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[19]. Furthermore, in the Netherlands there is a growing number of complaints from and about human deliverers[21][20], problems which will probably be eventually resolved with autonomous delivery drones.

Due to the high number of different companies which offer delivery services it is likely that in certain areas like cities there will be a very high number of drones and that these will have differing operating systems. In order to prevent collisions drones will have to communicate to each other in some way while also keeping track of no-fly zones. When many different operating systems have to communicate the chance of errors due to incompatibility increases. Furthermore, in high traffic areas the high number of drones will result in a lot of communication traffic happening between drones and this could lead to insufficient bandwidth to sustain a safe communication speed. All of these drones will also create a large amount of position- and routing data that every drone will need to keep track of and store, on top of the data of all the restricted zones the drone could fly through. In order to alleviate these issues it is necessary to create a single overarching communication and control system which can track and command all autonomous drones in a designated airspace. We want to design a system that will receive position and route information from all drones in a certain area, can compare these with each other and any no-fly zones to find any conflicts, calculate any necessary course corrections and communicate about these with (only) the affected drones.

Our objectives are to have at the end of this project: - Central communication and routing system - Corresponding drone to system communication code - Literature study on the USE impact of large amounts of drones - Literature study on the legal aspects of commercial autonomous drones

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

Clearly, the main users of this air traffic control system would be the delivery companies, irrespective of what they are delivering; parcels, food or other goods. On the other hand, the people who order and receive these good can also be considered as users. They will need to have enough trust in this system otherwise it will never be a success. It is obvious that these two groups of users have different interest, concerns and demands.

Delivery companies

As mentioned there is no real distinction between delivery companies on behalf of what they deliver. The delivery process will be entirely the same regardless of what is delivered. For convenience we neglect the fact that food can get cold along the way. So for a package delivery to be successful the autonomous drone will have to be equipped with the package, take off from either a truck or a distribution center, fly to the destination without colliding with something and then safely deliver the package. In this project we focus on the part where a drone needs to fly to the destination without colliding.

Consumers

The group of consumers basically consists of everyone who will make use of this service, whether they specifically ask for this type of delivery or they do not specify this. Since most people in the Netherlands will have packages delivered at home sometimes, this group will consist of the majority of the entire population. Their biggest interest is of course to receive the package undamaged, as soon as possible. Because we will not take a look at the transfer of the package, the safety of the receiver will not be discussed here as it does not come into dispute.

Society

For society however, there are major concerns about safety. Most importantly the possibility that a drone will drop from the sky and hits someone or something. Also the risk of a drone being hacked and letting it deliberately crash cannot be underestimated. In order to avoid this the drones itself will have to be very reliable, especially when they are being deployed at big cities. Besides this the system should work flawlessly to make sure that they do not only avoid other delivery drones but also static objects like electricity lines or high buildings. But also moving objects like birds or recreational drones that are not connected to the system should be avoided. Besides safety there is also the problem of nuisance, for example noise disturbance or invasion of privacy.

When drone delivery becomes more and more common, less humans are needed for the same amount of packages delivered. It could be that some people will lose their job because of this. On the other hand, nowadays the delivery companies have great trouble in handling all deliveries and making sure they arrive on time. This system therefore has the potential the relieve the pressure of the deliverers without a loss of job opportunity. How this will evolve mainly depends on what kind of deliveries will be autonomous and at what frequency they will be executed.

When the sky will be used more often, there unavoidably arises a threat to wildlife Where two drones connected to the same system are relatively easy to guide passed each other, it becomes a lot harder to avoid a bird which could fly at a speed of 70 km/h A good start to tackle this problem would be to prohibit drones from flying over forests, but this does not eliminate the risk. A very sophisticated anti-collision system with radar would be required to exclude this risk.

However even when all the above problems are dealt with in an appropriate way, it seems impossible that nothing will go wrong. Because these are autonomous systems, it is a difficult task to point out who is guilty and who is innocent. This could give rise to ethical discussions which nowadays are already being held about self-driving cars When, for example, a drone suddenly falls out of the sky and hits a pedestrian without having the certainty that it is a technical failure or a minor collision with a bird what caused it, who is responsible? If this happens more regularly, it is likely that people will change their minds about this technology and do not make use of it at all.

Enterprise

Before this system will be available, it will still need to overcome technical challenges as well as some legal requirements. To find out more about these challenges we contacted Avular, a startup company in Eindhoven which, among other things, is doing research about this topic. They mentioned that the three biggest challenges of today were perception, weight and certification. As mentioned before for this project we will mainly focus on the problem of perception, i.e. the ability of these drones to maneuver past static obstacles and avoid moving obstacles. However in order for a company to develop this system all challenges need to be dealt with in an appropriate way. For the problem of weight this means that the capacity of a battery per kilogram will need to increase. Because more and more devices are being equipped with batteries, constant progress is made on this side so in the future this will become less of a problem. In terms of legal requirements there is also some progress (see section ‘Legal Requirements’) made for commercial drones to be deployed.

