Defining the brief
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Context - The rise of Drones
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Who is interested on them?
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Technology
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Needs and opportunities
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The code
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Innovation model
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Policy:Prosocial Flight Regulations
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Flock
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The System
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Flock Brain
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Flock Guard
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Flock Perch
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Receiver’s experience
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Connecting to citizens
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The Design
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Towards the market
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Testing
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“The Big Brother”
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“The Cool Aunt”
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This is a project developed by:
Antton Peña
As part of: Global Innovation Design
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one of the boards used for the brief search
Defining the brief “Clouds”. The word what initialized the project. An interest in these floating particle groups made me think about the sky, look at everything that was happening above our heads, and analyze it.
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Knibbs, K. (2015). NASA Is Making a Traffic Control System for Drones. [online] Gizmodo. Available at: http:// gizmodo.com/nasa-is-making-a-traffic-control-systemfor-drones-1629397458
2 Estes, A. (2015). DARPA-Funded Researchers Have Tested a Drone That Can Learn. [online] Gizmodo. Available at: http:// gizmodo.com/darpa-funded-researchers-have-tested-adrone-that-can-l-1654444124 [Accessed 7 Jan. 2015]. 3 Vertol.mit.edu, (2015). UAV SWARM Health Management Project. [online] Available at: http://vertol.mit.edu/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2015]. 4 Hal.pratt.duke.edu, (2015). Researching the Interactions of Human and Computer Decision-Making | Humans and Autonomy Lab. [online] Available at: http://hal.pratt.duke. edu/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2015]. 5 Www3.imperial.ac.uk, (2015). Aerial Robotics Lab. [online] Available at: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/aerialrobotics [Accessed 7 Jan. 2015]. 6 Burns, I. (2014). Drone Patent Index October 2014 — ATIP Law. [online] American Technology & Intellectual Property Law. Available at: http://www.atintellectualproperty.com/ drone-patent-index-october-2014/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2015].
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There were many aspects that interested me; their abilities to control the earth’s temperature, their mystic connotation in certain setups, their ability to transport water at very high speeds… I explored different areas of the clouds, the research phase went on for about 3 weeks finding many areas of interest. However, there was a question that stayed on my mind no matter the area I was exploring. Who owns the clouds? and what happens when someone wants to do something above our heads? This questions guided me into finding more about air space and inevitably I stumbled across drones.
Context: The rise of Drones
Drones are the last technological trend. Being used by hobbyists and professionals, they are starting to be popular in many fields. Aerial photography, security, surveillance, agriculture or parcel delivery, are some of the examples of the areas were are being used. Despite their popularity, there is a great controversy about the usage of this technology. Risk for accidents, the difficulty to ensure privacy and an over population of our skies are the topics that usually rise in discussions about drones and their future in our society. At the same time, the drone industry is getting bigger, and the market size forecasts demonstrate that it is a field worth not ignoring. The predictions say that in ten years the UAV market will be a 11.6 billon dollar market. Currently the technology is evolving at a great pace, and new applications are continuously emerging.
Who is interested on the them?
Technology
As mentioned before, there are many fields in which flying robots are being used, and will eventually become essential in some of them. There are two ways in which the technology is being used. Some of them deliver benefits that couldn’t be obtained before the development of the technology, and others improve the existing techniques used before with different objectives.
Thanks to the new opportunities of using drones found by the industry, we are living in an exciting moment for the technological revolution of flying robots. Companies are working not only in the development of the technology, there is also a big interest in the development control systems around these machines. Organizations like NASA1 and DARPA 2 are also actively involved in building complementary systems for this flying objects, as well as many specialized labs of many well known universities 3 4 5.
The new benefits brought by drones include remote sensing, aerial filmmaking, infrastructure exploration or safe and rescue applications. These activities are generating businesses which offer services that couldn’t be offered before, or existed in a more rudimentary or limited way. For instance companies such as pix4D, skywatch or skyvantage, are some companies that offer specific services or products thanks to the usage of drones. There are some good examples where the drone technology was able to revolutionize existing processes. Some of this examples are how the surveillance of coast control is done, new ways to count and track animals in farms or how parcels are delivered to different locations. In this last example, many companies are trying to incorporate UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to their fleets. This allows them to dispatch items in a faster and more precise way. Big and well stablished companies such as UPS, Google or Amazon are already testing and developing the technology, and DHL is already commercially running a drone delivery program in specific locations in the north of Germany.
