# Remote ID in Public Safety and Autonomous Operations - Event: NestGen ’26 - Published: October 2, 2026 - Length: 28:50 - Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/-ycsdFrGNrc/ > The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's > captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms. ## About this session As autonomous operations scale, knowing which aircraft is in the air, who is responsible for it, and why becomes an operating requirement rather than a compliance checkbox. That matters as much to the agency responding to a sighting as to the operator flying the mission. In this NestGen showcase, Dronetag will share how Remote ID works in public safety and autonomous operations today, and what operators and agencies should think through when building Remote ID into how they fly and how they respond. ## Transcript **[0:00]** So, first of all, a very warm welcome to all the people who are tuning in today. I'm sure there's going to be people from different parts of the globe in this session today. So, please feel free to drop in, use the chat to introduce yourself and drop in where you're coming from, your city, your country. Happy to very, very happy to host you here. And this is one of our premier sessions in the physical AI showcase track. First of all, a very warm welcome to you, Lad. To set the context for today, DroneTag builds remote ID hardware and software used by thousands of operators across Europe and North America. The transmitters that broadcast a drone's identity, position, and operator info live. That's so that the public safety agencies and autonomous systems can see and coordinate with every single drone in the airspace. That is the background of DroneTag and walking us through what remote ID means for public safety and **[1:00]** autonomous operations is Ladislav Kuba. He is the head of marketing at DroneTag. He's been at the front lines of DroneTag's remote ID story, engaging with regulators, public safety agencies, and operators across Europe as remote ID moves from as remote ID uh as remote ID moves from compliance check checkbox to an operational tool. Very, very warm welcome to you, Lad. Very happy to host you at the And as just a housekeeping thing, I'm sharing one last thing. First of all, like if anybody here, I'm sure like there's going to be like a lot of like public safety folks who are tuning in today. So, please feel free to capture anything from today's session. Post the screenshot on LinkedIn. You can tag Lad, you can tag DroneTag, and you can tag Nッション, Nッション's official LinkedIn as well. Additionally, uh, entire session is going to be recorded and published on, uh, FlytBase's YouTube channel. **[2:02]** There's going to be a whole playlist of, uh, NestGen 26 sessions. So, if you ever want to come back to this session and, uh, review something very specific, you can always do that, uh, in the published recording. Uh, with that, over to you, Lad. >> Uh, thank you, Kanchi, for the introduction and for having me. Uh, I'm I'm very happy to be here. Uh, I do apologize in advance for, uh, my uh, voice. If I sound like I have cucumber stuck up my nose, it's because I'm, uh, recovering from some deadly virus, but I'll do my best to, uh, keep the mucus from me. Uh, let me just quickly share my screen. Uh, I believe that you should see my presentation now. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Wonderful. Uh, so, hello everyone. Thanks for joining this session. Uh, I'm Ladislav from Drone Tech. I'm a head of marketing there, and, uh, in the next 20 minutes, I would like to try to explain the role of remote ID in, uh, public safety and autonomous **[3:06]** operations. And, uh, I'm going to walk you through some use cases, some fresh data from our network, and, um, a couple of real installations, so you get a practical feel of what remote ID can actually bring to the table. Um, so, let me do a really quick introduction on Drone Tech. Uh, for those who don't know us, uh, we've been there basically since the beginning of remote ID. Our founders helped author the technical foundation of the remote ID protocol itself, and, uh, we were actually the first remote ID module that got approved by FAA and EASA, uh, when the regulation kicked in. Uh, we basically built the whole ecosystem, which consists of three parts. Uh, one of those are remote ID transmitters, which make drones uh visible in the air. We build remote ID receivers that listen to those broadcasts, and we uh build software that actually turns all those data into a live airspace map. Uh, today we operate the largest commercial drone detection network in **[4:11]** the world with about 3,000 receivers in the field, and uh the network is growing. And every number that you're going to see today comes actually from those data. So, it's uh it comes from a primary source. Uh, I'm going to sort of assume that everyone knows what remote ID is by now, but I'm