Regulating Drones in Restricted Spaces

Abstract

Commercial and end-user drones come equipped with a wide array of sensors. Unregulated use of such drones in public airspaces poses a serious threat to the privacy of citizens. We make the case for restricted spaces for drones, which are geographic areas for which a host can specify its privacy policies. Guest drones must prove to the host that they are in compliance with the host's policies before entering the restricted space. We then make the case for an information-flow control-based policy enforcement framework on drones, and sketch the design of a prototype framework atop the Robot Operating System (ROS).