The continuously increasing6 number of patent applications and granted patents for the UAV industry demonstrates the interest of the market in the technological research. Surprisingly, almost the totality of the patents are focused on optimizing different actions of the robots and making them more independent in the moment of reacting to different events. The development is evolving towards making drones more autonomous, able to decide by themselves and coexist with other robots and entities without needing external management or input.coexist with other robots and entities without needing external management or input.
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Needs and Opportunities
The clear direction of the technological research is leaving many questions on the way. There are many layers of technology around the drones that still need to be build and defined, and this lack of definition generates many questions that need to be addressed before the drones start flying around us freely. Although making robots more independent may be research-wise more interesting, there is a clear need of building a infrastructure that will create a friendly scenario where flying robots and humans will coexist. As we start building or trying to understand this infrastructure and the human-drone scenario, we realize that there are many questions to be addressed. The mentioned layers around the technology can almost be infinite and they will grow as we start building and giving them more definition. These layers directly linked to the technology of the drones, or more philosophical in terms of their behavior around us. The project that is presented in the following pages doesn’t try to answer to all the questions that emerged during the research phase. It’s aim is to inspire how this technology could become more human, and gives some key point and directions on how this could happen.
7 Interview: Remes, B. (2014). ReWork:The future of cities. [4/12/2014]
In order to achieve a natural human-drone coexistence, there are three key points that need to be followed when designing every layer. These key points where defined based on the understanding of human to nature interactions and translated to enhance human-machine interactions. The points have been defined as the three required key points of “the code”.
“The Code”
AWARENESS
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ACCESSIBLE
HUMAN CENTERED
Policy
Technology
Security
Service
Products
The Innovation Model The proposal that will be explained in the following pages defines three of the layers of the whole ecosystem, which are the minimum to create a holistic scenario of coexistence between humans and drones. These three layers are Policy, Service and Product and have been designed placing “the code� in the heart of the system. The whole system has been designed hierarchically. The policy layer defines how drones should think and fly, and how they should always take people into account. The service layer demonstrates that there are feasible ways to apply the policy through clear communication about the drones activities and behavior. The product layer shows how the
service can be designed making the user the center of every operation, and that we can develop products that make the technology more accessible. Although the layers are a way to inform the innovation and an attempt to generate a global solution that is not focussed in isolated problems, each of the innovations could be independently deployed from the others. If the policy is not modified in the proposed way, the services could be applied in environments where existent laws already allow the usage of drones. In the same way, if the service is not successful, the product could work with other services, and vice-versa, being able to offer the service using different products.
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Policy:
could offer benefits, but the rules don’t allow them to fly.
As mentioned before, there are still many questions that need to be addressed before having a full integration of drones. Unfortunately, policy makers instead of opening doors to all the opportunities that are being generated by the technology, are being driven by the fear to accidents and undesired consequences.
The mentioned rules are absolute rules. Rules that don’t accept variables, and don’t change depending on the characteristics of the activity nor by the status of the geographical area in which they are happening.
Prosocial Flight Regulation
As a result, most of the countries are forbidding any kind of uses of the flying robot technology. Countries, instead of defining rules that would make humans closer to drones, are limiting the technology. The United States for example is defining no drone areas; the ones shown in red in the map, which zones where any kind of drone activity is forbidden. The United Kingdom defined two absolute rules that block any kind of human interaction with the technology. The article Nº 167 of the CAA8 policy describes that any drone should not fly within 50 meters of any vehicle, structure or vessel. Although certain areas, such as inhabited regions, or rural environments are out of the reach of these inflexible laws, populated areas are unable to use the technology. Cities are one of the most interesting scenarios where drones
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Answering to the points of “The Code”, the only way to make the technology accessible is to enable drones to fly. The way to do this in a human centered way, is to propose a regulation that instead of blocking their activities, measures their flight impact in the society. By understanding this, we are able to regulate the maximum impact level each flight can have, instead of just forbidding it. This is what the ProSocial Flight Regulation proposes. First, the intrusive aspect of the flying drones needs to be accepted in order to understand the need of this kind of regulation. It is a fact that drones aren’t pleasant when they are around us and therefore they should avoid the unnecessary contact with humans.
8 Caa.co.uk, (2015). UK Civil Aviation Authority.. [online] Available at: http://www.caa.co.uk/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2015].
