# Securing and Managing the Lower Airspace as Autonomous Drone Operations Scale - Event: NestGen ’26 - Published: October 2, 2026 - Length: 30:36 - Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/e8SuulUP4ew/ > 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 The airspace below 400 feet over industrial sites, ports, and cities is getting busier. The teams responsible for what happens there increasingly need to see and manage that airspace rather than assume it is empty. In this NestGen showcase, Senhive will share what it takes to secure and manage the lower airspace as autonomous drone operations scale, and what site and airspace teams should think through when building airspace awareness into their own operations. ## Transcript **[0:01]** Thank you so much, uh for joining in today. So, today it's something interesting. We've spent most of the day talking about scaling drone operations, more dogs, more sites, more flights. This session is about a layer that sits above all of that. As autonomous flights multiply, the lower airspace itself becomes something that has to be managed. Steven here runs Senhive, the company that built airspace monitoring for the Port of Antwerp to have secured the skies above Paris Olympics, and he is here to talk about what it takes to keep the airspace safe and organized as operations like yours grow. And thank you so much, Steven, for joining in. But, before we start this session, let's keep some good housekeeping rules out here. All of you who have your questions, you feel free to drop it in the Q&A tab that you see right beside the chat tab. And also, the recording is available after the session. **[1:02]** Anything that you find interesting during the session, please do take a screenshot of it. And if you post it, please do tag Nesta and also tag Steven and me. Thank you so much for joining in, and Steven, over to you. >> Okay. Thank you, Shruti. Um I will share my screen with you. And if that works, then we're all set and good to go. >> Yes, we're good. >> Okay. So, hello everyone online. My name is indeed Steven Creighton. I'm the CEO of Senhive. And we contribute to a more secure and manageable airspace. And I have some some examples on how we have done that in the past. So, that's what we will discuss. If you have questions in the meantime, feel free to use the chat session. Shruti will keep an eye on that while I do the presentation. So, first of all, what is Senhive? Senhive is a Belgian company specialized in drone **[2:05]** detection and identification. And we started actually 2019 funny enough with a use case of forest fire detection. Which is quite actual right now. But one of the tools that we wanted to use was a drone. Then we had an obligation to be always aware where the drone would be. And that's when we started looking into drone detection systems that existed commercially. But we were not happy with the performance and then we said, well, let's do something ourselves. And then all of a sudden the market traction on the drone detection component was much bigger than on the one of the forest fire detection. And so that's basically where we start. Yeah. We come from civil applications. So, we work with airports, seaports, and organizations like that. And that's also our **[3:06]** specialization in detection. >> [clears throat] >> So, we focus on those drones that you and I can buy online and that we can use I would say the day after we we bought it. Yeah. So, that's a bit what we try to do. As said, but repeating for clarity, our first assignment was to help the management of all those drones flights, but we quickly learned that apart from the allowed drones, there were also drones flying that didn't have a permission. And so we also focused a little bit on the detection of what we call non-cooperative drones. Yeah. So, that's in very short our history. Which is more or less described here. So, as I said, we focus on first focused on on airspace management. And later on also on the security. When we started, drones were not as used and as available as they are right now. So, I think we were **[4:09]** happy to grow with the system and to grow with the usage of those drones. And if we see it now, at least in the part of the world where I live, which is in Belgium, Western Europe, we see 10,000s of drone flights happening and we just support organization to make sure that they don't give too much troubles and that they are used in a good way. So, zooming in shortly on the technologies that we use, I always say there is no one size fits all. There is not one technology that can see all drones. But what we do is we master different technologies. Some of the technologies we do completely ourselves, like the first one, detecting the radio frequencies that are used between the pilot and the drone. That's something we have made completely ourselves. Remote ID, well, that's a legal obligation, but unfortunately there, at least in in the sense of that we still have access to, we **[5:12]** see that only 10 to 15% of the drones are actually using the remote ID. So, a system that only detects those is not sufficient. Third technology we