The Russian government has approved the experimental launch of unmanned cargo transportation on the M-11 Neva highway - between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
This was reported by RIA Novosti with reference to a source in the transport industry and the resolution of First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov.
The official instructed the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Industry and Trade to form proposals for the regime of "digital sandboxes" for drones until February 2022. In addition, the Ministry of Economic Development has until April 2022 to prepare a draft government decree on the launch of autonomous cars in an experimental legal regime.
It is planned to accelerate unmanned cargo transportation within the framework of the Ministry of Transport's project "Unmanned Logistics Corridors— - testing of trucks in unmanned mode will begin in 2022 on certain sections of the M-11.
According to Deputy Minister Kirill Bogdanov, this will be the first step towards the large-scale commercial use of drones on the entire highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg from 2024, as well as the launch of autonomous transportation on 19.5 thousand kilometers of federal highways between Asia and Europe by 2030.
The concepts of experimental legal regimes or "digital sandboxes" have been introduced into Russian legislation since January 2021 and are designed to accelerate the introduction of digital technologies by creating the necessary legal conditions for this. They allow you to test new services and services in practice, while new legal norms are still being formed. The first swallows in the "digital sandboxes" were the taxi drones of Yandex. The launch of drone delivery in the Tomsk Region and the Far East is also being prepared.