Russia has its first city to greenlight drone technology. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree to implement an "experimental legal regime (ELR) in the field of digital innovation" for three years and approved the rules for operating unmanned aircraft systems in Innopolis, a satellite city of the capital of Tatarstan. The State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan approved this ELR in early 2023.
The experimental regime program concerns drones with a maximum take-off weight of 30 kg for performing aerial work and transporting goods. The science city plans to:
- create and launch a new type of transport service using UAS;
- create a distributed network of droneports;
- perform high-precision aerial photography for infrastructure facilities - power lines, pipelines, and others.
The Ministry of Economic Development proposes to eventually give drones the same capabilities in Moscow, with some restrictions by area. The Moscow and Tver regions are already testing an air logistics mode for drones.
This is not the first time Innopolis has become a testing ground for innovations related to unmanned technology. In October 2023, Yandex entered the final stage of testing unmanned taxis in Innopolis. The partnership with this modern young city allowed the company to become the first in Europe to conduct passenger transportation without a driver in the cabin. To ensure safety, each car was accompanied by another car with an operator ready to intervene and make an emergency stop of the robotaxi remotely if necessary.
It has been possible to order a Yandex unmanned taxi through the application since 2018. This service is available in the application when the client is in the science city. Since the beginning of testing, these cars have already traveled more than 1 million kilometers and made over 77 thousand trips. Innopolis is small, so a robotaxi has become an ideal mode of transport for it. But you will not be able to go to Kazan or any other settlement on it.
Since July 2023, residents of Moscow could test an unmanned taxi in the Yasenevo district, but three months later the company moved its tests to a more suitable site - the federal territory "Sirius" (Black Sea coast of Sochi, venue for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games). It is planned that Sirius will become the main place for testing robotaxis in the future, and tests of unmanned vehicles without passengers in the cabin, but with a driver behind the wheel, will continue in Moscow.