# Putting Drones on Patrol Alongside Human Guards at Trigion's Benelux Sites - Event: NestGen ’26 - Published: October 2, 2026 - Length: 30:33 - Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/Om_yyoRYK28/ > 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 Guarding providers are asked to cover more ground, verify alarms faster, and hold response times down without simply adding people to the roster. Drones are becoming part of how large security companies extend what a patrol can see, particularly across sites that are slow to walk and expensive to staff after dark. In this NestGen session, Drone Flight Company will share how drones patrol alongside human guards across Trigion's Benelux sites, and what guarding providers should think through when adding drone patrols to an established manned security operation. ## Transcript **[0:01]** So, hello everyone. How are you doing? Uh my name is Rohan and I'm the head of business for uh the security and public safety vertical here at FlytBase. Uh please feel free to drop where you're joining from in the meeting chat. Hi Saido. Hi. So, yeah. Uh welcome to another exciting session. And today, along with me, I have Ruul uh who is joining us from Netherlands. And please feel free to drop where you're joining from. Uh and have you guys watched any of the sessions so far? Anything that felt quite uh intriguing? Please feel free to drop in the comment section. So, we have another exciting set of session lined up for today. And the as you can see on the screen, uh we're going to talk about how drones uh on patrol uh and alongside human guards are currently being utilized by Tri-on, which is one of the biggest security companies in the Europe. And how our uh drone flight academy uh assisting Tri-on for doing this. So, uh before I introduce uh you to uh **[1:07]** Ruul uh and a bit more about what we'll be doing during today's session, a quick overview uh on uh like uh the some of the housekeeping rules. So, please feel free to grab any of the screenshots. And uh if you can put up your thoughts on what felt uh exciting and any of the thoughts that you think uh you would love to share regarding the session, please drop them on LinkedIn and tag #nation. Uh and another thing as a housekeeping rule, uh please feel free to drop any of your questions in the Q&A tab. And we will have the questions being taken up at the last 10 minutes uh wherein we'll be taking these questions one by one. And you have the meeting chat, so please feel free to uh share where you're joining from, anything that you felt interesting. And yeah, I'll be there to assist you throughout this. And we have a public uh chat section as well wherein you can chat with people from across the other sessions as well. So yeah, without any further ado, I will quickly introduce you guys to Roel. So, Roel is the founder and CEO of Drone Flight Company, **[2:09]** who started as a training school in Netherlands. However, now are present across multiple EU geographies. Uh they started 11 years ago as a training academy helping uh end customers as well as people from different aspects of lives learn how to fly drones. However, with now with the advent of this autonomy, they have now started with a remote operation center as well, where then they are assisting security service providers adopt drone in a box solution and how can they perform remote operations for any end customer. So yeah, uh that's it from my side. Over to you, Roel. Maybe a quick introduction from your side. Uh how have you started working for Drone Flight Academy? What are some of the thoughts that you would love to share about Trion and how are Trion being able to scale from one doc to many? So yeah, over to you. >> Yeah, thanks Roel. Thanks for the invitation to having me presenting. Um can you all see my full screen? >> Yeah, Tim. >> Yeah, perfect. Um yeah, thanks for the introduction. Let me **[3:09]** introduce myself as well. I'm Roel van de Vel. I have a background in the uh police force starting the company 11 years ago. Um we have two brands, Drone Flight Academy supporting everyone with trainings. We do online trainings all over Europe. Physical trainings all over Europe and we supporting companies under the label Drone Flight Company. >> [snorts] >> Uh I'm the founder and CEO, but the team is now starting to become some bigger. Uh we now have 30 employees in Netherlands and Germany and in a total of 70 instructors to to to support everyone. Um yeah, let's go through the presentation. I will give you a heads-up about who we are, what we are doing, um what we have done already for Trigion, but also for similar cases, and how we work more in detail. So, that's a little bit a brief overview about our team, ourselves. Um next to me, I have my project leader Rafael Donier Noto with me. He's an **[4:11]** experienced guy with several drone experience, and he's responsible for implementation of the drone boxes in the Netherlands. And Paul is our consultant to comply everything with AU AU regulations. Um and below you find some clients that we are working with. Uh contract with the the police force, but also contract with the Dutch MOD, uh fire fighters, um the Dutch railway railroad organization, but also, like mentioned by Rowan for Trigion. >> [snorts] >> Um next to Trigion, we have also a partnership in Germany with Kötter Security. And both are the in the top three security organizations. Um