UAS News Podcast — 2015-04-16
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the UAS News Podcast Series where we talk about current events and news relevant to the global unmanned systems community. I'm your program host Patrick Egan. As always, let's have a warm welcome for our co-host, Mr. Gene Robinson.
Gene, how's it going? Hello, Patrick. Things are going well at springtime in Texas and the flying weather is getting pretty darn good. That's good.
The flying weather is pretty darn good here too in sunny California. Although I'm cautious about telling people how good the weather is here in California because we don't need any more nuts here. I mean people here. Just kidding.
Anyway, yeah, so this week's episode is, I was calling it UAS Alphabet Soup for You because I figured we would comment on a lot of things that are going on. We got the NPRM and we got NASA UTM Sarp thing and we got the SUSB Expo and there's a myriad of other stuff going on out there that I figured maybe we could touch on and talk about in this very busy springtime integration season. Indeed. What topic do you want to tackle first?
Wow, Patrick, there's just so many to go after. We could go with a big one I guess. I'm sure everybody has probably looked at, read some of the comments, maybe even submitted their own as we have comments to the NPRM. The one thing that keeps popping out in my mind is that there are more and more people applying for 333 exemptions and then opened up the channel, opened up the faucet and said they're going to be able to do it faster and quicker.
Doesn't that kind of render the NPRM more impotent maybe? Maybe, but I got to be honest with you, I don't think we're going to see anything in a year. I mean, so people are still going for them. The only sad part about that is some people are really getting gaffed.
I hear people are paying up to $50,000 for lawyers to fill out this paperwork and send it in for them. In my estimation, that's another subject we could touch on, but I think there's a lot of carpet baggers and people jumping into this sector who don't really know the sector and are just taking advantage of people. That's just cool. I've helped people with COA applications and didn't get close to that sort of thing.
I think maybe I'm in the wrong business or something. Well, maybe. They've been thinking that for a while. But personally, I don't know.
I don't think it's cool. I don't know. There's a lot of that going on. But the 333 exemption is kind of cool.
Still, I don't know that it's worth a lot of money unless you're in the motion picture, people I hear, you have to have it. Cable TV, you don't have to have it. Every show has got a drum. Every show.
Every cable TV show. I mean, I was watching one on these guys doing the team survival. They had a drum. Everybody's got a drum.
It's not even funny. And then if you're one of these poor schlubs who goes out there and spends all this money on a 333 exemption and then everybody and their brothers buying the drone and in the business and doing it and flying around and making money, okay, there's something to be said. You went out and you're doing it legally. But God, it's just like, if I'd spend $50,000 to get one and let's see, how many now have been approved?
How many are in the hopper? It's woefully slow. Anybody who calls, oh God, this is great. Four got approved.
Woe! You know, I just, I sit back and I laugh. It's like, you know, 30 got approved, 700 in the hopper. You know, this is a victory.
You know, Patrick, I think what many people are doing is once the MPI room came out, they very falsely felt like, oh, we're done. We can go for it. They've got this out there. We're under whatever the MPI says, we could be good.
And that's not nearly the case. Oh, no, there's a lot of people who believe that. There's a lot of people that think that the NPRM was the rule and I'm out there and I'm not breaking the law anymore. Or, you know, they're obviously not reading the fine print on that or whatever.
And then there's people that think, well, that's going to be the rule and that'll be out in less than a year. So if I just fly to that and there's no enforcement and I'll be fine and okay, whatever, you know, do whatever you want to do. I don't think we're out of the woods yet. And the other thing, before we leave the NPRM subject, yes, Gene and I worked on comments for the ARCAPA and submitted those.
They are not up on the site yet for some reason. So we'll probably do, and for the sake of expediency, we will put them, I will publish them as a news story on the SUS News and people can write them and emulate them. Unfortunately, I've kind of talked about this out on Twitter and whatever else. Due to the lack of leadership in the industry, we do not have any scientific data we can submit to bolster our case, which I think is a big mistake.
But again, the people that have been kind of running the show for us have ulterior motives and I'll just come right out and say it because they do. Or either they're uninformed, don't understand what they're doing or just something's amiss. I don't know what it is. You know, when we move into the next subject about the NASA UTM, there's nobody that disagrees with me.
