Effects of a hovering Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on urban soundscapes perception

Torija Martinez, AJ; Zhengguang, L; Self, RH

Abstract

Several industry leaders and governmental agencies are currently investigating the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or ‘drones’ as commonly known, for an ever-growing number of applications from blue light services to parcel delivery. For the specific case of the delivery sector, drones can alleviate road space usage and also lead to reductions in CO2 and air pollution emissions, compared to traditional diesel-powered vehicles. However, due to their unconventional acoustic characteristics and operational manoeuvres, it is uncertain how communities will respond to drone operations. Noise has been suggested as a major barrier to public acceptance of drone operations in urban areas. In this paper, a series of audio-visual scenarios were created to investigate the effects of drone noise on the reported loudness, annoyance and pleasantness of seven different types of urban soundscapes. In soundscapes highly impacted by road traffic noise, the presence of drone noise lead to small changes in the perceived loudness, annoyance and pleasantness. In soundscapes with reduced road traffic noise, the participants reported a significantly higher perceived loudness and annoyance and a lower pleasantness with the presence of the same drone noise. For instance, the reported annoyance increased from 2.3±0.8 (without drone noise) to 6.8±0.3 (with drone noise), in an 11-point scale (0-not at all, 10-extremely). Based on these results, the concentration of drone operations along flight paths through busy roads might aid in the mitigation of the overall community noise impact caused by drones.

Citation

Torija Martinez, A., Zhengguang, L., & Self, R. (2020). Effects of a hovering Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on urban soundscapes perception. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 78, 102195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2019.11.024

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 27, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Dec 19, 2019
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 29, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 19, 2020
• Journal: Transportation Research Part D
• Print ISSN: 1361-9209
• Electronic ISSN: 1879-2340
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Volume: 78
• Pages: 102195
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2019.11.024
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2019.11.024
• Related Public URLs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/transportation-research-part-d-transport-and-environment
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Let to collaboration with Blue Bear Systems Research (and consortium) in the framework of UAV/UAM research (i.e. ATI, Innovate UK - Future Flight Challenge, Research Councils potential proposals in discussion); Funders : China Scholarship Council; Grant Number: ref: 201808330656