Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are becoming increasingly popular in the public safety sector. While some applications have so far only been envisioned, others are regularly performed in real-life scenarios. Many more fall in between and are actively investigated by research and commercial communities alike. This study reviews the maturity levels, or “market-readiness”, of public safety applications for UAS. As individual assessments of all applications suggested in the literature are infeasible due to their sheer number, we propose a novel set of application categories: Remote Sensing, Mapping, Monitoring, Human-drone Interaction, Flying Ad-hoc Networks, Transportation, and Counter UAV Systems. Each category’s maturity is assessed through a literature review of contained applications, using the metric of Application Readiness Levels (ARLs). Relevant aspects such as the environmental complexity and available mission time of addressed scenarios are taken into account. Following the analysis, we infer that improvements in autonomy and software reliability are the most promising research areas for increasing the usefulness and acceptance of UAS in the public safety domain.

无人机系统 (UAS) 在公共安全领域越来越受欢迎。虽然到目前为止还只是设想了一些应用程序，但其他应用程序经常在现实生活场景中执行。还有更多介于两者之间，并受到研究和商业社区的积极调查。本研究回顾了 UAS 公共安全应用的成熟度或“市场准备”。由于文献中建议的所有应用程序的单独评估由于其数量庞大而无法实现，因此我们提出了一组新的应用程序类别：遥感、测绘、监测、人机交互、飞行 Ad-hoc 网络、运输和反无人机系统。每个类别的成熟度都是通过对包含的应用程序的文献审查来评估的，使用应用程序就绪级别 (ARL) 指标。考虑了相关方面，例如环境复杂性和所处理场景的可用任务时间。根据分析，我们推断自主性和软件可靠性的改进是提高 UAS 在公共安全领域的实用性和接受度的最有前途的研究领域。