You know, there's nothing, we don't have any data. I'm like, you're writing either love letters or hate mail to the FAA because it's all conjecture. You got nothing to back it up and even ask for it. You got any data?
You got anything to back this up? And people are, if you've read the comments, there's lots of tinfoil hats, lots of RC people. There's lots of, and I'm not deriding anybody, but none of that is relevant. You don't have any data to back it up.
What do you have to say about that, Gene? I would have to agree with you. You know, we did our share of, you know, crashing airplanes and trying to get some data collection. But there seemed to be a few differences, so if it wasn't done in an entirely scientific fashion, they wouldn't accept it, which, you know, I guess that's cool.
But it was convenient at the time. So yeah, we really do need to be able to qualify this. And I know that there's a lot of universities out there, and they're listening today, saying, hey, universities, why don't we start doing some of this and collecting some good scientific data that we can use and say that this is what we should be up to?
Well, you know, and then I don't know if people, you know, we ran that as an article. Some of us put together a white paper to be part of the NASA UTM, which is Unmanned Traffic Management Program. And, you know, a lot of people said, oh, well, that Egan guy's disruptive, and, you know, he's a malcontent and some other colorful titles that I can't say because it's a family show. Anyway, you know, I said, all right, you know, you want a little white paper?
I'll bust one out for you, Dr. Professor Patrick. So I put one out there that basically said until you do the visual acuity study as a baseline, now we're talking about the human eyeball for seeing a void, you got nothing. And until you do the kinetic energy test to pretty much have a baseline to decipher what type of risk unmanned aircraft present, you got nothing.
It's all conjecture. And even, you know, I even said that with the NASA thing, you're just going to all sit around and this is going to be some sort of conceptual hypothetical conversation until that work is done. If those studies had been done, then we could have, let's say, this NPRM opportunity said, oh, this is great, the scientific data that we've collected that had, you know, third party QAQC by,
you know, like NASA or some other respected, you know, group, we could have said, oh, what the FAA says here is very progressive forward thinking, the data that we have, you know, reinforces and supports exactly what the FAA is saying.
You guys are doing great work. Have a nice day. Done. And we didn't.
So that's a missed opportunity. One thing that I did see at the NASA UTM SARP conference is lots, again, you know, the malcontent and the other colorful titles for years. Okay, years. This is a reoccurring thing.
You go to one of these meetings. We talk about smalls in Class G for about, oh, three to five minutes. And then we're right on to the Global Hawks, the Predators, Class B, you know, it's just, it's insane. So people got out here and they're doing presentations.
They're talking about sense and avoid. And they are, and as I said, was going to be the case. I've argued, it was great, Gene. So I'm sitting there in the room and people are doing their presentations.
And I'm like, I've argued with that guy. That guy said smalls will never be any money in smalls. There's no commercial market. You're crazy.
It just, it's like a whole lineup of people. That's what they've said to me in the, in the past. And now they're working on smalls. But when they go back and they say, oh, well, here's the data.
They've got just almost nothing about smalls. And then the next thing you see a picture of a Global Hawk or a Predator, and they've got some studies at work they've done on that. And it's, it's totally irrelevant. It is totally irrelevant.
So we're right back to square one on that one, which is a little disappointing. Well, you know, there, I know you've heard that some of the General Atomics officers have stated that there's no payload space available on the Predator nationwide. So, you know, they're, they're talking about commercializing some of their spaces. You know, there you go.
That's, I think that's the impetus for the most part is that there's some, there's some big money out there that wants to get into the commercial end of it. And they use what they have. And what they have is the Global Hawk and the Predator. Yeah, but, you know, I've, I've been delving more into this and I don't think people understand the scale with this.
You know, when you're, when you're talking like a Global Hawk, last time I heard it's about $255 million a copy. And operational cost about $37,005 an hour. When NASA goes out and flies a mission, they earmark a million dollars. There are no commercial markets for it.
I'm going to challenge people to listeners now. If you know a commercial market where we can, you know, justify the $37,005 an hour without selling tickets and throwing peanuts at people, please call me. I want to know. Because, you know, we could, we could open an airline and start making money and fly wherever we want today with that kind of bread.
