Each Proposed Solution Has Its Advocates, Detractors

In 2016, a provision of the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016 called on the agency to figure out a sense of standards for the remote identification of drones, and to gather stakeholders to develop a sort of license plate for unmanned aerial vehicles. This edict became more urgent the following year in 2017, according to Brendan Schulman, vice president of policy and legal affairs at DJI.

By the summer of 2017, Remote ID was not just a congressional directive, but also a security priority in the federal government, as security agencies made it clear they’re not going to allow drones to fly far from their operators without a good set of information about who’s flying drones, where they’re going and what they're doing.

With this in mind, the FAA established a rulemaking committee in the summer of 2017 that included 74 members — one of which was DJI — and had two goals: figure out how to achieve Remote ID and determine some of the policy that could create a solution to the issue of drones flying in the airspace without accountability.

The committee led to some “pretty good advice,” Schulman says, both in terms of how to do Remote ID on a technical basis, as well as what is important from a policy consideration. Some key points of emphasis were that Remote ID needed to be easy to use, inexpensive, and built in so it's easy to use. This advice was sent to the FAA in the fall of 2017.

At the end of the process, there was no single conclusion or recommendation for Remote ID to be done in a particular way. Instead, there was a choice to do it either by broadcast, which is like a radio wave coming from the drone that can be received by anyone within range, or by a network approach, which connects the drones via the internet and sends the same type of information.

Having spent so much time working on what Remote ID could look like from a practical standpoint, DJI took it upon itself to develop its own comprehensive drone detection platform, AeroScope, a broadcast technology that uses radio hardware already on the drone. Schulman says DJI reprogrammed the software but uses the same hardware to send the Remote ID information to anyone within range. AeroScope has been deployed for almost two and a half years, and has solved issues at airports, sporting events, and during election days, he says.

“We provided the solution two and half years before there was an NPRM, and probably what looks like it’ll be four or five years before an actual requirement to do Remote ID, and the purpose behind that was to very easily and simply and inexpensively do it, particularly for the people using the technology,” Schulman explained during a Remote ID Briefing on Monday, Feb. 10, on Capitol Hill, hosted by the Unmanned Systems Caucus.

“They turn it on and it’s there. It’s really not a lot of hassle.”

While AeroScope uses a broadcast approach, DJI is not a proponent of one approach over the other.

“From our point of view, either or approach, broadcast or network, they both solve the problem,” Schulman says.

Broadcast, Network or both?

Broadcast and network each have capabilities and functionalities that will make them appealing to different operators based on their particular operations.

“There are going to be people, drone operators, that are large, sophisticated businesses, that really want to be able to fly far beyond the visual line of sight and conduct operations that can’t be conducted within 400 feet of the drone pilot. Those solutions almost certainly are going to require some sort of network connectivity,” says Jeff Dygert, executive director of public policy at AT&T.

“On the other hand, there is an argument to be made that for shorter range operations, particularly for people that have just gotten a drone as a gift and are 12 years old, you may not need to have a networked operation.”

According to Dygert, AT&T “frankly isn’t taking a really hardline on this one way or the other.”

While AT&T doesn’t have a preference, fellow telecommunications giant Verizon prefers a network approach to Remote ID, according to Melissa Tye, associate general counsel for emerging technologies at Verizon.

With a network that covers 99 percent of the U.S. population, Verizon understands that in some cases a broadcast connection will be necessary, but generally speaking, the company believes network communications provide a “superior experience” for both the operator as well as law enforcement and the public to be able to get this information, she says.

One reason Verizon favors a network solution is because of the impending development of an unmanned traffic management (UTM) system. Tye says the expectation is UTM will be fairly decentralized and run by a federated system where private companies offer these services and feed into a central system where everyone feeds in and out. Verizon, for instance, would feed into the system and also take information and relay it to operators so they have a complete picture of the airspace, not just what’s on Verizon’s network.

Tye says a network solution also offers the ability for authentication, so an operator's identity can be verified when they connect to the network. This provides additional security for law enforcement or the public when they’re checking for that Remote ID information, and it also gives operators more ability to potentially customize the information they’re sending, because if they’re authenticated, they could potentially be offered more privacy since they can be properly identified.

Like Verizon, drone delivery company Wing also supports network-based solutions, says Matthew Satterley, who works in Wing's Policy & Government Relations department. Wing currently operates in Australia, Finland and the United States in Christiansburg, Virginia. All of the communities in which it operates are within network range, allowing the company to communicate with its customers more effectively and protect their data and their information.

Also like Verizon, Wing is keenly aware a network approach won’t work for everyone across the United States, as broadcast will be a better option for certain people in certain environments.

Wing says Remote ID, whether broadcast or network, will be crucial for the expansion of its operations across the country.

“Remote ID will really allow our business to scale in the United States and to become something that probably touches your lives more regularly, not just in Christiansburg, Virginia,” Satterley says.

As Wing expands to new communities, one of the first things it does is interact with the people in that community to establish a relationship and to build a rapport with those who will be impacted by the technology. Remote ID is the next step in that relationship building process.

“We want to make sure we’re building public trust. This is a new technology, this is new to everybody’s lives,” Satterley says.

“For us, Remote ID is really important because it allows us to have that relationship with the community at another level, where they can understand what we’re doing, how we’re operating in that airspace, and make sure that our aircraft is compliant with all of the regulations that the FAA has put forth.”

(Image provided with AUVSI news release. [L-R] Matt Satterley of Wing, Melissa Tye of Verizon, Jeff Dygert of AT&T and Brendan Schulman of DJI)

FMI: www.auvsi.org