Another reason why weight and battery capacity might not be a big problem, is because the so called ‘last mile delivery’ is the concept that companies seem most interested in (bron). This means that a truck will drive through a neighbourhood and lots of delivery drones will depart from the truck and only have to fly a relatively small distance to reach their destination. This could make the system more efficient than delivery seen nowadays (bron).

Like mentioned earlier is seems very unlikely that there will never occur an accident. For companies who are going to sell this delivery drone system it is important to have clear laws about when they are responsible, and when they are not. Avular mentioned for example that if it is a certain technical error they are willing to take the blame. However if a delivery company decides to use the drones when weather conditions are not good enough, they will certainly not. This seems fair, but it becomes a lot harder when there is no clear cause and there is a bit of a grey area. To prevent issues like this clear government regulations are needed.

Legal Requirements

Drones used for recreational goals are already becoming more and more common. Because some of these drones are equipped with cameras, the privacy of people is in danger. Also the noise can be disturbing when they fly too low over residential areas. When delivery drones will be deployed more often in the future, these problems will become even bigger. For this reason the Dutch government already made laws for both recreational and commercial use to prevent this. For both recreational and commercial drones the rule that they cannot fly higher than 120 meters above land or water applies. Specifically for commercial drones there are also a lot of areas specified where they cannot come closer than 50 meters, measured from the ground. Places like this are:

• big crowds

• contiguous buildings

• Harbors

• Industrial area’s

• Railways

• Highways

• Ships

• Airports

To make this more clear, a map of the Netherlands with all so-called non-fly zones is available:

Red: no-fly zone

Blue: only when permission

Purple: low-fly area

It is obvious that when a drone must deliver a package, it sometimes needs to cross a highway or a railway. This shows that the law is not completely ready for this technology. Luckily the rules will change as per 31 December 2020, and these rules will be the same everywhere in the European Union. Drones will then be divided is three categories, Open, Specific and Certified. This distinction is based on how much danger there is for a certain flight. Delivery drones will be in the Certified category, because they are autonomous and they deliver a package . Specific rules and guidelines will be clarified more in the future.

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.

Pakketbezorging in 2019: meer volume, maar tarieven blijven dalen This article describes the growth of the package delivery market in the Netherlands in 2019 and makes predictions on the growth in 2020.

Geen misstanden geconstateerd bij pakketbezorgers, maar zorgen blijven This article illustrates the increased pressure on the package delivery market and describes problems with package deliverers’ working conditions and law violations.

Klachten pakketbezorging This article analyses the complaints received by the dutch consumer’s bond about package delivery services. The main relevant problems are packages which are delivered late or never, the deliverer falsely marks the recipient as ‘not home’ and inaccurate tracking.

Security, Privacy, and Safety Aspects of Civilian Drones: A Survey This survey is about the security, privacy, and safety aspects associated with the deployment of civilian drones into the national airspace. It identifies both cyber and physical threats to drones.

Security, Privacy and Safety Evaluation of Dynamic and Static Fleets of Drones This paper investigates the challenges faced by fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the ways that these can be managed. It proposes a method of fleet control based on swarm intelligence.

Blockchain-base structures for a secure and operate network of semi-autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles This paper analyses the probable security threats to an interoperable UAV communication network and proposes to use and describes a blockchain based structure to secure such a network.

Understanding the drone epidemic This paper describes the attributes of drones that challenge existing regulatory arrangements. It documents the nature and characteristics of drones, the dimensions across which they vary, the purposes to which they are put, and the impacts that they appear likely to have.

Who is doing what?

Week 1

Name	Total hours	Tasks
Emmy	5.5	Watched videos and lectures [1h], brainstorm session [1.5h], worked on problem statement and objectives [1h], read articles and wrote summeries [2h]
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]

Week 2

Name	Total hours	Tasks
Emmy	3	tutor meeting [0.5h], group meetings [1h], researching architecture control systems [1.5h]
Mayra	3.5	tutor meeting [0.5h], group meetings [1h], researching stakeholders and user groups [1h], making a draft for the user (customers) questionnaire [1h]
Rick	5	Tutor meeting [0.5h], Group meetings [1h], Doing research on laws about drones [3.5h]
Roel	5	Tutor meeting [0.5h], Group meetings [1h], Writing email and finding company contact information [4h]

Week 3

Name	Total hours	Tasks
Emmy	3	tutor meeting [0.5h], group meetings [1.5h], writing out the questionnaire [1h]
Mayra	3	tutor meeting [0.5h], group meetings [1.5h], making the questionnaire in Google forms [1h]
Rick	2.5	Tutor meeting [0.5h], Group meeting [1.5h], Create questions and send email to companies [0.5h]
Roel	2	Tutor meeting [0.5h], Group meeting [1.5h]

Week 4

Name	Total hours	Tasks
Emmy	0	/
Mayra	0	/
Rick	0	/
Roel	1.5	Tutor meeting [0.5h], Group meeting [1h]