It is not practical. And what I am seeing is I'm seeing also, I'm not deriding the whole UTM thing, because I think that it's, I think it's good. I will say that PK or Parimal, Cobra car, Cobra car, I hope I say it's named right, is putting together a group of people that are, let's say, wider diversity than before. It used to just be all weapons contractors.
But I still, you know, Raytheon gets up there. Yeah, we're going to do this with radar. And I'm just thinking to myself, you're going to have to have radar on every corner, dude. And how much is this radar going to cost?
You know, I know, you know, Raytheon, what's their slogan? You know, it's not just radar, it's wedding presents too, or something. I forget. Anyway, the stuff is really expensive.
You know, that's not going to work. And the FAA doesn't have the money for that infrastructure. So you, you know, but okay, so we still have those guys. But now we have people that are in it from the commercial world and want to look into this.
And, you know, then you have some of the internet giants or tech, whatever giants. I think even on that end of the spectrum, I think that Amazon and I'm going to, here's total blasphemer. I'm going to get ready to blaspheme. So, you know, get the kids out of the room because it's Silicon Valley.
If you use the ride, you say anything negative about Amazon or Google, you might, you know, It's great to talk about it, but anyway, I don't care. People say, you know, I'm just hard on the FAA or AUVSI or any other group. You know, we need to have the truth detector out here just because you're Amazon doesn't mean you're going to be able to do whatever you want to do. And as I stated in the meeting, I will not tolerate, and I don't think the public is going to tolerate, Amazon drones falling on people's heads.
And we can't take your word that it's going to work. Show me the data. Just because you want to deliver DVDs, I don't think that you should go out there and wreck it for everybody. It's exciting and all the rest of the stuff.
You got the money, you know, you're getting in the aviation business and you need to act like it. And I think, I mean, I would like to challenge Amazon and Google. We know they have the money to put up the money for these scientific studies, these baseline studies like the visual acuity and the kinetic energy. And they're probably a handful more that we could come up with.
Yes, probably going to cost a few million dollars. But at the end of the business plan, Rainbow, you guys are there. They're looking at making millions and millions of dollars. So it'd be great if we get them to me.
Exactly. And it would be great if we could get them to step up to the plate, put the money where their mouth is instead of just saying, you know, well, we're trust us because we're whatever. So that's where I'm moving forward on the challenge. And again, show me the data.
We can't go on the feelings. You know, Patrick, you have a history of pointing out the inconvenient truths. And that's what keeps you the truth, is that you point out the truth. Well, I'm trying to be, it's like people say they're like, well, you know, you're, I mean, even with the NPRM, I, you know, I've been at this for a long time.
And so have you. And so that's in the NPRM. This community, it is a gift. That is a full blown gift.
You should be jumping up and down with the party hat and blowing the blower in the confetti. You know, I see some of the old guards at the NASA meeting and they're just like, whoa, I can't believe, you know, how, how liberal this is or how, you know, progressive it is. And I agree. So, you know, as far as that's concerned, that's, that's good.
We should be happy about that. I'm, you know, I think people's, my presentation at this year's expo is going to be a shocker for most people. Uh-oh. Well, I've, you know, I mean, I sent, I sent Jim Williams an email when the NPRM came out and I was, I was impressed.
I, you know, it's just, I can't believe how progressive it is. Just can't. So, you know, as far as that goes, the FAA, I'm pretty happy. Some other advocacy groups, not so happy.
Um, some of the hype, not so happy. I mean, there's, dude, I mean, is it just me or is the hype out there?
I mean, I don't even think the canoe is going to do it. I'm going to need to like wear snowshoes in the canoe. The hype's getting so deep. Yeah, that is a fact.
There, there seems to be a lot of, I say, purplish going on right now. And I think it's because there's a lot of people going after the money. I mean, we are a capitalistic nation and this is what it's about. There's about to be some big money, man.
No question about it. Well, I'm still working on my, you know, I'm skipping the seed round and I'm going for the 25 mil series, eh?
I'm still waiting to check. Yeah, I always say, you know, I'm working on my second million because I gave up on my first. Well, you know, I don't know, you know, maybe I should get in on the hype cycle. I just did a, I guess, you know, I think another thing that people don't understand about it, again, it's community first.