and what we are doing for them is we check their needs. We give the uh the advice as how to integrate it. Um and if needed, we do the pilot training as well. We do an um analysis of the locations that they want to place into uh drone docking **[5:13]** stations. We get it ready because the the the legal process is mostly the long-term waiting. But we go on until they have the permission to fly. And if they have the permission to fly, we uh extend the team with new pilots. We do the renewal of the licenses. And we keep everything in place. Um and our philosophy is that the customer will exactly say how to secure the area, and we will support them with implementation of drones. It's important to notice that we also have flight support. So, from an remote operating center, we can support the companies in the first phase, so that before they have their own permission, they can already start with us. And we can do that in the Netherlands, Benelux, and and Germany, and other countries based on discussion. Yeah, what is our experience? As already said by Rowan, we are 11 years in the market now. Um in 2020 2020 one of the first client came to me asking about **[6:18]** the possibilities to use a drone docking station for his security needs. Um [snorts] on that base, we started the first project together with Mapster AI. That's a local Dutch company. They made an own drone box for for themselves. Uh and we tested that with a client. After that, DJI came up with new products with a really scalable product. And as of today, we're working with several kind of drone docking stations. I'll come back to that, but for the people who are new with this type of business, in the last three to four years, the technology is there. The technology is ready to implement it everywhere. And based on the software of FlytBase, we can easily connect the drone docking station with a software layer and with incident management, so that as well as possible to send over a trigger through the system that the drone can directly go to his point. Um a little bit more about the technology. **[7:20]** The the docking station itself and the drone has three options of cameras, a thermal camera, wide angle, and zoom camera. And it's possible to fly almost in every condition. Uh only the wind is a limit. Um please notice that this kind of technology is not new anymore. It's already there. Only in the Netherlands, there are about 30 to 50 docking stations, but I know from all around the all of the world, there are a lot of docking stations right now. We uh comply with the SORA 2.5, and if needed, we can support, of course, the customer with that as well. And as well with the support of an LLC in the future. Uh last year, we did 5,000 flights to support our customers with the first projects. Um, the way of working, security to drone docking stations. Exactly, this video shows how it works. There's an alarm trigger. Drone will go out of the box within 10 to 15 seconds. And you have directly now view in the control room. Uh and if in the **[8:24]** Netherlands, it's also possible from the control room to send it directly to the police force to do the really um uh sophisticated security work. And after the job is done, mostly with the within the 20 minutes to 25 minutes, you can go back to the docking station and uh wait for another job. Um, [snorts] how we work together with FlytBase, that's quite interesting. One of our clients is an company in the federal infrastructure. Um, they give us the points of interest. And regarding FlytBase, we can implement every route and every angle of the camera, and even the possibility to record it at that place or not. And on that basis, we can implement surveillance routes. So, it's very easy for us together with our client to set up a kind of routine in the work. And also to plan those kind of surveillance. And due to the legislation, it's now possible in all of the Netherlands or Germany to implement it very fast. **[9:28]** This is the setup in Trigion. Trigion came to me already 1 1/2 year ago that they want to implement drone docking stations as a normal business case as a daily operations. Um we started with the first location with a tryout. After 6 months, we did a third and fourth location. And now we are implementing it in the whole province of Flevoland with at least eight docking stations up to 35, but also to vital infrastructure locations. And [snorts] what we've done, we train other operators. We um assess for the the right licenses in the Netherlands. Um now they have already the right licenses since 6 months and they are scaling up the procedures. And we make them their control room ready to use it. In in between, before they have the licenses, we gave them the flight support. So they really uh a care taking process. So we are care taking of all of the steps in the procedures **[10:31]** so that they can fly on themselves right as of today. Why you should you use drones for security? I discussed it as well with with Rigion, but also with Bauwatch, and also with Kutter Sicherheit, Germany. Um the size is quite big to to have mobile surveillance or demand aviation. The risks are being more complex, so you need really a site over viewed by a drone from the air with thermal cameras and with visual cameras. Um they have a lack of staff, so they want to have more people, but it's not they are not available in the market under the same conditions and it