A Look At Fairness in UTM Systems

One of Acubed’s earliest projects, now known as Airbus UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management), has recently taken a closer look at the notion of fairness in UTM systems. Why fairness? The commercial drone industry offers many new and vital applications—from humanitarian to enterprise uses—and in order to seize those opportunities, drones must be safely integrated into the airspace. So the question becomes, is UTM being developed to ensure that the skies are open to everyone?

While this may not seem like a huge issue today when you look up and see an uncongested sky, as conflicts occur in the future, it’s best to be prepared to handle them in a fair and equitable way. As with anything, a failure to plan is a plan to fail. This is especially true in the decentralized UTM architectures proposed in some regions, which mean that many individual participants and stakeholders must negotiate access.

Check out their overview here for thoughts and further reports and technical papers on the topic.