And then, you know, then I guess my own personal gain, which I think I have it mixed up because most people are out there, personal gaining and then community second. But I really care about this community. I put a lot of effort into it and I'd like to see, you know, I don't want to see backlashes of like a dot com backlash. I'd like to see us kind of go ahead and be, get some public acceptance.
That's another thing with the DOD vendors going commercial here. You got, you know, military systems flying around. People don't like it. The privacy thing.
There's some other issues. The other thing is there's harebrained ideas people are throwing out there. And another one that I love is, you know, even in this, this envelope that they're talking about giving us, oh, you know, you'll have to go. Like if you're going to overfly, then you got to go and get permission from anybody that you're going to fly over their house or, you know, your camera might see their house.
You're going to have to go have to get permission from them. And you know what?
The FAA hatched that one years ago. I'm like, that's just ridiculous. So if I'm going to go like, you know, even just do something as simple as a real estate shot of somebody's house, I got to go knock on 15 doors and get everyone's permission. That's not happening.
You know, I mean, in my neighborhood, I just think of my neighborhood. I mean, they don't even like me flying my own damn drone in my own backyard. You know?
You know, it's going to be, I think in Texas, we kind of have a unique opportunity here because it may be drone-fucking-feeding here in the next couple of weeks. I don't know if you heard, there's supposed to be a military exercise conducted in Texas. And you want to talk about the tinfoil hatwares. But they're going to try to infiltrate the civilian population with special ops guys, you know, just as a training exercise.
So we may get to see some good military stuff flying around if we take a good close look. Hmm. Yeah, you know, and then that helps stoke fears of the public. That's why, you know, there's two things in the commercial UAS world or drone world or whatever you want to call it.
I think we need to run far and fast from the DOD. And we also need to realize that this isn't the RC hobby anymore. Hasn't been for a while. No, it's not.
It's hard to have a foot in each one of those camps. It really is. And I don't think people are seeing it yet. But it just, you really can't do that.
And I think, you know, people are like, oh, well, you know, this group's, you know, their influence is waning and this group's coming up and this group's going to talk for us. And these people know what they're talking about. They're going to go to the hill and talk to people. I don't think people understand or let's say the community, the business community understands how dangerous this is right now.
There is no voice for the commercial end user in D.C. I don't care what anybody tells you lies or well, maybe not lies. You know, misunderstanding the situation. The Congress is confused on who is speaking for this industry, what their aims are and what the goals are.
And there are different groups out there that have had, let's say, traditional niches and they're still working those traditional niches. You know, your expense. A lot of people are telling you they're working. They're not working for you.
They're working for whoever's paying them the most money. And that's kind of a slippery slope. We've dealt with that with the D.O.D. vendors and it's definitely one of the causes why we were not in the air.
I mean, more and more even at the UTM, geez, if we had an exemption, if we had this, we had that, it would be great. We tried that. That's part of the NPRM comments that we made for our CAPA. The let's say the special rule for the micros that our CAPA had from back in the arc days from 2008 and nine that we tried to champion out there when people were saying we need to do something.
Tried to get it in the reauthorization bill. The D.O.D. vendor advocate people would not have an under four pound exemption, would not put that language in the reauthorization bill. These are the same people that are on the Hill right now telling people that they're the voice of the industry.
And they're also the same people that are that are now crabbing or cockroaching into the big, let's say commercial player. These people used to be D.O.D. advocates. Now they're working for the bigger companies that we hear in the news that want to do deliveries and whatever else.
Very dangerous because they're not working for you. They're working for themselves. That's all I could say about that. People say I should out all these people, blah, blah, blah.
But I don't I don't have time to or the inclination to battle it out with all of these people. They have much more money than I do. They have backing from companies that have, you know, gazillions of dollars. And, you know, I'm just a little business guy looking out for other folks.
So maybe one day I'll take that up. Right now I can't. I think there's a vacuum and somebody needs to step into the vacuum and say, hey, we talk for the commercial end user. And no, it's not Dr.
Professor Patrick. Agree or disagree, Gene?
Well, you know, Patrick, you again, you have a propensity for giving me a chance. We need we do need a spokesperson that is charismatic, as you said in the past. You know, there are a couple of folks out there that are significantly more charismatic than you and I are. We have about as much tact as a hand grenade, unfortunately.