should be automated. Um from that reason, they start with surveillance from the air directly connected with the control room so that they can do surveillance from one place in the whole of the country. Um what we integrated with Rigion, but also for other clients, we set up preventative flights. So flight per hour or flight per 2 hours. We make a schedule **[11:36]** with them. Of course, it should be random, not really predicted, but several flights in the in the night. And also implemented AI at the detector anomalies. And next step will be more integrated AI. We just started with that. Um Next to that, we balance, for example, we implemented as well alarm response, so that the trigger is going on. Directly the drone gives the signal, "Okay, I am at the location of the trigger. I can go to launch myself, but the pilot has to always be in control." And from that phase, the there's direct connection with the live video images to the control room, and they can send over patrol or send over the police. Um what are the first results, as you see now in the short video. Um you can make a combination of the thermal images and the normal images. We did a lot of flights for **[12:41]** them. We did almost every hour a couple of flights at several locations. It's also easy to scale it up. So normally they have cars driving around, and now they have drones flying around. >> [snorts] >> It's also very interesting, because normally mobile surveillance car cannot overlook the situation completely. And next to that, when there is an alarm going on, the guy in the mobile surveillance car doesn't go go alone by himself to that point. So it's also safer operation. The guy can see the images from his car or from the control room, and can send over the police with really following the suspects. Um what kind of drones do we need for that? We have several drones manufacturers that we are cooperating with. Of course, DJI does as of today in the most flexible one and also regarding quality still quite good. But we also cooperate **[13:41]** with Nokia and Dbox from Lithuania. We have very good examples from Dbox as well with the municipality of Vilnius taking care of a whole network, but also with Nokia taking care of all network with City Mesh in Belgium. Um, and it's very important to have multiple options because some of our clients are in the higher segment in the vital infrastructure and they cannot work with companies from China. Of course, there is there are solutions for that to to take it away, but still the reputation and the feeling about working together with Chinese companies can be changed in the in the future. So, we are open for any manufacturer to cooperate with. We are just a solution provider to support the client with the whole process. One important thing that is now developing regarding regulations, where can we fly? For example, in Netherlands every locations that **[14:44]** control count area and foresee the atypical airspace, it's directly possible to fly. It's based on declaration. It's the same in in Germany. In Belgium, it's more easy to start, but first you need uh have the permit on the sort of 2.5 to be able to fly over there. But the good thing is it's now more scalable. You see it now in Flevoland, they started already at eight locations of Flevoland and we'll scale it up to 30 35. Um, this is the the special for for this event. Some of the companies are still doubting is in is it a benefit to use a drone boxes or not. Uh, we make a special offer for interested people to to start with a 3-month or longer period with with patrols in the night, surveillance, alarm response, and a drone for a fixed price. **[15:44]** Um, we come to install it in the Netherlands, Belgium, or Germany, or other countries in as a discussion. And then you can evaluate it very fast um um, if it's profitable for you to integrate it. Um and one of the most important processes is the legal part. The legal part can take a little while. Uh, for that reason we have the flight support not only for these 3 months, but also for the period that you're waiting for that legal part to take care of. That's it from my side, Roel. Um, would like to give it back to you. >> Perfect. Thank you so much, Roel. So, yeah, we do have certain questions in the Q&A tab. So, guys, if you would love to ask any questions, please feel free to drop. So, I can see some of the names. Hi, Tim. Hi, David. Uh, yeah, please feel free to drop any of the questions. So, let's take questions one by one, Roel, uh, because there are a lot of them. So, let's take this. **[16:45]** Let me So, yeah. So, I think uh, we have the first question, Roel. Um, what's the false alarm rate? Uh, and if the drone is flagging movement every few minutes, uh, does that actually make the job guard's job harder instead of easier? So, this is a question that has come. >> Okay. Um, yeah, there are multiple questions in one. Uh, I will start with the first one. >> [snorts] >> Um So, the false alarm rate, that's very important. Everybody knows in the world of security that there's a huge number of false alarms. What we discussed with every security company, um there's always first human in the loop who says, "Okay, this alarm is for real." For example, Trigion receives 450,000 alarms per day per 24 hours. So, we kind of not going to fly at every alarm. When it's for example an alarm in combination of another trigger, **[17:49]** that will