use is acoustic detection. That is, for instance, we put sensors on top of a roof of a bank, for instance, and then you can hear close by if drones have been landing in your roof as part of a cyber attack that often happens with drones that carry a router. Yeah. So, acoustic is a third technology we use. We also use optical and infrared. That's a classical camera, mostly for track and zoom purposes. So, once we have detected the drones based on radio frequencies, we tell the optical camera it's incoming 40° or something, and then it tracks it. It zooms in on it, but it also adds to the data fusion and analytics parts to confirm that it is a drone and that it's, for instance, not a pigeon. Yeah. So, we use it **[6:13]** for track and zoom, but also uh in in support of the overall classifications. The technologies that I just mentioned are all passive. You can use them safely. You do not emit anything. The last one that we use is an active signal, and there we use radar signal that emit electromagnetic waves towards the drone. They bounce back, and then we can detect them. Uh each of the technologies has its advantages and disadvantages, as its complexity and its simplic- uh simplicity. So, when we talk to customers, we always want to understand what do they want to detect and at what cost. And then we come with a technical, mostly multi-layered solution uh on detection, classification, and localization, and identifications of the drone. Yeah. So, that was very short uh on the technologies that we use or that we have available. Now, what are our uh main markets? So, first of all, uh it's on critical **[7:16]** infrastructures, uh [clears throat] where we talk about banks, financial institutions, uh energy clusters, chemical clusters, that type of uh stuff. Um [clears throat] second is on air and seaports. There uh clearly on airports, you don't want to have drones interfering with the flights of the normal airplanes. But, on the other hand, like at the seaports, drones are used in a positive way. They're used by different subcontractors that are working in the ports, so you also want to support that usage of drones, but also want to make sure that for instance during the night there are no malicious drones doing something that is not legally allowed. Yeah. So, second market, air and seaports. Of course, security at the airports and the risk on accidents is very high. So, there we use the entire technology stack that we have because you don't want to have any risk on incoming or outgoing flights. **[8:19]** Third domain is more in the public safety domain, public safety and security where you have mass events. Things like soccer games, music festivals, big conferences, and that's where mostly cities and police carry the combined responsibility of the safety and the security of the operations. And it's in that domain or in that market that we have done the Paris Olympics like you introduced Riti. I will zoom in on on that use case later on. Yeah. So, third third market, urban and police in the context of public safety and security. The last one is the defense market where we work with defense organizations to do protections of the the bases in the homeland, but also in deployed environment. I will not not zoom in on that domain later on, but if you have any questions there, **[9:20]** feel free. But I'll now give some examples on what we have done in the mentioned domains. Anybody an idea what typical threats that can uh uh that are in the seaports when on on drone usage, yeah. There are the obvious one on espionage and surveillance. Uh but they are also used in cyber attacks where we have seen jammers mounted on drones that are trying to disturb radio communication for instance, yeah. And there is of course, which is always a risk in ports, payload and smuggling risk. And so what we have done is help ports all over the world to protect against that to make sure that their perimeter is secured so that they don't have any operational risks. I mean, if by accident even a drone **[10:21]** crashes on a vessel carrying something rather explosive, that's not what you want to have, huh? And [clears throat] so that's what you want to protect against. And zooming in on on an example, that is what we did for the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, which is uh at least in the top 10 of the top 10 of the ports worldwide. I think in Europe it's in the top three of ports. Lucky for us, the Port of Antwerp-Bruges was a supporter of our solution from day one. Not only because they wanted to protect themselves against malicious drones, but and mostly because they wanted to make positive usage of drones. And there is an example for instance where we have replaced samples that used to be carried over the road to a lab to confirm that the cargo to confirm the cargo of the ship. That is now being done by a drone. **[11:24]** The Port of Antwerp, rather busy environment, lots of traffic jams, so it took easily half an hour, an hour for the sample to arrive at the the lab. But with the drone, we reduced it to 10 minutes. And it's almost guaranteed. So, we work there with a partner that executes the flights, and our system is used to make sure that we know where the the drone that is carrying the samples is flying. But you also have different subcontractors in maintenance and operations that use drones. So, um 3 years ago, roughly, there were uh about 600, only 600 uh drone operations in the port. Last year, there were 14,000. 