Drone technology: interdisciplinary systematic assessment of knowledge gaps and potential solutions
This work addresses the problem of drone integration into daily life for researchers and policymakers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing Technology Assessment methods.
The paper analyzes why drones are not yet part of everyday life, identifying safety as the most critical gap, and suggests solutions through Unmanned Aerial System Traffic Management (UTM) systems and project implementation guidelines based on public acceptance.
Despite being a hot research topic for a decade, drones are still not part of our everyday life. In this article, we analyze the reasons for this state of affairs and look for ways of improving the situation. We rely on the achievements of the so-called Technology Assessment (TA), an interdisciplinary research field aiming at providing knowledge for better-informed and well-reflected decisions concerning new technologies. We demonstrate that the most critical area requiring further development is safety. Since Unmanned Aerial System Traffic Management (UTM) systems promise to address this problem in a systematic manner, we also indicate relevant solutions for UTM that have to be designed by wireless experts. Moreover, we suggest project implementation guidelines for several drone applications. The guidelines take into account the public acceptance levels estimated in state of the art literature of the correspondent field.