prevent a situation that we go flying for every thing. The guy in the control room push the the trigger, so to say, to fly with it. And that gives us the the opportunity to lower it down. And as of today, you cannot say we have false alarms because there's always a kind of detection. But the most of the times, and that's also the positive way, um we came to the fact that that there is a person who is allowed on that area, but he doesn't follow the right procedures. So, you can say we have we are quite successful. We have five to 10 um persons detected, so to say, on the locations, but they didn't follow the procedures. We had two uh really incidents where we have the police in in place and uh uh so report on that. Um the next question is if the drone is flagging movement every few minutes from animal, why doesn't it actually bite the guy or instead of **[18:50]** easier? >> Yeah. >> Um I have to understand that question. So, the the the animals is not the issue only with eagles, for example, but that's that's really a difficult specific issue with wind. It's up to 12 m/s that can take off and uh and land. But of course in an really emergency situation you can overrule that. And you have to take care of the fact that only the landing is is is probably an issue. So if it's really an emergency, you can overrule that process and you can go up to flying and land next to the box if necessary, but normally it's restricted to 12 m per second. We have made more calculation in Netherlands and only a few hours per year we are not able to fly because we we take some measurements extra. **[19:55]** So in [clears throat] the end the guard jobs make it easier because he has support from the from the air so to say. And also direct live feed with the police forces if needed. >> Sounds good. So yeah, I think there's another question. You mentioned the client is scaling. What were the key factors or the decision criterias? Does the client fly or you perform the ops for them? In case you fly, how does the client get the results? >> Well there's a life so so it's a couple of questions in once. The the factor of scaling is because of the clients are satisfied. The clients start with the kind of POC and then they really say okay, we are we are scaling it up right now. We are excited about the results. You want to implement it on multiple locations. So that's the main key factor to scaling it up. Next to that a kind of a client is Trigion is one of the biggest security company. So they have already a big **[20:58]** network and they can easily sell it to every client and they are already having security contracts so they cannot Um, it into place instead of other security elements. Um, they are flying by themselves. As discussed, we we started with flying with them until they have the operations done and the flights permission to fly and the the trained operators. Uh, and in case we are flying, we have shared FlytBase screen so that the client can follow the direct link with us. >> I think this is very interesting rule which you shared that initially in order for the client to kickstart the ops, you provide remote ops to them so that the client learns and understands how many people do they need to hire, what to do, which training do they need to do and then eventually they get their own solution. >> Yeah, it's also easy for them Rowan because they don't have to invest in persons directly from the start, but they can also have kind of **[21:58]** try out version and then after that selecting the right people and to make it really scalable. >> Sounds good. So yeah, I think we have Tapiwa who is I'm so sorry if I'm not pronouncing your name correct. Do you offer your services internationally? >> Yeah, we are of course we would would like to do that and we have to discuss the the locations and the local restrictions where we can operate. It's good to mention that we have a 24/7 ROC so we can work around the globe. They are all speaking English. So if it's if it's in the English language and if we can take concrete steps to to work in in that specific location country, we can do that. >> Perfect. So I think we have another question. What was the response time reduction for Trigion? I think regarding alarm responses. >> Um, **[23:00]** yeah, that is to has to do with the combination of the alarms versus the uh the drone. Um The the the good situation is now the alarm is in the same location coming in. Uh and directly the drone will be respond. So, it will be with within 1 1 minute, but most of time even 30 seconds before it can operate. Normally, it was up to 15 minutes to 30 minutes. Now it's uh 30 seconds to 1 minute. >> Perfect. So, I think we have Adolf. Nikuna, again, so sorry if I'm not pronouncing your name right. A good day, Ruud. Do you have any partners in South Africa? If you would love to share your email address. >> Okay. Yeah, I would like to do that. I already [snorts] wrote it down, so thanks for that. >> Absolutely. So, another thing that's very interesting, how do you price a blended service with drones? And do clients accept paying for drone time the same way they pay for guard **[24:02]** time? >> Um that's a good question. We have thought a long time about it. What we are doing is we make a one-off price, so to say, to support the client with the training, with the um uh legal services uh with FlytBase integration, and etc. etc. And next to that, um based on the needs, we