Designing for Certainty in the Sky
Source: https://www.tue.nl/en/news-and-events/news-overview/11-03-2026-designing-for-certainty-in-the-sky Parent: https://www.tue.nl/en/research
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How service drones can communicate to bring trust and safety in everyday public spaces
Designing for Certainty in the Sky
March 11, 2026
Service drones will enter public spaces rapidly. New research shows how clearer communication and movement design can reduce uncertainty and increase public trust.
ChatGPT generated image by Nischal Lingam
Shiva Nischal Lingam from the Department of Industrial Design and in collaboration with Royal Netherlands Aerospace Center earned his PhD on 10 March 2026. In his dissertation, Lingam explores how service drones can interact with people in public spaces in ways that feel safe, clear, and predictable. As drones become part of daily life, understanding these encounters becomes increasingly important for society.
Growing presence
Drones are steadily moving into streets, parks and residential areas as tools for deliveries and support in emergency situations. Their usefulness is clear, yet many people still feel unsure when a drone appears overhead or starts descending. Some wonder whether it is safe to walk near it, while others question why it is there or what it plans to do next. For entrepreneurs deploying drone services and for local communities witnessing these changes, such uncertainty can reduce trust and acceptance.
Human reactions
Lingam’s work shows that recipients of a delivery and bystanders face fundamentally different challenges. Recipients want to track their drone and understand when and where they can collect a package. Bystanders, however, may simply be passing by and have no context for the drone’s behaviour. Bystanders want to know the purpose of the drone and where it lands to keep away from the space. The research, highlights that these differences need to be considered in the design of drone to reduce unnecessary tension and hesitation in shared public spaces.
Hidden factors
Through interviews and focus groups with experts and everyday users, Lingam identified multiple contributors to uncertainty. Drone movement patterns, propeller noise, and the lack of clear communication appeared repeatedly as concerns. These insights point toward a need for purposeful interaction design rather than relying solely on technological capability.
Clear signals
With this foundation, Lingam developed and tested several visual communication strategies, such as ground projections resembling a landing zone, directional displays, and clearer movement behaviours. Online and virtual reality experiments showed that people feel certain and safe, and better understand drones that communicate its motion with arrows, where it lands and distance to maintain with ground projections while hovering above human height as a safety threshold, and lower packages via a cable instead of landing directly.
Staying safe
Bystanders also emphasised the importance of understanding when they should keep their distance. Cues such as visible projections and directional indicators are required to prevent unsafe behaviour, including walking beneath a descending drone or approaching too closely while it is preparing to deliver a package. These findings underscore that communication helps to bring not only about clarity but also potentially safety.
Future use
Lingam’s research offers practical recommendations for drone manufacturers, entrepreneurs, designers, and municipalities that plan to introduce drones into their services. By approaching drones as communicating actors in public space, rather than silent machines, this work supports a smoother and more socially accepted integration of drones into everyday life.
Shiva Nischal Lingam defended his thesis on 10 March 2026.
- [### Doctoral candidate
Nischal Lingam, Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences
Read more](https://research.tue.nl/en/persons/shiva-nischal-lingam/) - [### Title thesis
Uncertainty in the Sky: Designing Service Drones for Encounters With People in Public Spaces.
Read more](https://research.tue.nl/en/publications/uncertainty-in-the-sky-designing-service-drones-for-encounters-wi/?_gl=110nvp7b_gcl_auNzIxNDIwNTg4LjE3NzMwNjU4MjQ._gaMjAyMjE3OTE2MC4xNzczMDY1ODI0_ga_JN37M497TT*czE3NzMxMzI1OTckbzQkZzEkdDE3NzMxMzQwNjYkajMkbDAka) - [### Supervisors
Marieke Martens, Bastiaan Petermeijer (Royal Netherlands Aerospace Center), Mohammed Obaid (Chalmers University of Technology)
Read more](https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/marieke-martens)
Marc Rosmalen