going to do a quick uh recap anyway. Uh, basically you can think of remote ID as a digital license plate for drones. In >> [clears throat] >> the US, EU, uh Japan, and a growing list of other countries, any drone that meets certain criteria is uh required to actually broadcast identificand messages into its vicinity. Uh, the criteria for the drones actually vary per market, but the content of the message remains the same. Uh, what is broadcast is the drone's serial number, its position and altitude, its speed and heading, and [snorts] the pilot's position. Uh, **[5:12]** in case there is no pilot position, which concerns mostly the remote ID uh add-on modules, uh it broadcasts its takeoff position, so you can actually see where the drone took off from. And uh since we're discussing the remote ID uh rule in uh autonomous operations, I um included an excerpt from the remote ID final rule uh executive summary, which as you can see considers the remote ID as a stepping stone towards more complex operations. Uh, so, uh what this basically means that with a proper listening device, uh, you are able to monitor the vast majority of drone traffic out there and, uh, see it in a real time. So, what it actually looks like in practice. Uh, I'm going to play a little video for you. It's, uh, historic replay of a detection that we actually took, uh, last **[6:13]** year at the music festival. It actually happened here on the airfield. You are going to see a drone in blue here. You are going to see its operator here in purple. And this is a portable remote ID receiver that actually caught the detection and, uh, notified the team that it happened. Uh, what you're going to see is a super nice example of how remote ID can be, uh, advantageous for you because once the team actually caught the detection, they hopped on a scooter and drove right to the pilot because you can see the his position and you can open it in Google Maps. And they exchanged some words and, uh, the pilot did one last loop and then landed the drone immediately. Uh, the reason I actually like this, uh, detection is that, uh, you can sort of feel the situation unfolding in front of you just from the pictures. And, uh, it illustrates how knowing the, uh, pilot's operator position is super helpful because, uh, grounding a drone is actually very complicated discipline both **[7:16]** legally and practically. So, if you know where the pilot is standing and you can just ask him to land, it's a win-win situation for, uh, everyone. Uh, what this also means is that, uh, all this level of detail you actually will get in real time. So, uh, from a drone that is flying around you, it suddenly becomes a known factor. Uh, it has some se- uh, serial number, so it it has an identity. Uh it has some flight path. And uh it has a person behind it, and you can actually see where that person is standing in real time. Apart from that, you can also see all other telemetry like altitude, position, etc. So, uh to move on, let me quickly check how you can actually listen to remote ID. Uh in theory, you could use your phone. Uh the remote ID regulation was written with that in mind, but it soon turned uh pretty clear that it is a very impractical and **[8:19]** unreliable uh way of listening to remote ID. There are multiple reasons, most of them uh technical, but uh if you mean any serious business, you really want to get yourself a dedicated device. And uh those basically come in two different versions. Uh one of them is portable. Uh for reference, this one is about uh this size. Uh it fits in your palm or your pocket or backpack, and you can carry it anywhere with you. It was built for people who are uh in the field, so mobile security teams, uh police, firefighters, anyone who needs to move a lot and needs to see what's flying around him in the field. That one has a range about 5 km uh with clear line of sight, and it gets a lower in uh urban or city areas. Uh the other version, which has much larger range and is a fixed unit. Uh those come basically in uh two versions. One of them is a **[9:20]** baseline with omnidirectional antennas with a range of about 10 km. And uh there is also a high-performance version with directional antennas, which you can see here on the picture, which boosts the performance to about 25 km with clear line of sight. Uh it gets down to about half of that in urban areas. So, uh, which one you choose basically depends on the setting and, uh, how far you actually, uh, need to see. Uh, both these devices, uh, come with an app where you can actually see the airspace and see the live drones and detections and historic replays. Or, you can, uh, integrate the data stream into any other, uh, C2 platform that you're actually using. So, whatever you're running on right now, you can, uh, stream this data in there and see the detections along your flight, as well. And, uh, now finally to get to, uh, some problem and a