14,000 allowed uh drones uh >> [clears throat] >> on different timings and occasions in the port on a yearly basis, but that is clearly a huge number, and we helped the Port of Antwerp to make sure that all that uh drone usage is done in a safe way. Yeah. And **[12:31]** I always use this example as an indication that drones in some parts and in some domains are becoming a commodity. So, sometimes people do not realize, but 14,000 drone movements on a yearly basis on an uh area like the Port of Antwerp, that's quite massive. And um that's a nice example. So, uh another example, and that is what we did with FlytBase, happy to be partnering there uh via our partner Drone Starts, that's in another seaport in Europe. I cannot always disclose the final customer, so allow me to be a little bit vague on the exact location and customers here, but there it's a nice cooperation where we were responsible in the detection and localizations of drone and pilot. Where um FlytBase was used to um or the FlytBase system was used to go to the drone or the pilot and make footage and make the detection and report on **[13:33]** that so that the security teams could do the necessary counter measurements. And our partner drone starts, they were responsible in deploying the the environment and using both the send out system as the flight bait system. So I think that it's a nice example of a command and control element provided by drone starts. The automatic flights provided by flight baits and then our detection and localization of drone and pilot, yeah. So I think it's a nice showcase of how different technologies can jointly do make a difference. Airports, it's rather similar, but there of course the risks and the stakes are higher. Like a drone like a bird, a drone can could potentially collision with an airport. It could enter the engine and then you have a massive problem there. The usual ways that there are no drone flights allowed at the airports and if you **[14:39]** need to do something based for for inspections or something else, that needs to be strictly regulated. You need to have the proper decisions and allowance to do that. So there like I said, we often use a multi-layered approach. We use RF, we use optical, we use radar and a little bit less acoustic. But we have there for instance a country in Asia Pacific where we did the installations in one airport to for two reasons. First for a technical feasibility to understand is it possible, does the system do the necessary detection, but also to create awareness because sometimes people still think drones are just used to make a Facebook movie, you know. But if we say, "Okay, just put our sensor there and we'll just see for 3 months what is happening." And then there is often a lot of surprise that there are **[15:40]** already drone flights that they were not aware of, yeah. And so that's a typical approach. We do a one or two cases where we show uh the problem and the solution at the same time. And when that is accepted and when the decision makers uh realize that they do something, then we can roll out through other airports over the countries, yeah. Uh so that's what we did in the Asia Pacific country. Also in our home country Belgium, we already have a long cooperation with Brussels Airport. And quite recently uh there have been some drones spotted. Happy to say that it was our system that has spotted them, but those were a typical uh use case of innocent drone flights. It were people that wanted to film something, but they were not aware that they that they were not allowed to fly within 5 km of the airport. And that is a typical example of what we call the clueless, the careless, and the criminals. **[16:41]** Clueless is people that are just not aware that there are restrictions. A boy that receives a drone for his birthday and starts flying it. The careless is more people that do know they should ask for a permit, but said, "Hey, there's this night plane landing. I'm a spotter and I do want to have this footage." And then the third one, clearly that is uh the bad case, yeah. So let's say the the systems our systems, amongst others, are in place at the Belgian international airports and they have proven that they are doing their work, yeah. So that was the airport use case. Critical infrastructure like briefly mentioned, there are a lot of reasons why you want to protect yourself against drones. Some of those drones are used in cyber attacks. We have seen drones on the roofs of a logistics company for instance, that had a jammer and was disturbing the signal of the barcode scanners. So, and the entire operations came to a full **[17:45]** stop. So, there was not a package coming in or leaving the uh the company and then they got a call from cyber criminals saying, "Listen, if you pay us that amount