make a proposal for the flight support, so to say. So, um the client uh accepted to to pay the double cost, so to say, for the guard and the drones itself, because they want to have if they are really professional, and we are only looking for the professionals, they would like to do it both in the first phase, and after that, they will phase out the guards and lower down the cost. And that's also the reason that we are only looking for the uh high segment customers, so they they have a long uh, long road map, so to say, to integrate this because of course in the beginning it's costing some money and in a few steps you will decrease that money when you use the the **[25:08]** drone as a for surveillance. You're muted, Ron. >> So sorry. Yeah, so we have another interesting question. It's did drone ops affect FTE count for Trigion? You also mentioned Bow Watch, what about them? >> Bow Watch is also looking forward to integrate it, but now they have several other challenges, so to say. They are now in the phase that they will be taking over. So, after taking over, they will start again with the drone uh >> [snorts] >> uh, sales strategy. Um uh, the question is did did it affect to >> the full-time employees, like the total number of employees in the organization? >> Um, as of today, the the challenge is for Trigion to have enough staff. So, they have a lot of vacancy job vacancies. **[26:09]** And it will be more easy, of course, to fulfill the needs with drones at certain points. But in the end, it the work will be more intelligent. So, it's not only driving around anymore with mobile surveillance, but then they will use drones drone surveillance. So, it will first both, so not uh, directly um uh, short less people, but in the end it will be more in a way of effective doing their business than only working with people. It's a combination of hardware and working with people together. >> I think that's a very good answer, right? It's a blended mode wherein you do need some people for intervention, even though the drone actually does the first response and gives you the situational awareness. So, we have a question from Daniel. Have you experienced any jamming or spoofing during your ops? How did you mitigate? And how do you manage the manned and unmanned traffic? >> No. No. Um of course that can **[27:10]** be happen in the future and I cannot say that it's uh all jamming or spoofing uh proof because um I know the military's uh do also have the technologies to to do jamming and spoofing. Um so, for example, the for for specific type of clients, we can use, for example, D-box with a military version of the uh of the barrel drone to prevent [snorts] that situation. But, that's only allowed to use it for very very specific uh clients like border patrol or like uh vital infrastructure structure on the highest level. And that's the way uh that we can make the mitigate it. Um and next to that, there are also customers uh looking for the combination of the drone box and drone detection. So, that's also a combination that we can offer. Um but, we we don't have experience now with with jamming and spoofing. >> Perfect. That sounds good. So, I think uh we have another question. Uh when a guard is doing a foot patrol and the drone is flying a patrol at the same time, are **[28:14]** they coordinated? Does the guard see where the drone is and does the drone know where the guard is? >> Yeah. That's a good question. Um uh it we have some customers who already integrated and actually we are doing as well business case together about how many minutes does the foot patrol needs for the same survey surveillance as the um surveillance with the drone. But, normally the there will be one of that two doing the surveillance. Either the drone will do the surveillance or either the the guard will do the the surveillance and only when an incident will happen they will work together. And they can work together in two ways. Um and getting the the images from the control room directly to the to the guard so that they can have an overview from above by sending the live feed with 5G FlytBase. Or they can **[29:16]** How do you say it? Structured and and sent over to the right place by the control room based on the video images of the drone. >> Perfect. So, we have some talked through most of the questions, but guys feel free to share your email addresses. What we can do is after this meeting ends, we'll share Ruud's email ID and both all of you guys can connect with him. So, yeah. That's how we have come to the end, Ruud, and thank you so much for taking out your time. >> Indeed, it was a quite exciting and inspiring session where you even mentioned how you guys started and how you guys have been now scaling. So, I think the key CTA is for drones for security now are now there and they are scaling and autonomous drones are present. Like they are not a future anymore. They are there today. So, thank you so much guys again for tuning in. We have people joining in from a lot of different geographies from Nigeria, from South Africa. So, we have a lot of exciting sessions lined up. So, please uh go to the agenda ones if you would **[30:17]** love to see any of the sessions. So, we have Airbus as well as tuning in. So, you can go to the agenda tab to navigate to the other sessions. But as always, thank you so much and looking forward for meeting you guys soon. Have a great day. Cheers. Bye-bye.