End-to-end drone route planning in flexible airspace design

Drone traffic, consisting of anything from small quadcopters for video and photography to large eVTOL transporting people, is expected to grow rapidly as soon as the challenges currently barring urban flights can be solved. One of the main challenges is how to automate authorization while both keeping full control over where and how drones fly over specific areas, and at the same time allowing the operators the freedom they require to successfully provide their services. While restrictions are necessary, being overly restrictive on plans has a negative impact on capacity, safety and efficiency. In this article we propose the combination of no-fly zones and flight grids into design elements for airspace design, to be used only where and when necessary. City planners can use these design elements to make both strategic decisions and real-time updates, and thereby set the rules for an automated system for planning and authorization. We describe the design elements, how to automatically find the optimal end-to-end route between or through these elements, a set of modifications or extension to improve flexibility even more, and demonstrate the efficacy of the approach through example airspace design patterns and by showing the resulting traffic in a drone traffic simulator. • The presentation of means to control airspace design from the airspace authority’s point of view, for improving airspace access for operators while maintaining a necessary level of governmental control. • The combination of no-fly-zones, local grids and regions that allow for direct navigation. • Multiple refinements of simple design elements as well as implementation details for crossings, roundabouts and grade separation for lanes in grid routing. • Demonstration of functionality and several resulting traffic patterns.