of Bitcoins, then we'll solve your little problem." Yeah, so it's not always on energy and chemicals and things that have a physical risk of exploding or or whatever, but it's also a lot of times we see drones that are used in cyber attacks or that are used by people that are a little bit too curious, yeah. Uh very clearly here, I cannot give the details of what we have done, but I'll give an example. So, a left up, that's protection of prisons. There is a lot of smuggling ongoing with drones at night. Uh Uh drugs, weapons, all of that going back and going through prisons. We have seen cyber attacks at data centers, but also at financial institutions like I just mentioned. And we also, but that is more in **[18:48]** the context of I would say uh a governmental security approach, >> [clears throat] >> protecting the important energy provisions in country, yeah. So, that is on the the critical infrastructure. Uh The last one is is more zooming in on on the urban and police case where, yeah, as if you are in the public domain lots of people can fly over whatever event you have. Sometimes it's just a journalist or a photographer that wants to have some nice view, but even then what happens if the drone drone would crash and so on and so on. So that is usually um the responsibility of both police and cities that make sure that those massive and can happen in a safe way. But of course there are also other threats the drones can raise **[19:48]** in in in the public domain. Um and it can be sometimes also innocent well not so innocent. We have had cases where for instance firefighters the were disturbed by people that wanted to have footage of the ongoing fire. And then their work was disturbed and that's not what you want to have. So we are supporting some firefighting teams that at least they know where the drone is where the pilot is so that the police can uh ask them or force them to go away and leave the firefighters do their work. Yeah. So that's that's an example that we had we had. Uh here it's an example of which we are pretty proud of. So in 24th 24th sorry. We were contacted by the French police and they were looking for a solution for drone protection during the Paris Olympics. **[20:52]** Uh both the Olympics and the Paralympics. Back then the entire city of Paris uh was a no fly zone zone so no drones allowed. Um what we did before we before the opening of the Olympics, we already put some installations there to just monitoring and see what is happening. During the games, when there was the no-fly zone active, if then we would spot the drone, we could also see in the history of our detections, okay, where have we seen this drone maybe earlier, and is it with all the knowledge that the police then has, is it a threat or not? What is also interesting, and which was quite a challenge for us as a company, so we had the fixed solution, which is depicted top right, as you see. Uh, but they also wanted to have a mobile solution. And so you have to imagine that the gendarmerie of Paris asks you eight weeks before the opening of the Olympics, "Hey, can you make us a mobile solution?" **[21:55]** So what we did is we put everything in a backpack with battery and everything included. And then the police went to the roofs of the apartments close to the locations of the sports events. And they were happy with this mobile solution, but it cost a little bit of work at our side, but happy that we could deliver and that the solution work. And so they detected more than 800 drones during the Olympics. Some of them were coming from journalists. What we also learned as a funny fact, well, a little bit of funny fact, we also noticed drones by competing teams that were filming their trainings to understand the tactics of the game that were going to play. So also that is apparently a use case where spying on your sports competitor drones are used. In the majority of the cases, we could identify the position of the of the pilot, **[22:56]** and so then the police went to the pilot and asked them politely uh uh stop with that. Uh some of them we do couldn't find the pilot and then uh the drones were jammed. Yeah. Um I said we are very proud that we have done this this this support for the Olympics, but it also caused us to be known a little bit in France at least. And uh this has been from a business perspective really an enabler for us where people at uh would say global level understood that our solution works and is quite useful. Yeah. So, happy to be able to to share that with you. Another example is uh really Belgium case. If you are familiar with the Tomorrowland festival, huge festival started long long time ago when it was very small, but uh now during the festival which is like two weekends, I believe I'm not mistaken. I've never been **[23:59]** there myself. Uh Uh but there is no fly zone. And so, that is because of security uh reasons. Um Well, no fly zone. You can't fly, but you need to have a permit and then you have to do it in a safe way and all of that. But of course, there are a lot of uh people that very enthusiastically want to make beautiful photos and footage of of what is