Drones are an exciting kind of robot having recently found their way into the commercial mainstream. The idea of using drones in public spaces has gained momentum and been implemented in some recent public events, such as the 2018 Winter Olympics’ opening ceremonies. As drones are designed to be directly observed and possibly interacted with by an ordinary audience, some fundamental challenges remain for such interactions to be carried out successfully. Our work focuses on bridging the psychological gap between front-end technologies (drones) and the human observers’ emotional perceptions. For interactions to be effective, the observers need to feel safe and empathized with the artificial entities. To that end, we identify and discuss some open technical challenges to address this gap.