as possible; the delivery companies will be most cost-effective and efficient and the receivers get their packages as soon as possible making their satisfaction go up, which in turn also benefits the delivery companies.

Society

- Privacy: especially for the inhabitants of high-density delivery areas, privacy is an important issue. Possible data being gathered cannot be used for any purposes other than improving the delivery process. The government plays an important role in this as well.

- Protection of sensitive areas: certain regulations need to be in place to ensure that nature areas are not interfered with by the delivery drones and do not affect the peaceful environment they embody. The government would be responsible for legislation around this matter.

- Protection of wildlife: as much as possible, the drones need to fly in airspace not used by birds or other wildlife. If flying in the airspace of birds, they need to get detected as soon as possible so collisions can be prevented.

- Regulations around airports: delivery drones will not reach the heights planes do. However, around airports they can cause trouble. Therefore, regulations need to be made for the behaviour and height drones will fly around airports.

Enterprise

- Comply with regulations: in order to sell the product and make a profit out of it, the production company needs to comply with the legislation and regulations made by the government.

- Effective and cost-effective product: the system developed should be made with the lowest cost possible, without compromising on the effectiveness of the system.

Approach & Milestones

As mentioned above the goal of this project is to create an anti-collision system for drones that can deliver packages at home. To do this, at first all group members will do a literature study to get familiar with current developments in this area. After that the problem can be more specified, for example how far the maximum travelling distance is and what the minimum and maximum flight height is.

When the problem statement and goal of the project is clear, a model will be created to simulate the package delivering performed by these drones. For this a Matlab script will be created where the goal of each drone is to move from A to B as fast as possible, without hitting other drones. The model will then be expanded to make sure that these drones will also avoid other obstacles, like birds or electricity lines.

A provisionally planning for the project can be found below.

Deliverables

The deliverables of our project are:

• This wiki page containing a summary of all work done on this project
• A video with the final presentation
• Our final model, together with a simulation created by running our model.

State of the Art

How reliable does a delivery drone have to be? When a delivery drone fails, it can severely impact the people near it. However, setting a concrete reliability goal for delivery drones is not easy. Multiple sensors on the drone can fail at any moment, leading to dangerous situations. Companies need to take costs, public safety and technological options into consideration when setting a reliability goal.

Logistic deliveries with Drones. State of the art of practice and research. In this paper, the current status of delivery drones is discussed. The authors look at previous tests with drones within the medical and logistic sections. The current state of the research regarding drones is also evaluated. The authors conclude that drones are only able to replace traditional transport methods in very special situations, as there are still too many negatives for drone delivery to work perfectly.

Analysis of Amazon Prime Air UAV Delivery Service. This paper analyses the status of the Amazon Prime Air drones. Different aspects of the drone are discussed, such as its specifications, the delivery costs using the drones and the current regulations concerning drones.

Drones as a Threat to Wildlife: YouTube Complements Science in Providing Evidence about Their Effect This paper discusses the effect of drone usage on the behavior of wildlife in the area by analyzing YouTube videos made by drones.

International Commercial Drone Regulation and Drone Delivery Services This paper discusses the laws concerning drones in different countries with regards to required licenses and line-of-sight regulations.

Amazon’s Drone Patents This paper discusses the drone patents granted to Amazon regarding concepts for delivery drones. This includes patents for aircraft design, safety systems and methods for transferring goods from the air to the ground.

Energy use and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of drones for commercial package delivery In this paper the energy consumption and the greenhouse emissions of a delivery drone system are discussed.

Strategic Design for Delivery with Trucks and Drones This paper elaborates an investigation where multiple drones are deployed from trucks to deliver packages, and compare this to the case where only trucks are used to deliver packages.

Coordinated logistics with a truck and a drone In this paper the efficiency of a system where a drone departs and returns from a moving truck to deliver a package is investigated.

Drone Delivery Models for Healthcare This paper investigates the use of delivery drones specifically for healthcare applications. Especially for developing countries this could be interesting since only a third of all Africans live within 2 kilometres of a road that is functional all year. Deploying drones for delivery could thus potentially save lives.

Framework for Autonomous Movement of Drones In this paper a test is elaborated how good the delivery by drone is. Practical considerations such as electromagnetic interference, weather conditions, range, capacity and construction are all elaborated.

Vehicle Routing Problem with Drones for Last Mile Delivery This paper does research on the efficiency of the 'last mile delivery', which means that a truck drives within a mile of the delivery address and then a drone departs from that truck and delivers the package.

An adapted TPB approach to consumers’ acceptance of service-delivery drones This paper discusses consumers' acceptance of drones for service-delivery technology by applying the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). It names consumers' perceived risks of drones' usage as well as potential functional benefits, and the relational attribute to the drone.

The multiple flying sidekicks traveling salesman problem: Parcel delivery with multiple drones The multiple flying sidekicks traveling salesman problem(mFSTSP) is a scenario in which a delivery truck and a heterogeneous fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) coordinate to deliver small parcels to geographically distributed customers, wherein the objective of the problem is to leverage the delivery truck and the fleet of UAVs to complete the delivery process and return to the depot in the minimum amount of time. This paper proposes a three-phased heuristic solution approach for this problem with an analysis to highlight the benefits and limitations, as well as the impacts of the region size, potential automation improvements, and implications of different endurance models.

Air traffic control for delivery drones This short article introduces us to the company PrecisionHawk, which is working on the challenge to coordinate drones beyond the light of sight. They mimic the strategy that is increasingly being used to manage full-size aircraft, whereby those aircraft determine their positions using GPS or some other form of satellite navigation and broadcast that information by radio to everyone else. This form of air traffic management is called ADS-B (for Automatic Dependent SurveillanceBroadcast). While it seems sensible to integrate drones in this system, with the growing number of UAVs this system can get easily overwhelmed, and thus an independent system for drone-traffic management seems inevitable.

Flying drones beyond the line of sight using 4G LTE: issues and concerns This paper discusses the extent in which 4G LTE (4th Generation, Long Term Evolution) can be used for air traffic management of small Unmanned Air Vehicles (sUAVs) and the limitations and enhancements that may be necessary.

Design Perspectives on Delivery Drones This report explores the vehicle design aspects of the delivery drone problem by having developed and tested a simple delivery drone performance model, with the primary outputs of interest being weight and energy consumption, but it is also addressing flight efficiency, noise and safety.

Drones in Smart Cities: Overcoming Barriers through Air Traffic Control Research This paper focuses on small, low-altitude UAV flights in densely populated cities, which would be the most valuable type of robotic aircraft flight. For this, it presents a cloud-based system for city-wide unmanned air traffic management, prototype sensor systems required by city police to keep the city safe, and an analysis of control systems for collision avoidance.

Who is doing what?

Week 1

Name	Total hours	Tasks
Emmy	3.5	Watched videos and lectures [1h], brainstorm session [1.5h], worked on problem statement and objectives [1h]
Mayra	5	Watched introductory videos and introductory lecture [1h], brainstorm session [1.5h], studied papers 13-18 and wrote summaries [1.5h], worked on users and user needs [1h]
Rick	5	Watched lectures [1 h], Brainstrom session [1.5h], Reading papers [2 h] and making the planning [0.5 h]
Roel	5.5	Watched introductory videos [0.5h], Introductory lecture [0.5h], Brainstorm session [1.5h], Researched papers, wrote summaries and wrote deliverables [3h]