No drone area map in California - USA
If we measure the contact the drones have with humans and the way it happens, we can evaluate each flight. The impact level is measured and defined with the FIL (Flight Impact Level) number, which changes depending on the number of people it affects in real time. In that way, instead of regulating areas in an absolute way, the system would regulate flights depending on where the people are each time. Instead of defining no drone areas, or establishing maximum proximity distances, the law would regulate what the maximum FIL is. In this way, flyers, or flight planners are forced to plan their routes thought the most respectful area. Through sensors installed around the city and a correct usage of data generated by mobile phones, the FIL is defined . Each position would have a condition multiplier; depending if the person is in a quiet park, or in an already congested area. When a flight path is overlaid on the FIL map, the system can calculate how many citizens would have contact with the flying robot, and therefore define the FIL number. As a result, flights would be planned depending on their impact. For instance, it makes no sense to say that drones cannot fly in parks when parks are completely empty at night. Or to define residential areas as drone abled, when at night big percentage of the population sleeps in these areas. PSFR (ProSocial Flight Regulation) offers a more relevant way to define rules; rules that change with the way citizens live.
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flock airdelivery in the best possible way
It is recommended to watch the video that explains the how the system and respect algorithm work, which can be displayed following the QR code in this page.
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The system
The ProSocial Flight Regulation system seams hard to implement, unfeasible. It is necessary to install several sensors throughout the city, collect real-time mobilephone data, and finally enable senders to define their paths depending on the FIL they get for each flight. That’s why Flock is being proposed. It is a way to deploy the needed infrastructure, and at the same time make the technology accessible to the users. Flock is an automatized Drone Fleet Control system for Air Deliveries. It is the service that connects senders and receivers, while considering citizens. In this way all the stakeholders (active and passive) are taken into account. In order to do that, flock is composed of three main products, and a core that coordinates all of them and plans the flights. These three products are flockGuard; an interface to control fleets, flockPerch; the device that enables drones to deliver directly to the windows, and the flockPerchApp; the interface that controls the perch. The core that makes all the devices talk is flockBrain. It is recommended to watch the video that explains how the system and the “respect algorithm” work, which can be displayed following the QR code in this page.
< Delivery
+ R
Landing Permission - Time Window > < Price - Missions Status - Notifications
Feedback - Prefered delivery moments - enquiries > < Delivery is happening - package content - Information about the company
Surrounding Social Info > < Air Space Situation
flockbrain
< Flying enquiry - permission - plan request Flight plan - route to follow - actual UAV position >
Users
flockguard Sender
Delivery Confirmation - Flight Status - Position Double Check >
C
GPS POSITION - FULL/EMPTY - DIAGNOSYS > < PATH TO FOLLOW - REAL TIME ADJUSTMENTS - NODES IN WHICH CHECK IN
Flock Drone - UAV approaching - Air Status - Systems Intentions >
Citizens
The flux diagrams that shows all the interactions of the system
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flockbrain flockBrain is the brain of the system that thinks in a prosocial way. The brain that understands where the population is at every moment, understands the needs of each sender and receiver and more importantly, the one that makes sure that all the flights are calculated in the most respectful possible way. It is an algorithm able to propose different flight routes and then check them with all the information available (real-time or predicted). The diagram in the page 9 shows the information flow between all the products and stakeholders in the system. This is how flockBrain understands what is happening and delivers the best possible flight paths. The interface shown in this page is the way that the thinking is visualized. Once the delivery is accepted by the receiver, and the drone loaded with the container to deliver; flockBrain is able to drive the drone to the final destination. Using the flexible and open source autopilots already available in the market, such as AirWare, flockBrain defines the points that the drone needs to follow. In this way, the drones are able to deliver the goods without having to be manually driven.
9 Airware, (2015). Product. [online] Available at: http://www.airware.com/product [Accessed 7 Jan. 2015].
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Different route proposals with their FIL numbers
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flockguard flockGuard is the interface that makes the whole flockBrain technology accessible to the senders. Thanks to a tablet app, the senders are able to control all the drones in their float, easily define final destinations, and manage the moment in which each delivery needs to happen. The interface simplifies the way a flight needs to be planned. The system already has all the landing points (perches) positioned. Thanks to that, the sender only needs to know the email or nickname of the receiver. Having the coordinates in the system, the email is enough to know where to deliver. When a delivery needs to be planed, the sender writes the nickname of the user. It is then, when the user is notified. Through to the flock-
PerchApp, the user will accept a delivery. Once accepted, flockBrain will define when the best moment to start the flight. The sender will then receive a notification telling him when the package needs to be ready and placed in the take off point. Once the parcel is placed in place, through the app, the sender starts the mission, and the drone flies towards the final destination. At any time, the fleet owner can visualize where all the drones are, and have an overview of how all the missions are going. This allows almost everyone to own a drone, and fly it safely and respectfully in urban environments. This will change the way many businesses and infrastructures work.
