UAS News Podcast — 2014-02-04
Transcript
Music Welcome to the next installment of the SUAS Days Podcast Series where we interview newsmakers and discuss the news and applications that are relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I am your program host Patrick Egan and as always let's say hello and welcome to our co-host Mr. Gene Robinson. Hello Mr.
Egan, how are you sir today? I hope things are going well on the left coast. They are sunny, you know, I forgot to turn the heat off. You know, frosty 65 here.
I know, so you know, where's my firecracker? I got to get that moment. Yeah, so how's your life been in the direction?
I think we need to get, you know, some more theme music. Well, you know, it's been what, 70 podcasts so far, you know, you've got the same opening band. You know, can we maybe change the tone a little bit?
Is that possible? Well, I just think about the theme music. I got to think more about that. I was really trying to find any enduring blockhead song to open with.
Most of them are kind of off color, but anyway, that's another story for another time. So, you know, lots of news, lots of new stuff in the news. Anything catch your attention that you need to talk about?
You know, it was just one of those things. I'm sure like the record number of millions of Americans that tuned into the Super Bowl. You know, I don't have a mule in that race anyway, so I kind of was going for the commercials. What made me wonder is you looked at those sweeping vistas that they show.
I wonder how many of those cameras have unmanned aircraft sitting on top of them? Gee, willikers, that's a good question. I, you know, more and more it's pretty funny. I mean, you can't, and I know you had a couple of program segments on local news.
One last night here locally in Sacramento, you know, real estate agents like, oh, all my high end I use unmanned aircraft. I use drugs. And the pilot wouldn't show his face on the TV, but, and I'm paraphrasing, but basically the FAA lost the battle was what the dude had to say. And he gets $500 a job and nobody's shutting him down.
So, you know, it goes on. We've, I think the FAA's lost the battle. Well, and you know, we've got some fresh news from the FAA. I got a letter here this morning on the SUS News editorial desk here from Ms.
Margaret Diligan, Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety at our favorite three letter federal agency. Do tell. Okay. And it's a good one.
It was very plausible. And it's sarcasm if you couldn't tell. Now I've made a request and I believe this was back in, mine had already been back in 2012 already. You know, I know there's timelines that are stuff to work on.
Anyway, this responds to your Freedom of Information Act request. You can copy of correspondence, memos and documentation between the Unmanned Program Office and the Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety pertaining to the formation, chartering and population of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Arc, chartered June 17, 2011. That's the current arc with, you know, all of the DOD veterans on there. Yeah, you know, petitioning to get on small business guys might want to get a mule in the fight, maybe.
But that one, you know, they said, well, we're going to talk about smalls or small UAS. You know, no worries. We got a small business guy on there. I asked if it was the guy from Rady on our General Atomics.
Still waiting to hear back, get the contact info for the small business guy. Anyway, a record search was conducted in the office of the Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, ABS 1. We did not locate any records or files pertaining to your request. Please be aware that this search covered only the office of the Associate Administrator and that you will receive a separate response from the standard service.
So anyway, you have a shot on that. There are no records, no correspondence, no emails, nothing pertaining to the formation of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Arc. So, you know, Les Smith and her name was on it. She's the one that, Miss Gillian is the one that, you know, basically signed the charter for that thing, was the one who talked about who could be on it.
But there's no record there, nothing. There's no records, no files, nothing. Not even any other stuff back of an envelope. You believe that?
Is dignity outraged or just shock? Well, you know, I've been doing these Florida requests since about 2008. What is it now?
Fourteen, six years, whatever. If you saw the way they dog house members and congresspeople, and the house members and congresspeople just take it. I mean, if I wasn't elected officially, you know, a million people voted me in, and they sent me something like this, I'd be pissed. But, you know, they take it in stride.
I try to take it in stride. I'm taking the federal elected official route. Oh, maybe a couple of chuckles. Isn't that cute?
But that's what you're getting. And I have been told, I've got a couple of, there are a few moles in Prairie Dogtown. And I was told yesterday that I'm beating the wrong people up. I really should be beating D.O.T.
up because the FAA has done their job. Although other moles would suggest that the management over there at the UASIO office is akin to being run kind of like Gitmo. They don't have to wear the orange jumpsuits, but it's a very oppressive and scary place to work. So I don't know.
