Abstract
Civilian drones are becoming more functionally independent from human involvement which sets them on a path towards “autonomous” status. When defining “autonomy,” the European Union (EU) regulations, among other jurisdictions, employ an all-or-nothing approach, according to which a drone is either able to operate fully autonomously or not at all. This dichotomous approach disregards the various levels of drone autonomy and fails to capture the complexity of civilian drone operation. Within the EU, this has regulatory implications, such as regulatory lag, hindrance in better safety regulation, and incoherence with the Union’s regulatory approach towards Artificial Intelligence (AI). This article argues that understanding autonomy as a spectrum, rather than in a dichotomous way, would be more coherent with the technical functioning of drone and would avoid potential regulatory problems caused by the current dichotomous approach. In delineating this spectral approach, this article (1) analyses manifestations of autonomy in drone operations, (2) delineates efforts in the technical literatures and drone standardization to conceptualize “autonomy”, and (3) explores definitional attempts for autonomy made in three other technologies: self-driving cars, autonomous weapon systems, and autonomous maritime ships.
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Acknowledgements
Work on this article was conducted under the aegis of the research project ‘RegulAIR: The integration of drones in the Norwegian and European Airspaces’ funded by the Research Council of Norway. Thanks go to that institution for support and to my colleagues at Peace Research Institute Oslo—particularly Bruno Oliveira Martins and Kristin B. Sandvik—for their important feedback on my earlier drafts. Previous versions of this article were also presented at the 37th Nordic Conference on Law and Information Technology and at the Research Group on Law and Technology at the University of Oslo. I’m grateful for the feedback that I received from the participants.
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Open access funding provided by University of Oslo (incl Oslo University Hospital). The research leading to these results received funding from Research Council of Norway under Grant Agreement No. 314615.
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Nawaz, S.A. Regulating Autonomy in Civilian Drones: Towards a Spectral Approach. J Intell Robot Syst 110, 46 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02056-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02056-9