Drones may soon fill our city skies, warns researcher

Samar Abbas Nawaz has spent three years scrutinising European drone regulations. What he found should give us pause.

“Self-operating drones and their legal issues weren't things that stakeholders in the civilian drone ecosystem are generally concerned about. They see it as a problem of the future,” he says.

That future, he argues, is unfolding faster than laws can keep up with.

What does ‘autonomous’ actually mean?

‘Civilian drones’ is a term for drones which are not used for military purposes or police work.

The EU has ambitious plans to normalise the use of civilian drones across all member states. 

Drones are already used for filming, agricultural inspections, and package delivery, and plans for urban drone transport are well underway. 

Many of these drones are highly automated. They can fly and carry out tasks with very little human involvement.

But Nawaz noticed something odd early in his research: the word ‘autonomous’ was being used loosely and often incorrectly.

“Calling something autonomous gives the impression that the drone is very advanced. But just because a human is not involved in the operation, it does not mean that the drone is truly autonomous,” he explains.

There is an important distinction here. A drone that follows a pre-programmed route is automated. It does exactly what it has been told to do. 

A truly autonomous drone would, strictly speaking, be capable of making decisions on its own. 

These are two very different things – but European regulations blur this line.

“Autonomy has to do with independence. Drones can easily be programmed to function in a certain fixed manner, but that does not make them independent in that sense,” says Nawaz.

He believes that this misuse of terminology is not just semantic nitpicking. It has real consequences for how safety is assessed and regulated.

Three laws, three problems

Nawaz analysed three areas of EU drone law: rules for how drones are operated, rules for how they are designed and certified, and the framework for a drone traffic management system called ‘U-Space.’

He found significant shortcomings in all three. 

The laws are based on technical concepts that are poorly defined. Important certification mechanisms are missing. And perhaps most importantly, the laws fail to account for the broader social and technical context in which drones actually operate.

“Law is at times seen as the cure for all things bad with technology. But it has to be seen in a broader sociotechnical context. Safety is not purely a technical or a legal issue that can simplistically be fixed,” says Nawaz.

A sky without human controllers

One of the most striking elements of Nawaz’s research concerns U-Space, the EU’s planned system for managing drone traffic. 

Unlike conventional air traffic control, where human controllers communicate directly with pilots, U-Space is designed to be largely automated.

Digital systems will provide drones with the information they need to navigate safely, without involving human controllers.

“It’s imaginative – and dystopian or utopian, depending on how you interpret it,” says Nawaz.

The idea raises profound questions about accountability and safety that current regulations do not adequately address. 

If something goes wrong in a system with no human controllers, who is responsible?

Law as part of a larger picture

Nawaz emphasises that he is not opposed to drone technology or its development. But he argues that the current regulatory approach is too narrow.

“Researching an emerging technology from a legal and social perspective is challenging. It’s like you’re a sceptic in a room full of developers trying to create the next big thing, and regulators trying to help them make it possible,” he says.

His research points to a need to redefine key technical terms in drone law. There is also a need for greater focus on the design elements of drone systems – not just how they are flown, but how they are built.

A question for all of us

For most people, drones remain a curiosity – occasionally visible overhead, but not a fixture of daily life. 

That is about to change.

“Currently, we do not see many drones in our airspace. But the EU, and other countries across the globe, are aiming to change that. Public participation is seriously missing in these efforts,” says Nawaz.

He hopes his research will encourage people to engage with the question of what kind of skies we want – before the decisions are made for us.

“I do hope that it makes people wonder about this future and raise their concerns from different perspectives,” he says.

References:

Nawaz, S.A. Safe integration of civil drones: Law, self-operation & infrastructure, PhD thesis at the University of Oslo, 2025.

The regulation of drone autonomy: Implications for the European civil airspace, Project homepage.

RegulAIR: The integration of drones in the Norwegian and European Airspaces, Project homepage.

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