DroNova

Inspiration

The idea behind this project came from seeing the real challenge that the FAA faces with managing over a million drones in the U.S. By 2024, drone registration and identification have become critical for airspace safety, ownership transfers, and tracking incidents. It’s a huge task, and that’s what inspired us. We knew there had to be a way to make the process easier, faster, and more efficient. So, we decided to build a solution that would be simple, secure, and entirely online. With technology, we could streamline the process for drone owners and make it easier for the FAA to keep track of everything. It’s not just about creating something new; it’s about solving a real-world problem with a human-centered approach. Our goal was to make sure everyone could get their drones registered and managed with ease, without any unnecessary steps or complicated paperwork.

What it does

DroNova is a comprehensive platform that simplifies the drone registration process, streamlines ownership transfers, and ensures drones are easily identifiable. Users can register their drones, manage their fleet, and transfer ownership all in one place, fully online.

The system uses a variety of DocuSign tools to handle document signing, verification, and notifications, making the process secure and efficient. Admins can verify registrations, while users complete legally compliant steps without ever needing to deal with physical paperwork or in-person visits. Everything is designed to be intuitive, ensuring compliance and accessibility for drone operators.

Key Features

DocuSign eSignature: Used to handle digital signing for registration forms and ownership transfers, eliminating the need for paper-based documentation.
DocuSign Authenticate: Integrated for phone number verification, ensuring a secure registration process with SMS authentication.
DocuSign Connect: Enables real-time notifications to keep users and admins informed about registrations, document status, and ownership updates.
Click API: Provides a smooth, legally binding click-to-accept mechanism for terms and conditions during registration and transfers.
Embedded Signing Mechanism: Allows users to sign documents directly within the DroNova platform, providing a seamless and integrated experience.
Brand Feature: Customizes the eSignature interface to align with DroNova’s branding, ensuring a consistent user experience.
Document Generation with HTML: Enables PDF generation for documents, overcoming challenges with customization and design.
Clickwrap API: Used for efficient integration of terms and conditions while ensuring security and proper tracking.

By combining these features, DroNova transforms the complex process of drone registration, ownership transfers, and compliance into a streamlined, efficient, and secure solution.

Challenges we ran into

UI/UX Design: We aimed to create a user interface that simplifies the process, making it intuitive and minimal to use while easing the entire registration and ownership transfer flow. This required careful design and user testing to ensure a seamless experience for both novice and experienced users.
Real-time Notifications: Building a robust notification system using DocuSign Connect to deliver updates promptly was complex.
Document Customization: Generating PDFs using HTML due to challenges with document customization required additional effort.
Image Embedding in Documents: Ensuring images were properly embedded during document generation posed technical hurdles.
Clickwrap API: Implementing the Clickwrap API required generating unique IDs to ensure secure and compliant document handling.
Time Constraints: With limited time to develop the system and integrate various features, meeting the project deadline while ensuring everything functioned smoothly posed a significant challenge.
Drone Identification: The current method of ADS-B for drone identification is effective but has privacy concerns. We faced the challenge of finding a more user-friendly, secure, and private identification system for drones. After considering various options, we decided to implement a QR code system, which was not only simple but also provided users with greater privacy. Encouraging users to register their drones with this method required overcoming the challenge of ensuring that the QR code was easy to use, secure, and scalable. The idea of shifting to a more private and efficient solution was a bold choice, but it helped us create a system that better aligned with user needs while motivating them to register their drones.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building DroNova has been an incredible journey, and we’re proud of the fully functional app we've developed to simplify drone registration, identification, and ownership transfer. With two distinct views user and admin we’ve created an efficient process for both parties, ensuring a seamless experience from start to finish.

One of our standout features is the real-time notification system, powered by DocuSign Connect. This keeps both users and admins informed every step of the way, reducing friction and ensuring transparency in the process.

The app integrates DocuSign’s eSignature and Click APIs, which makes registration and ownership transfers not only legally binding but also secure. The user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) have been designed to be simple and intuitive, enabling users of all tech levels to easily navigate the platform. The dashboard clearly displays the status of each process, ensuring that users can easily track their progress.

Although the ownership transfer system is complex under the hood, we’ve simplified it to the point where users can complete transfers with just a few clicks. Thanks to this efficiency, what could have been a time-consuming process is now faster and easier than ever.

Overall, we’re incredibly proud of how far we’ve come. Despite facing tight time constraints and complex technical challenges, our team collaborated effectively to deliver a solution that not only addresses a pressing real-world problem but also provides a secure, user-friendly experience. DroNova is poised to revolutionize the way drones are registered, tracked, and transferred and we're excited to continue evolving it for the future.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned the importance of user experience in systems that deal with legal and official processes. Simplifying complex procedures and making them accessible online is essential to drive adoption. We also gained hands-on experience with DocuSign’s powerful APIs and how they can be leveraged to automate and simplify document signing and workflows. The challenges we faced, particularly with security and real-time notifications, helped us better understand the intricacies of building a secure, scalable solution.

What's next for DroNova

The potential for DroNova is immense, and we are excited about the future. As the drone industry continues to evolve, we see numerous opportunities to expand the platform's capabilities. Our immediate next steps include scaling the app to introduce advanced features such as live flight tracking, incident reporting, and geo-fencing to ensure drones remain within safe, designated boundaries.

A key area for improvement is enhancing the ownership transfer system, adding more flexibility to facilitate smoother and quicker transactions between users. Additionally, we aim to integrate DroNova with more regulatory bodies and drone manufacturers, broadening its acceptance and positioning it as a trusted tool for drone operators and aviation authorities worldwide.

We are also looking to implement a permit system that allows users to request permits for flying in specific regions. This feature will give users a streamlined way to request approval from local authorities, ensuring compliance with regional regulations and making the entire process more efficient and transparent.

Ultimately, our goal is for DroNova to be more than just a solution for today’s needs. We want it to be an adaptive tool that can evolve alongside the drone industry. By keeping user needs and technological innovation at the forefront, we aim to create a long-lasting and valuable solution that not only meets current demands but also anticipates the future of drones and aviation.

Conclusion

DroNova is a solution born out of necessity and driven by the potential to make a real-world impact. By leveraging technology, we’ve created an intuitive platform that simplifies drone registration, identification, management, and ownership transfer. This project has not only helped us address an important issue but has also demonstrated the power of combining innovative thinking with practical tools like DocuSign to create a seamless and secure process.

While the journey hasn’t been without its challenges, we’ve overcome them by staying focused on our mission to make drone management accessible, efficient, and secure. As we look to the future, we’re excited about the possibilities for expanding DroNova’s capabilities, refining its features, and bringing even greater value to drone operators, regulators, and the community as a whole.

The sky truly is the limit, and we can’t wait to see how DroNova will continue to evolve.