NRI: FND: COLLAB: Drones and the Design of Public Outdoor Spaces

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With recent regulatory changes allowing for the commercial use of unmanned aerial vehicles, aka drones, many new opportunities are emerging for public engagement, especially in areas like filming live music events, coverage of sporting events, and creating powerful imagery of landmarks or monuments. However, these technology advancements have also led to a proliferation of hobbyist drones. As a result, there are increasing reports of illegal drones flying in these same spaces, which present a risk to people on the ground or to those commercial drones legitimately flying in the spaces. Outdoor public space managers could benefit from design guidelines and technology recommendations for systems that could detect and potentially mitigate unwanted drone incursions into their spaces while protecting both people on the ground and legitimate drones. There is a need to explore passive approaches to drone detection and mitigation for public areas that attract small to medium sized crowds, particularly those approaches that are affordable and safe. Through assembling a multidisciplinary team of engineers and landscape architects, Duke University and Clemson University researchers take a systems-theoretic approach to analyzing and addressing this problem. Such a problem is multidimensional with multiple stakeholders, including venue managers, the general public, and legitimate drone operators contracted by the venues for services. Involving critical stakeholders at all points in the process, a model of those variables that interrelate in the design of passive drone detection and mitigation systems will be developed, including operating environments, physical and cost constraints, and security and aesthetic considerations. Design prototypes will be built and tested. A set of formal guidelines and a design trade space that reflects costs and capabilities for a range of passive technologies will also be developed that can be used by designers and mangers of outdoor public spaces, who will be increasingly struggling with this problem.