solution. So, basically, what **[10:20]** the operator is, uh, thinking about when he's flying, uh, the question comes down to, uh, knowing what's flying around you. Uh, basically, I simplified it into you don't want to hit anything and you don't want to get hit by anything. Now, the drones, uh, obviously are not completely blind. Uh, they have some mission camera, they, uh, can avoid, uh, some obstacles. Uh, and, uh, recently, uh, there are also being ADSB receivers which see manned aircraft, uh, integrated into the docking stations and autonomous platforms. But, uh, none of those can actually tell you if there is any drone flying around you. So, uh, that is the role that remote ID actually fills. And, uh, that's the space that, uh, actually, uh, fits in. Now, you may be interested in what's flying around you in, basically, in two situations. Either you're flying and want to fly and, uh, you want to know what's flying around you and you don't want to hit it or get hit by it. Or, **[11:24]** alternatively, it can serve as a trigger for launching an autonomous operation, uh, based on that alert. So, uh, I'm going to get into the first one, which is the deconfliction. So, now we're talking about a situation when your operation is on, your drone is in the air, and you want to see what's flying around you and make sure that your flight path is clear and without any dangers. So, uh >> [clears throat] >> as we discussed, uh the only thing that comes close to remote ID is actually the manned aviation monitoring, which comes through ADSB, ADSL ADSL transponders, and uh other varieties. But, that traffic actually happens much higher, uh mostly much higher than you're actually uh concerned with. What you want to see is what's flying below the 120 m uh limit or close to him, because that is the band that is actually mostly used by **[12:28]** uh drones and uh autonomous operations. Uh this is data for our network, and you can see that it's already the most used band uh there is from the altitudes, and there's a lot of traffic around it as well. Uh you can also see that already one in five flights uh Uh sorry, that's a different number, but uh you can see that only one in five drones, which is 20%, it's not uh that low, actually crosses that threshold of the 120 uh meters, but uh most of the flights actually follow the regulations and stay below that limit. Uh uh Today, most of the platforms actually treat any alert about detected drone in your vicinity as uh as an uh input for the operator who does some action uh based on that, either uh ground the drone or return it to the base or actually keep going. **[13:30]** The decision is up to him. But the proposed rules for the future for remote ID is that those I mean for drone operations is that those reactions get automated as well. But no matter if it's an operator or if it's an autonomous system that has to do some reaction based on the detection, it comes down to actually seeing what there is in the air around you and you can do that with the means that are at the drone disposal today. You need some technology that actually fills the picture about the lower airspace which remote ID does much better than any comparable technology like radar or optical or acoustic sensors because the level of detail is incomparable. You can also see that the autonomous flights are growing rapidly. Uh see in the past 12 months the amount of flights that we detected was about 30-fold. **[14:31]** To be fair, our detection network also grows. It grew about 11 times. But still you can see that the rise of autonomous flights is about two times faster than the network is growing and already about 20% of all detected drones are autonomous. This number doesn't include Skydios which do have docking stations, but those can be flown both manually or autonomously. So the number is even higher. This is a base floor. So the point is that the traffic is growing. The traffic is going to keep growing and the altitude is already super busy and it's going only going to get much busier in the future. I'm going to drink. Now, a fun thing fact is that you can actually tell what sort of drone you are detecting **[15:32]** based on the serial number because you can tell by the amount of flights it basically does within a year. Standard consumer drones like DJI Mini and other smaller models do only a couple of flights per year. Just to make sure these are flights per unique serial number. So, we're talking about one specific drone and how many flights it does on average per year. Whereas for the autonomous drones, you can see that the amount of flights is much higher. So, as soon as you see a drone that is flying a lot a lot of repeated flights, >> [snorts] >> you can be pretty sure that it's a it's an autonomous or docking station. We can also see that there are new models being detected in the network in the past 12 months and as I said, we only expect more to come. So, that