Russia has its first city to greenlight drone technologies. 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 takeoff 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 such as power lines, pipelines, and others.
The Ministry of Economic Development proposes to eventually grant similar capabilities to drones in Moscow, with some restrictions by district. The Moscow and Tver regions are already testing an air logistics mode for drones.
Innopolis is not the first time it has become a testing ground for innovations related to unmanned systems. 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 via the app since 2018. This service is available in the app when the client is in the science city. Since the start of testing, these cars have already traveled more than 1 million kilometers and made over 77,000 trips. Innopolis is small, so a robotaxi has become an ideal mode of transport for it. But you won't be able to go to Kazan or any other settlement on it.
Residents of Moscow have been able to test an unmanned taxi in the Yasenevo district since July 2023, but three months later the company moved its tests to a more suitable site — the Sirius federal territory (Black Sea coast of Sochi, venue for the 2014 Winter Olympics). It is planned that Sirius will become the main place for testing robotaxis in the future, and Moscow will continue testing unmanned vehicles without passengers in the cabin, but with a driver behind the wheel.