So, you know, that's that's what we need. We need that that tactful person that would be able to be forceful enough to go into the industry and make a real change. Well, the person needs to be polished. You know, I have a person in mind because it's kind of funny is I you know, there's no shortage of groups who want to speak for the commercial end user.
And, you know, we're recruiting the top professionals in the field. You know, we've got 200 people. I'm like, you got 200 top professionals that know about airspace integration. I don't know that many of them.
I mean, there's a couple of handfuls of people. OK, sounds good. And so, you know, I talked to all these different groups and they're all coming up on the commercial end user. They're all coming up on the commercial UAV drone guys association and special commercial drone people guy association and all the rest of them.
And they're like, yeah, you know, we're putting together a group and we're going to pick a leader. And it's I'm a total has been. And I say, well, you know, they go, well, what do you think?
And I go, I know I'm probably one guy who could really lead the effort. And they're all waiting for Dr. Professor Patrick to be the name. But no, it's not me because I'm too real.
I got to I can't sit there with a smile on my face when I'm getting screwed. I have an aversion to that. But I think the guy that I would nominate would be Gary Shapiro from the Consumer Electronic Association. Smooth.
Yeah, he is polished. He knows the game. He knows technology. Consumer Electronics Association already has tons of advocacy work going.
I'm sure a guy like Gary doesn't work cheap, but that's cool. I mean, you know, if you get the right person to throw, you know, half a million at him, throw him a bonus of 150 grand. I don't care if he's producing results, pay the guy a million bucks. It's worth it.
It's definitely worth it. Look at the money that they're throwing at the small UAB coalition. Millions, millions of dollars. They're lobbying and it's effective.
It's working. Hats off to them. They're they're working the hill like a rib bone. They get their members in there.
Their members get to, you know, cry all over Congress and private meetings. I didn't get my co-op until my drone was obsolete. Boo hoo. I'm losing money over here.
You know, I'm losing money. I'm losing money. I'm losing money over here. You know, I mean, it's the propaganda is not bueno, but, you know, you when when you're you got that kind of machine going, that's the kind of, you know, horsepower you get.
And you get the White House saying things. You get Congress saying we got to do something. You get SBA saying, let's, you know, let's move forward. And so that's been very effective.
And I think that that kind of helps illustrate that the other world's largest advocacy advocacy group either was totally out to lunch or, you know, no fresh ideas. I can't even I'm still trying to figure that one out. I've been asking around, but nobody, you know, nobody has any answers. You know, they want to want to, you know, they want to be effective.
You know, even though, you know, the board meeting or the board election that's going on now, you know, you got retreads coming in there that were part of the problem and, you know, they're they're coming back. Then you got, you know, the guy from Airbus is running for chairman of the board and opposed. What the hell is Airbus going to how is Airbus?
I was like Northrop Grumman. Yeah, we're the commercial association now. Okay, yeah. Two hundred fifty five million thirty seven five an hour.
What does that have to do with the rest of us? You know, that doesn't have anything to do with the rest of us. You know, we're talking about billions. We need to rake in billions to keep the doors open, not, you know, you know, tens of thousands or whatever.
So that group has still not made a turnaround. It's disappointing. Yeah, I think it's kind of interesting the way the nation has gone, especially in the potential of small businesses. I was a part of the personal computer, but I wrote I was a code hack for 19 years and it was fairly easy for my team to get into the computer business, especially if you're good with code and you know how to do Windows.
And of course, once the bigger operators like Iron Man and those guys got their feet on the runway, of course, you know, tried to snare as much of the market as they could. And I think it's interesting that, you know, I hate to be a conspiracy theorist or anything like that, but it appears that the industry really has suffered from the suppression by larger entities that that stifle innovation that comes out of these guys
and their granges and doing some really, really cool stuff. Yes. Well, that was kind of a funny note that you say that because there was a gentleman at the UTM thing from one of the larger federal groups that want to use drones.
And, you know, this is just goes around the room. Nobody is going to be building a drone in their garage that can, you know, fly beyond visual line of sight, you know, successfully and efficiently. Yeah, they're doing it for years. Yeah, exactly.
