Market Design for Drone Traffic Management

TL;DR

This paper introduces the drone traffic management problem as a new research challenge, emphasizing the need for market design and AI solutions to create efficient, fair, and scalable frameworks based on stakeholder insights.

Contribution

It formulates the drone traffic management problem, derives key design principles from stakeholder interviews, and outlines future research directions in market design and AI.

Findings

Identified five key design desiderata for drone traffic management.

Provided an overview of potential solution approaches.

Highlighted the importance of stakeholder-informed design.

Abstract

The rapid development of drone technology is leading to more and more use cases being proposed. In response, regulators are drawing up drone traffic management frameworks. However, to design solutions that are efficient, fair, simple, non-manipulable, and scalable, we need market design and AI expertise. To this end, we introduce the drone traffic management problem as a new research challenge to the market design and AI communities. We present five design desiderata that we have derived from our interviews with stakeholders from the regulatory side as well as from public and private enterprises. Finally, we provide an overview of the solution space to point out possible directions for future research.