Is it the management at the UASIO, the FAA, or is it D.O.T.? We've got some other people we've got to ferret out, too, and see what's wrong. There's lots of stuff going on. But anyway, that was the update.
And now we're going to get upward and on. I don't know if there was anything else that you wanted to mention real quick because I know that you were, like I said, in the news. Would you like to speak about that?
Well, actually, your update has me speechless. You didn't find me on that one, so I'm quite shocked. My little appearances on the local affiliates were really kind of minor compared to that one. So I think I'll just sit here and be quiet, Patrick.
Well, you know, I just found it this morning, so I couldn't have alerted you to it. But anyway, I know it's kind of at least renders one's speech, but that's your public rulemaking process or your representative government in action. Somebody, you think I should do, Gene?
Should I just write another story? You know, I'll be like, I got five or six stories in the queue. Should I call her up?
Should I say, you know, what's going on here? What's your advice?
I would say that at the very least, a phone call is in order to take. Peggy, really?
No, I've got a desk number here in my phone. Should I call that number or should I go through the secretary?
What do you say? I would go directly to the desk phone and say, Peggy, really?
All right. I like that it's signed by her too. I like that. I'm going to take that advice after the show today.
I will give her a jingle, see what you guys say. I'm very curious to hear how that goes. All right. Well, we'll see what's going on.
All right. Well, you know, now the new format of the show is only 30 minutes, so we can't, you know, belabor the point too much that we're getting screwed. I mean that we're... Pardon me.
Okay. So I want to bring on our guests here. We have two guests today and they are from the Game of Drums and we're going to talk about that. One of them actually was a speaker at the Small and Man's Systems Business Expo that everybody should go to www.susbexpo.com because this year's speaker list is shaping up to be dynamic.
We're going to have a lot of stuff going on there. Oh, and one other thing I wanted to note was the Drone TV Network. You've got to go over there and check that out, www.drontvnetwork.com and check that out because it's pretty good. And this week's episode or this month's episode is actually, I don't know, our co-host, Mr.
Gene Robinson, so go check that out. We're going to bring on our guests. We have Eli DeLeah and Mark Kornblatt. And I would like, Eli, to come on first and introduce yourself, please, to the audience with a little bio and how you first got involved with Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
Mr. Robinson, Mr. Egan, very good to be with you this morning. I think some of your show is keeping me grounded, unintended, in the drum world.
Thank you very much. So you know about me. I guess my background is in visual effects. I've been a lifelong roboticist and very into building robots since I was a kid.
And since I got off this shelf, UAV technology made itself available. That's been my biggest passion in life right now is designing and developing various UAVs from multirotors to text wings and combination fair. My family and I also run Paintball Jungle here in Northern California. And that has been a fantastic test bed for all the various UAV monitors that we've been working on.
Mark and I will go into the Game of Drones and what we've been working on there. But I guess with Paintball, one of the things that we've done, what I spoke about at the conference, was how we're using six wings in the air over the games to basically revolutionize Paintball. I call it Paintball 2.0. And I don't think it's a business model yet, but it's definitely something revolutionary I'm very proud of and we're working towards to grow out.
And the way it's changed the games is that we get to see the entire gameplay from the air. And we have a red team and a green team UAV operator, they're both watching the same cameras, they're updating their field commanders on the ground with troop movement or player movement. And then they're updating their troops to basically adapt to that game. The games have totally changed and now a lot longer.
And everybody's adjusting to the big picture in real time and it's very exciting. The way we're going to kind of push it out. Go ahead, I'm starting. I was trying to heat that up.
That's interesting. Yeah, it's basically a video connection right now that's going down to the ground operators. And from there we're trying to move it out to the web so basically the whole world can watch the games in real time and enjoy it that way. And I guess that's a big revolutionary thing.
Right. But Mark and I, my partner in flight are working on something revolutionary and stuff with Game of Thrones, I think, and Mark can tell you a lot about that. All right, well, Mark, maybe we can bring you on and you could introduce yourself and give us a bottle, do the same so we can get a little background on you, sir. Sure.
