Tell us about your idea:

 

“1 Trillion Drone Trips!” I presented this idea at the ‘Internet of Things Symposium’ held at Indiana University in April 2019. Imagine: your friend 3 miles away made an amazing cocktail and sends you a sample for your opinion?

Or, in 2050, a grandma wants an elephant shaped refrigerator and her granddaughter taps on her haptic “screen” ordering “one-tap” from Walmart a modular refrigerator to be 3D printed at their massive printer shop 2 miles away, shipped 2 pounds at a time by a fleet of 150 electric ultralight drones! And, assembled by the $5000 home robot, relieving grandma of all the trouble of purchasing, assembling and siting early 21^st century 3D objects in her private environment. Or, “Electrification of aircraft, in general, is expected to fundamentally change the aerospace industry in the near future,” Furbush said. https://techxplore.com/news/2019-04-jetsons-future-role-cars-sustainable.html.

Americans took ~ 411 billion daily vehicle trips last year or about 1,500 trips per person. With the above grandma example, capitalist societies will hyper charge delivery, far beyond the half-trillion trips, similar to what we saw with the communications explosion triggered by the internet (phone calls to video chat sharing).

I am proposing a novel’-ish’ idea to make drones follow a 3D ‘operating system’ that replicates our already existing terrestrial roadway system … to be replicated in the sky.

What will it take to achieve this idea, and why now? 

There are ~50 million road segments in the US and it has all the trapping of complex traffic rules. Automated vehicles are predicted to use our existing roads. However, due to automation they need no traffic lights or other traffic furniture (everything is computerized with predicted routing using a centralized computer system).

I developed, using the latest traffic simulation geographic information software, a traffic-signal-less operating system for terrestrial vehicles and projected them into space 300 feet above ground. 200 to 400 feet is the FAA restriction for drone space so a ‘pipeline like’ aerial highway will be used and sold to companies (similar to how the Federal Communications Commission ‘sells’ airwaves). This will eliminate the chaos of insect-like swarms of drones affecting quality of life by restricting airspace based on a regulatory framework. In addition, centrally planned trips would eliminate ‘unqualified’ and rogue drones to ever violate this delicate and extraordinary innovation we may call what’s essentially a 3D electric transport architecture.

It takes around 2 hours, using terrestrial transportation GIS simulation software Transmodeler™ (the most advanced in the market), to simulate say, downtown San Francisco. See my example of “A blueprint for a Drone skyway” video here: https://youtu.be/u0VdKrsOtSM .

 

Instead of everyone using drones by themselves, an FCC type 3D electric ‘spectrum’ will be auctioned off to companies and the money will be used to monitor and control drone space like the FAA.