I'm like, I can think of a bunch of guys and one of them, you know, I use Ted McGeer, who I would call the Steve Jobs of drones, you know, arrows. I got the picture of him doing the aeroson in the garage. He's doing the flex rotor in the garage. So I think people kind of and then, you know, you got guys like Jean who've been out there using building doing for years.
It's just that the misinformation is really kind of sad. And I will say that I do sit there and I'm a little bit quieter and I let people go on and talk about, you know, what they want to talk about. But lots of it is just nonsense. And I have no idea.
It's the same with the news stories. Oh, you know, some other, you know, one of these big construction companies, the first company to use drones in their business, maybe, you know, in 2015 for 2015, they're the first business. But even then, I don't believe it. I mean, it's been international contractors have been using them.
You know, I was using as part of my contracting business in 2004, you know, or whatever. So you missed the boat. To be the first. Yeah, there's not much new under the sun these days as they as you saw.
But yeah, it's the first that a lot of things really need to look a little bit further back in the history books and maybe not so much. Well, you know, what they say, it really starts getting dangerous when you're buying your own propaganda. And I think that's kind of what you're going down. But, you know, whatever.
Now, I did want to, you know, we're a little over, but that's OK. As I always tell people, if you know, we're running long and you can't listen, you can always come back later and listen. It's great. But I did want to talk a little bit more about the expo.
Oh, yeah, coming up. Yeah. And even at NASA, it's kind of it's kind of makes me happy that people are like, that is the super symposium. And I will tell you now that we have like actually probably 30 exhibitors this year, booths, tables.
We're going to DJI, bring in a flying cage. We have a STEM zone, sea, land, air and space. We've got there's more than 40 presenters, and that doesn't include the workshops. On map making, aerial photography and filmmaking.
And of course, asar. We got this dude. We're bringing this dude in from Texas. He's an expert.
Maybe you've heard of him. His name is Gene Robinson. I do have a few new missions to talk about. I do have a few new missions to talk about.
And of course, the complexity of the landscape is just a little bit. Well, and, you know, things are, you know, ever evolving. And there is some excitement about that. I think we're going to have some heavy hitters in there.
I was at the Silicon Valley robotic block party. I hear there's there's much buzz over there at Google and Amazon and the rest. DJI, everything else. People are talking.
They're coming to the show. They want to see what's happening. I will already say that we are probably beyond the comfort level of persons for the people running the venue. But I'm damn the torpedoes.
Full speed ahead. You know, let's fill it up. Let's let's have three days of learning. You know, networking lunches.
Lunch is going to be available. It's ten dollars a day. Half sandwich bag. And a Coke.
That's all you get. You can get that going. But I wouldn't leave. I won't be leaving.
I'll be there. The three full day solid. How about you, Gene?
Yeah, it's it's it's really difficult to even get up and make the essential break sometimes when you got folks that are talking. You just don't want to get out of your seat. That's the one thing I learned last year is you need to time things so that you can, you know, take care of business. And be there to see the person that, you know, is going to be talking about the very thing you want to hear about.
Exactly. And the actually the schedule is put up on the website today. One other note, if you want to be in the workshops, you're going to have to sign up and you'll have to email Veronica at S.U.S. News dot com.
She's taking she's in charge of the signups. There's limited space for the workshops. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Last year, I know that when I put in the first workshop that we had brought for people, we started and then there were people standing in the hall. So, you know, peeking in the door. Yeah.
So it was very well received and probably will occur this year as well. Yes. Well, the room's a little bit bigger this year and we can accommodate accommodate about 40, you know, a lot of last minute Louie and stuff. But don't last year had people, you know, oh, man, I flew in from, you know, mad at medicine hat and I wanted to see this and there's no room.
And those were the people standing in the hall. You know, if you want to see it and all the rest of that, you got to sign up early anyway. That's probably enough for for this week, Gene. It was good, as always, to speak with you and I will see you in.
I don't even know what the day actually what is it's like less than two weeks from today. Less than two weeks. Yep. Yep.
And it'll be a drone, a Palooza and drone, Chela all rolled into one. Roger that. And I look forward to it. All right, sir.
I will see you soon. Adios. See you.