Guess this never got reported, but clearly someone had moved the gate in Imperial Transport Hub at one point and forgot to move the cargo drone that was on top of it along with it, so now it’s quite lonely out there:
Not that it’s a bug that I think strictly needs fixing (it’s the only free space drone in the game so it has curiosity value), but now that the zone is station protected you might as well.
i would say this is intended
often when i send my cargo, and the drone is close to warp gate i end up cancelling it and it asks me to use warp gate,
this solves that issue.
wasn’t that like that from the start? i can at least remember that one gate had the cargo drone always like this in empire.
created quite some confusion where to search for it in general for us in the start 
“sometimes its close to the gate, sometimes in front of it” was at least what i heard my mates telling me. 
i would say this is intended
given that it’s usually not the default spot, I think snibs explanation of the phenomenon is probably quite correct i think.
im the onliest who gave an explanation for why it should be there,
also there was no dev saying all the drones had to be placed on the beacon, just because he found one that doesn’t. i have found multiple drones that is not 10 meters away from the jump gate.
he didn’t have any explanation to why it should be on the warp gate in the first place, it just bugs up if you go to close to it, you will warp to other side instead. in fact every drone should be placed like the one u see on the picture there, so you if you go to close to drone you wont activate the jump gate instead.
you are not alone, we have quite some discussion about that in other threads. it is obvious, that having the drone in the open is actually helping with the “activation radius” issue, and actually if you read carefully…
Not that it’s a bug that I think strictly needs fixing (it’s the only free space drone in the game so it has curiosity value), but now that the zone is station protected you might as well.
It’s because it’s in the Empire, and the Empire shall have all the advantages!
Imperial Transport Hub’s cargo drone was always there. Kinda strange, but at least it solves the gate clipping problem that other drones have.