covers the deconfliction use case. Now, I'm going to take a look at the **[16:38]** other end of the autonomous chain and that is actually triggering launch. So, basically up until recently, most surveillance systems focused on protecting perimeter on the ground. You would usually see motion sensors, you would see cameras, you would see fences. But with the growing drone traffic, the focus is actually a starting to be also paid on the airspace above the perimeter. So, how that works, you can actually set up or your own geofence. These are screenshots from Octavia special software. You can build your own geofence zone. The setting is totally up to you and as soon as anything enters that zone, it actually triggers an alarm. Now, that alarm can serve as a trigger for an autonomous surveillance drone to actually fly out and be on the spot as soon as possible. **[17:41]** You can see that thanks to remote ID, you can even in this virtual system, you can see the drone, its flight path and actually where the pilot is standing. So, instead of chasing the drone, you can actually fly straight to the pilot and be on the spot before he actually finishes the operation and moves on. Um We're going to see here that the time window to actually catch the pilot or the drone in air is not very large. Basically, half of operations are shorter than 5.4 minutes. So, times time matters here. And you can see that drones as first responders are being able to put the drone on the scene in less than 2.5 minutes. The number is higher somewhere, but they're trying to get there as soon as possible and there is a good reasoning behind it. And the good news is that in about 96% of cases, you can actually see the pilot's position **[18:45]** on the map. So, you can actually display the drone there and not to chase the drone in the air. Um Now, I would like to move to some real world installations so you can actually just the pay for performance of the receivers. Now, this is a suburban settings. This is suburban LA. This is a coastline. There is a sea or ocean on this side and this is the land. You can see the position of the receiver and some radius. So, this is a high performance version of the Scout. So, it has four directional antennas which each cover 90 degrees. So, you have a 360 degree view with four antennas. And you can see that the reliable detection distance is about 10 km. It does have some detections on 20 km away, but those are mostly occasional. **[19:46]** To be honest, we also had detections that went up more to more than 90 km away, but those are not reliable detections. It only happens from time to time under ideal conditions. Basically, in the high performance configuration what you get in urban area or urban area is 10 km range which you can rely upon. I'm going to jump to the second installation here which is downtown San Francisco. Again, this is a coastline. You have the sea going through. This is a San Francisco Bay Area. And you can see that we have three Scouts there here. And the one that is actually downtown in the city has much stricter cutoff than the one that is in the open area and on the coast. So, the setting actually matters. In the city, you have a lot of Wi-Fi and mobile infrastructure interference. **[20:46]** And the position of the Scout actually matters as well. You want to get it as high as possible and as little obstruction in the view as well. You can see that the detection here is somehow altered by some obstacles in the way. It's San Francisco. There's a lot of sky rises and a lot of population and things in the way. So, uh in such cases you want to actually uh make a larger network of scouts to actually have a reliable coverage and ideally uh complement it with the mobile units. Uh to put that range into some perspective, uh I'm have some uh ranges of autonomous operations here. Uh you can see that the drones as first responders uh for these departments are all within uh let's say about 5 km. So, even the baseline can do the job there. And uh with the uh Scout high-performance, you can actually cover the 10 km perimeter that **[21:50]** includes also DJI docking stations. Uh Zipline deliveries uh operate on a larger distances, but again, if we're in uh some open area, you can cover it with a single Scout unit. If uh you want to follow a specific corridor, you would need to get more units to actually cover the whole area. Uh To somehow finish this up, uh autonomous operations are not mainstream uh are not uh niche anymore. Uh we can see that uh the the flights grew uh about 30 times since last year from uh to put it in some uh percentages, it was from about 7% to 20% within 12 months. The uh tempo is actually rising and we're only going to see more autonomous operations. Uh Remote ID is going to give you the picture of uh around your operations, so we **[22:53]** actually see if there is anything flying around you. Uh we can see that the traffic is uh