Skip to content

Drone Operations Safety

AI1SAD drone integration is strictly advisory and observational.

Phase 25C adds a Drone Operator Console for human-entered observations. It is a frontend intake surface over existing drone APIs and does not change aircraft-safety boundaries.

Phase 25D-A adds metadata-only analyst review fields. These are annotations on existing observations and do not change aircraft-safety boundaries.

Phase 25D-B adds the media attachment storage design and privacy review. This is a planning-and-documentation phase only. No media storage, upload, or hosting is implemented.

Phase 25D-C adds a local-only, metadata-only attachment prototype. It is disabled by default and does not add binary upload, cloud storage, media download, computer vision, media analysis, autonomous detections, or flight-control behavior.

Phase 25D-D hardens local attachment metadata validation. It rejects unsafe path-like metadata, executable/script filename extensions, invalid checksums, malformed timestamps, impossible file sizes, and unsupported attachment enum values before any binary upload support exists.

Phase 25F adds UAV operator feedback intake. Feedback records are research and requirements input only; they are not live observations and do not change operational outputs.

Safety Boundaries

  • Drone write endpoints are disabled unless DRONE_INGEST_ENABLED=true.
  • No autonomous takeoff
  • No autonomous landing
  • No waypoint execution
  • No offboard flight control
  • No aircraft-control commands in public or internal API responses
  • No vendor-specific command dependencies
  • MAVLink bridge support is telemetry-only and must not transmit MAVLink commands.
  • The Drone Operator Console must not expose arming, takeoff, landing, waypoint, mission-upload, offboard-control, or MAVLink command actions.
  • Analyst review fields are metadata-only; AI1SAD does not fetch, host, or analyze media
  • analyst_notes_private, analyst_reviewer_role, and analyst_reviewed_at are excluded from public output
  • Media attachment support is metadata-only in Phase 25D-C; no file upload, hosting, cloud storage, or storage client code is added
  • Public feed rules for future attachments deny private URLs, storage keys, original filenames, and unreviewed evidence
  • Media attachment endpoints are disabled unless MEDIA_ATTACHMENTS_ENABLED=true
  • Local attachment metadata remains private-by-default and is not exposed through public surveillance feeds
  • Attachments do not create sightings and do not alter scoring
  • Attachments do not infer species or trigger computer vision
  • Original filenames are private display metadata only and are never used as storage paths
  • UAV feedback records do not create observations, sightings, warnings, public alerts, replay facts, or surveillance feed entries
  • UAV feedback records do not imply endorsement from an agency, operator, researcher, or lifeguard service

Interpretation Rules

  • A drone sighting is source-attributed observation metadata.
  • Review status affects confidence.
  • Probable species is not official taxonomy unless a source says so.
  • Observed behavior is preserved as reported and does not imply intent.
  • A no-sighting patrol result does not establish safety.
  • Species guesses entered through the console are provisional unless confirmed by an official source or qualified review.

Operational Use

Recommended patterns such as shoreline_parallel_sweep and post_sighting_focus_area are planning labels for human operators. They are not executable flight plans.

Console safety copy:

AI1SAD records human observations and recommends surveillance attention. It does not control aircraft or predict individual shark attacks.

No-sighting patrol copy:

No-sighting patrols reduce uncertainty only within the observed patrol area, time window, and visibility conditions. They do not prove an area is safe.