What are the safety and line-of-sight flying concerns regarding the use of drones in policing and how can these be mitigated?

Background

"Mobility is the ability to move to/from locations quickly to prevent, detect or respond, including to access difficult locations safely to maximise intelligence and minimise risk.

Autonomous vehicles, and particularly a combination of drones and fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles, offer a faster, safer, cheaper, and more sustainable means of frontline deployment and advanced evidence capture. The National Police Air Service and the National Police Chiefs' Council’s National Lead for Drones have a joint strategy that sets out in detail the technical challenges we must overcome to be able to operate a suite of complementary response options. These relate to concerns over line-of-sight flying, safety, cybersecurity, costs of replacement and maintenance, expertise required to use, and poor battery life. Each of these need to be addressed alongside extensive consultation to ensure policing’s use is understood by the public, considered proportionate, and supported."

Next steps

"We welcome your engagement with our ARIs in the following ways:
• If you have evidence that completely or partly supports or answers one of our ARIs, we invite you to share that with us. For any ongoing research relevant to policing and crime reduction, we encourage you to register your research on the College of Policing’s research projects map, which has been designed to promote collaboration and support requests for participants.
• If you are, or plan to be, carrying out research that relates to one of our ARIs, we’d like to hear about it. While we cannot respond to speculative approaches for research funding, we will where possible act to support your ambitions, including finding you policing partners where possible.
• If you are submitting a funding or grant application that aligns with one of our ARIs, we hope that referencing policing’s ARIs will help to strengthen your case for the possible public impact of the research.
• We will use the ARI document to structure our academic engagement, prioritise events and build new connections with external partners. We will be using our ARIs in our engagement with UKRI, and we will publish any opportunities for funding via our website https://science.police.uk/
Please send any correspondence and questions to csa@npcc.police.uk, including ‘ARI’ in the subject heading."

Source

This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:

Policing Areas of Research Interest

Related UKRI funded projects


  • Diversifying Drone Stories

    (1) RESEARCH CONTEXT: Following its establishment as a now-iconic warfighting tool, the drone increasingly features in domestic airspace. The domestic drone's meteoric rise is evident in the UK Government's ongoing inves...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Why might this be relevant?

    Partially relevant as it focuses on the impact of domestic drones but does not specifically address safety and line-of-sight flying concerns in policing.

  • Detecting Drones: low cost, plug and play, mass market

    Prisons, aviation, utilities, borders, government estates, public events and individuals are increasingly seeking cost effective drone detection technology to counter the reckless and hostile use of consumer drones. Our...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Why might this be relevant?

    Partially relevant as it focuses on drone detection technology, but does not address safety and line-of-sight flying concerns.

  • System for High Integrity Monitoring of Advanced-Air-Mobility Network Operations (SHIMANO)

    This project consists of a consortium of organisations with expertise in engineering, aviation, and business to provide a clear path for development, testing and exploitation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The key a...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Why might this be relevant?

    Fully relevant as it addresses safety, line-of-sight flying concerns, and expertise in UAV operations.

  • INNOVATION PROCUREMENT OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES FOR SAFE REMOTE VEHICLE STOPPING BY LAW ENFORCEMENT

    INTERCEPT aims to strengthen the capabilities of law enforcement authorities in the EU and equip them with effective methods to remotely and safely stop vehicles posing imminent and high-security threats to citizens and ...

    Funded by: Horizon Europe Guarantee

  • National drone detection network for Singapore

    Our proposal is to deploy a wide- area, ground-based, lower airspace monitoring system, which monitors all conspicuous drones across Singapore. Leveraging the latest machine-learning, cloud and edge technologies, this ne...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

  • A feasibility study on a low cost drone detection radar system

    Navtech radar will explore novel applications of micro-Doppler and FMCW radar in order to investigate the feasibility of producing a radar system that will successfully detect Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs/Drones) with ...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

  • An innovative Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and enclosure to allow fast and efficient emergency response.

    Evolve Dynamics (ED) is a UK-based aviation and aerospace SME with a core project team of Mike Dewhirst (Founder/CTO), Sam Palfery (Project Manager), Ben Adamson (Electronics Lead), Scott Maltby (Integration Lead), Aidan...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

  • Edged sensing array affording Intelligent integrated airspace awareness

    Drones are set to transform industries of all types by optimising processes and reducing the cost of e.g. logistics and surveillance to near £zero. However, methods capable of tracking and increasing drone visibili...

    Funded by: ISCF

  • Home Office The impact of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles on Policing service delivery UKRI Policy Fellowship

    Each fellowship will last up to 18 months to cover: a 3-month inception phase for set up activity a 12-month placement with the host organisation an impact phase lasting up to 3 months Fellows will co-design projects a...

    Funded by: ESRC

  • XCelerate

    XCelerate partners' goal is to take UTM systems out into the real world, by providing a repeatable framework that towns, cities and wider can follow in order to open up portions of the skies and enable suitable safe BVLO...

    Funded by: ISCF