actually focused in the band that the autonomous operations actually use the most. So, that band is probably going to get even busier. And without actually knowing what's flying around you, you can never know if your flight is safe or not or if there's any danger in the air. And in ideal situation, you can cover one of your docking stations or operations with a just single remote ID receiver unit. Compared to other technologies, it's basically very cheap, let's say cost effective. It's passive, so there is no interference with the other technology on the side. And it's super easy to deploy. It basically takes minutes and you're operational and running. And I think I would finish it about there and I would be happy to take any **[23:57]** questions. >> Amazing. Thank you so much Vlad for such an insightful session. I think even the insights on like a combination of static and mobile infrastructure, how is that useful? And I especially love the San Francisco Bay Area case study. I think that is so so impactful and like a lot of like city-wide monitoring, public agencies can actually learn a lot from that case study. Speaking of which, now we only have like 5 minutes left and I would just quickly want to jump to the Q&A. For that, you can stop sharing your screen. So, as you were presenting, a lot of people in the audience did have like a lot of questions. So, I'm just going to pull up those questions for you one by one over here. >> Mhm. >> Right. So, first question is does it interact with ATC like the transponder does? >> No, so the transponder, **[24:58]** as you said, interacts both ways. Transmitter only transmits the data. So, it doesn't reply to requests, and the receiver passively receives the data. That is why the receivers are actually passive devices. They don't have to communicate or emit anything. >> Understood. And then somebody is asking another one here. For those of us running For those of Sorry. For those of us running almost dock operations, does remote ID mean drones are not broadcasting their position to anyone with a receiver? What information is exactly being shared and who can see it? I think this is an important question. >> Yes. So, basically, as I said in the beginning, uh if there is active regulation in your country, your drone most probably has to broadcast remote ID, no matter what. Anyone with a receiver can see that information. You can monitor with your even with your phone. So, even some hobbyist who's around **[26:02]** your operation can actually pull out your phone and probably see your operation. If you know If you want anything more reliable, then you have to get a dedicated device. But yes, your drones are most probably visible to people around you. >> Noted. This is their own regulations. If we are operating BVLOS with a dock drone, is remote ID sufficient for regulatory compliance and identification, or do authorities still require additional tracking? >> So, I believe that at this point, you only need to comply with the remote ID. So, if your drone has a inbuilt integrated solution, or you have a remote ID module, add-on module, then I believe you should be fine. But it's always good to check with the specific uh rules and regulations in your area and for the type of your operation. >> Right. Makes sense. Um is remote ID reliable in areas with poor connectivity or GPS interference? **[27:04]** >> Right. Uh so uh it is not uh it is not dependent on on interference, basically. So, you can receive the remote ID broadcasts, but it does interfere with it is uh uh other technologies that broadcast on the same technology, which is Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Uh if you do not have connectivity, you can actually run the remote ID receiver offline. So, the Scout unit has a ethernet cable that actually powers it and also the data pulls through that. And you can run it offline or it does have built-in LTE modules, so you can use SIM cards to actually trans transmit the data if necessary. >> Understood. Um and another person is asking a similar one that we operate in a sensitive environment and we don't want our flight patterns visible to the public. Is there a way to comply with remote ID without exposing operational details? >> Uh I don't **[28:08]** believe so. The whole point of the remote ID regulation is that the flights are visible. So, if you would go around that, that would kill the point. So, I don't believe that's possible. >> Understood. Understood. All right, I think that that answers most of the questions from the audience and I would once again thank you for taking out the time. I know you've been under the weather, so thank you so much for still making it to the next gen stage and to the next gen 50 pioneer list. We are very very lucky to have you here and I hope you enjoyed giving the talk as well. >> I did. Thank you for having me and have a good day. >> Have a good day, lad. See you. >> Goodbye.