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Scan this to try the app in your iPad
flockguardApp
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Takeoff notification in the flockguard App
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flockperch In the other side of deliveries, the receivers also need simple ways to access the technology. The early attempts of the drone enabled air deliveries have been delivering parcels to the floor, to the house doors or gardens of the houses. There are many problems with this way of delivering that need to be solved. Unfortunately, not all the households have gardens or private entrances. Not all the houses are at ground level, and the lower the drone needs to descend, the more annoying and dangerous it will be. Delivered packages are also very desired by burglars, leaving them in the door entrance until someone arrives home and picks them up, it is not a safe way to deliver. flockPerch is a folding perch able to collect packages directly from the drones in the wall. It is installed next to the window, and it deploys when the drone approaches, opening the delivery net. Once the drone leaves the package in the net, it closes back to keep the package safe until the user arrives home. flockPerch offers a way to receive packages safely directly in our window, but more importantly, the possibility to receive packages at any time. This allows us the receive packages without needing to be home waiting for them. This is key to enable ProSocial deliveries. By letting the receivers choose the urgency of each delivery, it gives the system more time to choose the most respectful path. The bigger the time window, the bigger the chance to find a respectful flight route. The more respectful the route, the cheaper the delivery will be. At the same time, the perches are the best way to deploy the needed sensors in the city. The more clients the service has, the more sensors will be installed in the city, getting a more precise data. It is the way to create a huge sensor network without requiring a huge infrastructural investment to kick off the service.
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Receivers Experience The whole receiving experience is driven by the app. Thanks to the flockPerchApp, the user is able to decide how fast a package needs to be delivered, and when to collect it from the perch. When a delivery is programmed by the sender, the receiver receives a notification in the phone. The notification lets him know who is the one sending the package and what is in it. The receiver then, can decide to accept or refuse it. When the user accepts the delivery, chooses a time frame. In this way, he is able to define the urgency of the delivery, and the price of it, which will change according to the urgency. Once the time frame is defined and the delivery accepted, the process starts. First, flockBrain calculates the itinerary, and communicates to the sender when to leave the package
to be picked. While the sender is busy preparing the parcel, the only thing the receiver will see, is a process bar, letting him know how long it will take for the package to arrive to his flockPerch. When the drone is nearby, the perch will open automatically, collect the package, and close back. When the process is finished and the package is safe in the perch, the user will receive a notification. It is then when he is able to control the perch. Once the receiver is home and ready to pick the parcel, by simply pressing a button in the app he will be able to open the perch, go to the window, and take the parcel. The whole process will finish when the parcel is in the hands of the receiver. He will be able to close the perch by just pressing the button again. The flockPerchApp, is also a key element of the whole system. Even when it is apparently inactive, is letting the brain know where the user is, giving our real-time citizen map a bigger resolution.
flockperchApp
Experience the app in your iPhone
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Citizens and flock The perch is also the way flock has to communicate to the citizens. Although the system makes its best to avoid the contact with people, there may be some cases in which the contact is inevitable. The perch helps building an awareness of the droneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actions. Predictability is what makes humans feel comfortable with artificial intelligence. The trust on robots is bigger when humans can understand the intentions of the robot. Drones move fast and are very nimble. It is difficult to embody predictability in their movements, but thanks to having a infrastructure deployed in the city, flock can let the users know when a drone will come by, and what is the route that is following. This is the way flock has to communicate with the less active, but not less important stakeholder, the citizens. This way, it tries to create a communication between robots, the system and citizens.