Thank you very much for having us. It's a pleasure to be on the show. I've been building robots and technology researcher for the last 25 years or so. And Eli and I go way back.
We've known each other since we were kids working backstage in theater, packed together trying to invent the future of theater technology. More recently, however, we've been more actively engaged with robotics and drones. And about a year or two ago we found ourselves forming up the Game of Thrones. Out of an experience that we were having, which was we would join up with other robot makers and artists on Friday nights and have an impromptu underground fight club of our robots and of our drones as we started building drones.
And what we discovered was the drone industry is still so young that the hardware and the tools and technologies that were available, while they may be terrific at flying around, absolutely failed when it came to the wear and tear of daily use, hard abuse of use, especially the kind of uses that you would get in this kind of fight club where you're battling your drones against each other. And so out of that sort of crucible of drone combat, we started developing airframes that could take the abuse and keep flying with a minimal amount of repairs needed.
So we were really honing the idea of an airframe that wasn't just inexpensive and cheap to repair, but one that actually did not require any repair at all. And from that we developed the action for the airframe. We were making a bunch of videos about it and putting those up on YouTube. And the response was so overwhelming that we were compelled to launch a Kickstarter campaign to try and distribute these airframes and really kind of test the waters and see if there is really a market for them.
And in fact, it's been pretty successful. So I think we will be going into production after the Kickstarter and launching these commercials. Well, I can tell you guys are excited about this because you basically ran through the whole show. We're a little bit excited about it.
Yeah, it was great having you guys on. Yeah, well, it is kind of exciting. And let's back it up a little bit because we did kind of run through the whole thing here. But, you know, and Eli, you were a presenter at the Small Island Man's Systems Business Expo.
And the thing that kind of resonated with me, people were like, oh, you know, this guy's out there. He's, you know, I don't know if he's just getting some flying time and all the rest of that. But kind of how you talked about Paintball 2.0, the concept that you had and what kind of resonated with me was it was Paintball 2.0 with Web 2.5.5 or whatever because instead of it just being something, and everybody talks about this,
you know, virtual Internet thing, you have this, let's say, that amalgamation of virtual and real where you can, and I know the concept we're getting out there because we're not there today, but the idea that I could be in Tekephe or Sheboygan on the computer and play via Internet, pay by a credit card, and be part of a live action game somewhere else in the world.
Would you like to expand on that? Well, you pretty much summed it up. I think that's pretty much it. Basically, with drones in the air over the games, right now it's just two pilots talking to their teams.
But very soon, and that technology is right around the corner, it's going to happen, I would say, and the scale of things tomorrow, that anybody in the world can dial up and watch the game live and be able to also talk to those teams and give them good information but not through teleprism. Basically, using the drones as a means to actually join the games themselves. And it's on a level you have active players, the games are going on in Northern California, up there in Texas can then join the game.
But not only that, parents can dial in through the drones and see what's going on in the games, what their kids are into, and then spread the word. So the viral potential is huge. And right now, yeah, it is very underground, but I think it's going to explode once we have the means to show the world what we're talking about. And I think pretty soon we're even going to see a lot of paintball fields try to follow suit.
So I like to go ahead. Well, you were telling me how you kind of got this idea, and that parents would be sitting out there in their car waiting for their kids to play paintball. Right. They have no idea what the games are really about.
Right, exactly. So now you were saying that they sit out in their car, and they could actually watch it on their phone or watch it on their iPad or watch it on their computer. They could sit there and watch what their kids are doing in real time and get a better understanding of what's happening. Right.
But not only that, but very soon actually interact with the games themselves in a very passive-aggressive way, I guess the ultimate passive-aggressive way, watching it on the computer and then interacting with a lot of games. And I totally encourage that. And it's just a matter of some minor infrastructure, really. It's just a matter of these repeaters getting to be a little better and the video signals getting to be a little more robust.
And that is happening around us. And we're just kind of developing our side as the whole world develops the infrastructure, we'll just apply it and it'll be out there. And I think we're going to be the first field, but we are definitely going to be the crest of the wave of a huge tsunami of things that are stored. I imagine a bunch of sports are going to adopt that method too.
