Legal Dilemmas of Drone Development in Poland

Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems (2024) 110:78 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02068-5 REGULAR PAPER Legal Dilemmas of Drone Development in Poland Ewa Jasiuk1 · Anna Chochowska2 · Krzysztof Chochowski2 Received: 19 July 2022 / Accepted: 24 January 2024 © The Author(s) 2024 Abstract This paper aims to discuss in detail the legal aspects of drone use in Poland and demonstrate the need to establish a legal act (Drone Code) that would comprehensively regulate the principles of safe drone use, whether aerial, land or sea, as well as to show the importance of creating a public administration body competent for drone-related issues, or perhaps even an entirely new international organization to safeguard the legal and ethical use of drones. Keywords Unmanned aircraft systems · UAS · Drones · EU regulation 1 Introduction According to the definition in the encyclopedia published by Poland’s leading scientific publisher, Polish Scientific Publishers (PWN), a drone is unmanned aircraft, typically smallsized, that is controlled remotely or follows a programmed trajectory (drone definition). A drone may also be referred to as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or an unmanned aerial system (UAS). It is worth pointing out that apart from aerial drones, there are also ground drones (platforms) and underwater drones (platforms). As indicated by W. Dzienkiewicz, “An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft without a pilot. According to the definition of UAV adopted at the 35th Session of the ICAO Assembly, a pilotless aircraft is an aerial vehicle which is flown without a pilot on board and is either remotely and fully controlled by a pilot from another place such as the ground, another aircraft or airspace (remotely piloted aircraft system, RPAS), or is programmed and fully * Ewa Jasiuk Anna Chochowska Krzysztof Chochowski 1 University of the National Education Commission, Krakow, Poland 2 State Vocational University of Prof. Stanisław Tarnowski in Tarnobrzeg, Tarnobrzeg, Poland autonomous. With regard to flights performed by UAVs, the term unmanned aerial system or UAS is also used. UAVs are commonly called drones.” [1, Art. 126, pp. 457–464]. Drones are currently being used for both civil and military purposes with the common goal of striving to eliminate, or limit, the risk of death or injury to humans. The dynamic development of drones during the last decade has brought about a number of improvements – as well as diverse risks. These issues have been assessed by legislators who adopted several legal acts that provide the framework for legal drone use. However, it would not be fair to claim that the activity of national or EU legislators or that of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has allowed to fully tighten the legal corset so as to eliminate any pathology in this field. In fact, the authors of this paper believe that in the race between technical and legal progress, new technological solutions and new technologies have taken the lead. This in turn calls for the scrutiny of the legal dilemmas associated with drone development. After all, the visions of classic science fiction authors such as I. Asimov, F. Herbert, A.C. Clarke and S. Lem are already unfolding before our very eyes. The development of artificial intelligence and the increasing autonomization of drones beg the question of the scope and cost of this progress. This paper aims to discuss drone development and the scope of drone use. Determining the legal framework that regulates drone use by adopting the appropriate legal acts seems to represent the need of the moment. After all, drones not only provide opportunities for growth but also entail new, previously unidentified threats and hence legal dilemmas arise associated with the possibilities of employing drones more fully. Vol.:(0123456789) 78 Page 2 of 8 The implementation of the above goal requires a research question: What legal dilemmas does the further development of drones in Poland pose? In turn, the basic thesis was formulated as follows: Further development of drones in Poland brings a number of benefits, but also generates certain risks—therefore, it is necessary to create a comprehensive legal regulation that would normalize the scope and manner of using drones, e.g. in the form of the Code drone, consistent in this area with international regulations. The authors apply the dogmatic method which is the leading method in legal science, as well as, to some extent, the comparative and historical methods. 2 Civilian Use of Drones The scope of drone use for both civil and military purposes is very broad. In terms of non-military use, drones are used primarily in situations where direct human activity is associated with a high risk of death or injury. The risky nature of such activities obviously increases their cost; drone use allows to significantly reduce these costs. In the field of environmental protection, drones offer an effective means of monitoring protected areas by taking photos and videos; verifying in detail e.g. air quality or hazards at a given area; identifying and controlling illegal waste storage or disposal, including illegal sewage dumping into water; and finally verifying the risk of fire caused by waste processing [2, p. 186]. In the field of mining, drones can be used e.g. to examine the technical condition and air composition inside mines (this may also apply to ground platforms). In maritime transport, drones can be used to monitor shipping lanes, and in the deep sea mining industry, to monitor the technical condition of installations and identify and remove the potential sources of environmental pollution, as well as to perform underwater operations, and to patrol and monitor bodies of water. The civilian use of drones also includes agricultural applications such as assessing plant vegetation and plant condition or precisely spraying crops [3, p. 23–25]. Additionally, drones are used to locate the sources of fires and extinguish them,to identify contamination and its sources; in advertising and the film industry; and in geodesy and cartography. Drone use has been increasingly present in health care, as shown especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when patients under isolation or quarantine were provided with medications, food and other necessary supplies. Drones allow to reach a patient in urgent need of intervention and even transport patients to wherever help may be provided [4, p. 4]. Drones have also proven useful with regard to railway infrastructure. As noted by P. Lesiak, drones aid in detecting cavities, cracks, deformations or corrosion in the construction, and in the intelligent maintenance of bridges and overpasses; inspecting dams and water reservoirs for Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems (2024) 110:78 potential leakage or erosion; examining landslides, roads, tramways and railways; examining the condition of power lines and railway electrification systems, etc. (...truncated)