Controlling Drones with Satellites (emf2026)

Ownership and usage of drones has skyrocketed over recent years, with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimating that 8% of people in the US own a drone (nearly 27 million people) and the UK Civil Aviation Authority stating that there are over 500,000 drones registered in the UK for commercial or recreational use. At the same time, satellite usage for all kinds of purposes has also increased drastically — most famously with the introduction of Starlink broadband services which has approximately 10 million users worldwide. Both of these have become hot topics within industry with all kinds of new start-ups, technologies, innovations, etc. being revealed constantly. So, what would happen if we mushed them together? In this talk I’ll explore the technical details of a number of existing satellite communication (SATCOM) systems, how these technical details play into controlling drones, the fundamental problems of controlling drones with satellites, and some potential solutions for these problems; ideally without making it out of the reach of those who aren’t as rich as Jeff Bezos! Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/243-controlling-drones-with-satellites