IEEE Spectrum May, 2017 - 8

05.17

Electronic License Plates for Drones
Should drones be required to broadcast an identifying
code by radio?

n late 2015, mandatory drone registration went into effect in the
United States. Since then, anyone who wants to fly a drone (or
model aircraft) weighing over 0.55 pound (0.25 kilogram) must
register with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to receive
a unique identification number. This number needs to be placed
on the drone, but there is no requirement for the tiny aircraft to
broadcast signals to allow for remote identification. That might
change in the future.
The FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016 required the
FAA administrator to "convene industry stakeholders to facilitate
the development of consensus standards for remotely identifying
operators and owners of unmanned aircraft systems and associated
unmanned aircraft." Earlier this year, DJI, the world's largest commercial drone manufacturer, outlined a general scheme for doing
just that.
The Chinese company's proposal attempts to balance the public's
interest in being able to identify who is using a drone at a particular
place and time with the privacy interests of the drone's owner or operator. As DJI points out, drone operators may want to maintain anonymity even if there are people around to witness their flights. Suppose, for
example, a company is surveying land in anticipation of purchasing and
developing it. That company might not want to clue in its competitors.
Or perhaps the drone is being flown for the purposes of investigative
journalism, in which case the journalists involved might not want others to know what they are looking into.

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It's also easy to understand why lawenforcement or regulatory authorities
would want to identify the owner or
operator of a drone, say, if somebody
felt the drone was invading their privacy
or if a drone was being flown close to a
nuclear power plant.
DJI's solution is to require drones to
broadcast an identifying code by radio, by
embedding that code in the telemetry or
video transmissions. It would not include
the name and address of the owner, but
authorities would be able to use it to look
up the information in a nonpublic database. Essentially, DJI is proposing electronic license plates for drones.
The requirement would not apply
to all drones, though: Those at the
small end of the spectrum would be
exempt, just as they are from current
FAA regulations requiring the registration of drones and model aircraft that
exceed 0.25 kg. (By the way, DJI thinks
that the 0.25-kg weight threshold is too
low and that a more reasonable value
should apply to both the current registration requirement and to any future requirement
to broadcast an ID.)
Any new drone regulations are bound to be controversial, but DJI's proposals sound pretty reasonable to me. I am skeptical, though, about how well
drone owners would comply. Consider that the FAA
estimated that about a million small drones would
be sold during the holiday season of 2015, shortly
after the registration rules were put in place. But
by the following February, only 325,000 registrations had been received.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean that there
were 600,000 or more scoff law drones. Many
drones sold as gifts could fall under the 0.25-kg limit.
And one registration can cover multiple drones.
Still, I wonder whether most owners would bother
registering their drones.
My biggest concern is that the FAA would
attempt to boost compliance by imposing harsh
penalties for those who don't register. So far
it hasn't happened-the FAA seems more keen
to educate drone flyers than to fine them. But
that could change, especially if hundreds of
thousands of drones start broadcasting empty
#0000000000 IDs.
-DaviD SchneiDer
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum May, 2017