happening around. Uh but it's not allowed. So, also there we put a temporary system up. And people that uh uh use drones there were yeah, contacted by the police. Uh I was rather surprised that it worked rather well. >> [snorts] >> Um but it's in the context of the broader security. It's uh I don't think it has a lot to do with the image rights or anything, but if you have that amount of people, if I'm not mistaken, we're talking about uh 10,000s of people, maybe even 100,000s. **[25:00]** You just don't want to have hundreds of drones flying around there and crashing on people's head. Yeah. So, an example of how we support mass events like festivals, like music festivals or sport events. Always in touch with the end organization. In this case, it was Tomorrowland. But, the people that were operating our system is where are our partner Sky-Drone in Belgium together with the local police. Okay. So, that was my last example. I tried to make it not too technical and and to make it somewhat hopefully inspirational on how drones and drones can be used in a safe way. But, you have to do it with the necessary technical support of a detection system. Happy to answer any questions that you guys have. >> This was great, Stephen. I mean, I myself learned a lot of case studies from this **[26:02]** and it was very interesting to know, especially the Paris Olympics one. Uh >> [laughter] >> But, we do we're running out of time. So, I'll just share a few questions which you can quickly answer. So, we do have a question which says, "What can be done with not cooperating drones? If it does not have the right intentions, once when if detected, can it be countered head-on with another drone so that the threat is neutralized?" And another question is, "If it's a fixed-wing system where the altitude is high, then a multicopter, is this system effective?" >> The that's a long question and it's also not a easy topic. So, as said, we specialize in the detection and the identification of the drones. And then, the actual neutralizations can also be done in very different ways. You can jam the drones, you can indeed use another drone to go head-to-head with it, but the assessment on the whether or not it's uh safe to do **[27:04]** so and uh it's effective, that is usually done by the people that operate our system and that is not necessarily our specialty. In the cases of for instance the Paris Olympics and of the festivals, it's much safer safer to just go to the pilot and force him to him or her to have the drone land it than to shoot it. Because when you shoot a drone, you don't know whether it will crash, whether it will continue, or what it will do. So, it's the overall risk assessment that is usually done by the people that operate our system and that's not really our specialty. >> Makes sense. Also, I mean if you would like to comment, there was a part in the question that said that if it's a fixed-wing system where the altitude is high then a multicopter is the system effective? >> Is the question on whether the detection works well on both fixed-wings as in multicopter? The answer is yes. The detection range is **[28:09]** in rural area 25 km and we have some specialized antennas that we can put into place there. If it's a question of a multicopter trying to go head-to-head with a fixed-wing, that will be a challenge I can imagine, but again that's not our specialty. >> Yeah. If RF detection to be effective, does the drone library need to be constantly updated to be able to identify drones correctly? >> That is absolutely correct. So, that's a continuous effort of our team. It's a little bit like the antivirus on your computer. Unfortunately, the bad guys are always one step ahead and we have to catch up. So, it's a continuous effort from Senhive to make sure that the drone library is uh updated and we try to have two to three updates a year to make sure that we can also catch the latest drones. >> That's great. The last question, uh though we are overrunning, but what is the **[29:12]** most challenging scenario for detecting drones in the lower air space as autonomous operations scale? >> I think the the most challenging scenario it's um if the intelligence on the drones goes up. If we have a swarm of drones that has like 10 individual drones flying the same course, then we can detect them, but if there is intelligence and they can change their course, the radio frequencies use, even switch from radio frequencies to maybe cell phone, uh uh so, if the adaptability and the agility of the drones increases, then our challenge uh becomes more complex. >> Mm, that's great. I think we will have to stop with that for now. Uh any more questions? I'm dropping his LinkedIn out here. You can just go and reach out to Steven and ask for more uh clarification, but for today, since we are running out of **[30:15]** time, we'll have to stop this. Thank you, Steven, for joining us and it was indeed a great presentation. Uh I'm looking forward to more such presentations in the future. >> Thank you very much for everybody participating and I wish you all a nice day, wherever you are in the world. >> Thank you. Bye-bye.