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Moment in which the drone delivers the package to the perch
The Design The perch had a clear functionality, but in order to be able to easily integrate it to the facades of the houses, needed to fulfill other requirements. Although the aesthetic got an important roll on the definition of the perch, the weight of it, the simplicity and the ease of access also defined how the perch is. In order to keep an slim design that would fit the most of the facades, when close, the perch is a 100mm wide aluminum stick. It has a 30ยบ bend in the higher part to host the light beacon and the pulling cable. The lower flexible part is built made out of a elastomer, that gives a solid appearance both when it is closed as well as opened. This elastomer in interchangeable, a sleeve that covers the mechanism. This way, the user can choose the final finishing of the perch, letting them change it to better answer to their needs. The pulling mechanism is built with a cable to avoid building big and heavy pushing arms from bottom up. The closing mechanism has a separate actuator, to be able to open the perch when it is down, allowing the receivers to pick the parcels.
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“The Big Brother” strategy: Amazon Prime in Cambridge
Towards the market Although the concept it has been proposed, there are many steps that need to be given before the service and the product are something that can be proposed to potential investors. As said at the beginning, the whole project takes advantage of certain technological advances that, even if aren’t still commercially available, will be soon. This advances are related to the way the drones are controlled and all the security systems that will be needed. At the same time, the full implementation of the project relies on a positive attitude from the policymakers, hopping that if not the proposed prosocial regulation, better and more flexible policies will be adopted. Although the project has been proposed bottom down, starting from policies and developing towards the product, the implementation of if should happen the other way around. As posed at the beginning of the document, the three innovation layers don’t necessarily need to be dependent of the others, but they can help on the implementation of the rest. That’s why starting with the product would be a way to start small while thinking big. Thanks to offering an stand alone benefit to the users, is the way to quietly start building the infra-
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structure, to later, have a big network ready for the moment the service is launched. In order to make that happen, the perch should also be an standalone product that benefits the users by itself. The product proposed here fulfills the basic needs to answer to the service, but needs a further development to be well accepted by the market. The used actuators are very heavy and expensive, they don’t offer enough agility for the movements, and are very energy consuming. The next version of the perch should first be more agile and easier to install. Should give more options to be better integrated with the building facade, but at the same time, should be more energy autonomous. For the moment, the perch is only able to collect packages from drones, but it could be able to host and charge drones, as well as serve as a docking station for them. There have also been risen some questions about the safety of the action of hanging in the window to collect the package, which also needs to be addressed. Some attempts to create new forms of the perch have been already pursued, and the design process of it will continue until it really answers to all the market needs. The new design will continue keeping the main characteristics mentioned as key points earlier in the document, but will incorporate new attributes to answer to the questions just proposed.
“The cool aunt” strategy: The UAE
Testing
Once the product is better defined and ready to be tested, some field trials will be needed to further understand the iterations the products needs, and to see if it is ready to be adopted by the public. Two strategies have been proposed for this, which took the names of “The Big Brother” and “The Cool Aunt”.
“The big brother”
“The cool aunt”
As said before, there are many companies interested in the urban Air Deliveries. One of them is Amazon. The American online retail store already started testing this technology, and in order to expand their test and research abilities, they just opened a new “Amazon Prime” research center. This center was opened in Cambridge, and it is working since October of 2014.
The second option is to launch a test run in a country that is already very permissive with and interested in the drone technology. This country is the UAE, which in 2012 gave green light to commercial activities with UAVs (a technical word for drones).
Amazon is the “big brother”. Thanks to their political power, are the ones that could get policies changed, and if that works, they will soon have drones flying. Although Cambridge has a very rural layout and low buildings, can be a great place to start testing the perch and understand the needed iterations. It seams simple, Amazon would already have their drones flying there, so flock could offer surrounding services around them. Unfortunately the company is keeping all the activities developed in the research lab secret, and there is no way to predict what their next steps will be, that’s why there is also a second plan.
Although in a very rudimentary way, the government is already using drones to deliver documents between different institutional buildings. This makes the UAE a great location to start testing the product. The drones are already flying, but many things can be improved around the way they pursue the activity. It is a country that has great interest in new technologies, and therefore could be interested in the products flock is proposing.
10 Operations of Unmanned Aircraft Systems - UAS in the UAE. (2012). 1st ed. [ebook] Abu Dhabi: GCCA / ASAS / ANA, pp.1-4. Available at: https://www.gcaa.gov.ae/en/ePublication/admin/Library%20Pdf/ANS%20Information%20Notice%20(ANSIN)/ANSIN%202010/ ANSIN%20003-10%20%20Operations%20of%20UAS%20in%20the%20UAE.pdf [Accessed 7 Jan. 2015].
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flock Follow to watch the flock video.
flock Follow to watch the flock video.