So it's something I'm pretty proud of in moving forward on. I'm not sure I've done enough though. Yeah, I mean it's an interesting, it's definitely caught my attention because of that leap between the virtual and the real world. Yes, and that's what really got me is because everyone was like, oh, it's virtual this and virtual that, but now it's virtual, real and virtual.
No, there's not going to be a line. There's not going to be a line in the way anymore. It's going to be live games. And there won't be any virtual without it.
It'll just be live gaming games that people have a way to get involved with. And I think our airplane is perfectly perfect for that. Yeah, well, we're going to get into that. I want to do, you know, I got the idea for this show.
We're going to talk about some other stuff here. But you guys hosted the Make Drones line. That was pretty cool. And a bunch of people have posted some videos.
But any side notes on that event? I want them to have them a lot more. And I was really thrilled to see what other developers are coming up with. And I think what I like most is that all the kids really went home very inspired.
There's a lot of adults flying. But the kids that were present at that got so much out of it. And I think that's key that we're inspiring the next level of the future engineers. And we're giving something tangible to play with and to take something they can make and then fly.
That is so inspiring to so many kids. And I think for that reason we need to keep doing it. It makes it us. Definitely a family-friendly thing.
Oh, absolutely. It was such a family-friendly environment. It was just so much fun. And I was buzzing about it for days afterwards just how much fun we had.
And the thing is with those meetups, it's such an incredible meeting of the mind. I had great conversations all day long with people with brilliant ideas and great technology. And I thrive in that environment myself. I can't get enough of it.
Right. I agree with that. Mark, any insights into the make thing?
Yeah, absolutely. The meetup was so much more well-attended than we expected. And the attitudes were so enthusiastic and positive that we really discovered that that meetup wasn't quite enough. And the fly-in where people just come and bring their drones and fly, even that's not quite enough.
So in addition to those meetups, we've been hosting more formalized fighting drone meet nights that are based on the fight club that we started. But we're also realizing that we need an additional sort of meetup to occur where it's like Eli was saying, where it's really a meeting of the mind where people are bringing their drones and showing them off. And it's not so much about flying and fighting as much as it's about sharing discoveries, sharing advancements, and exploring the future of drone development together.
Because one of the things that emerges from all of these meetups, whether they're about the fighting or just the joy of flying, is everybody out there seems to be inventing their own drones, building their own solutions, and coming up with really innovative ways of solving problems, of cutting costs, and of sort of personalizing the experience. It's really unique to see such an early moment in an industry, yet that moment has been so seized upon by DIYers and makers and kids who are just kind of interested in the technology and the toys.
And it's really interesting to see how this industry is not immediately dominated by the big military contractors and other big players. Just the opposite, it seems as if the groundswell of individual projects and individual motivation is really starting to dictate the next wave of perception of drones. And that's a very good thing to add that into the story. Minimize the idea that drones are only these military killing machines and emphasize the idea that drones are actually tools, robots, very inexpensive and very accessible.
And in fact, to me, drones represent kind of what the internet represented in the 80s or early 90s and the potential of the internet back then I see in the potential of drones today. Right. Now I have a question. You guys have like, you know, you have this fight club.
Now you have like, you know, team jackets like the Jets and the Sharks. Well, we do, yes. It's funny you mention Jets and Sharks because that was like the first team names that I came up with as well. The fighters are actually all independent teams or independent players.
So we're going to encourage them to kind of come up with their own branded team names, team colors and numbers so that we add more of the sporting element to the games. Like I say, we started as an underground fight club with no rules and no structure. And in the last few meetups that we've done, we started applying structure, scorekeeping and a league infrastructure to the games. And with that comes all the things you're describing.
We're going to have a scoreboard and we're going to have an air horn for points and we're going to have, in addition to the combat teams, we're also going to start including challenges where you might do a follow the leader or a game of tag or case. You also might do obstacle courses for timing and points. So we're really looking to expand the ways in which drones can compete without having to be directly combated with each other. But kind of expanding the entire range of ability and sport within the world of drones.
So the recreational... Demolition, derby in the air. Yeah, recreational drones are plenty. I like that.
Okay, well, you know, that's all very interesting. I like how you guys are looking at it. And I think that that's good. And I think the acceptance through recreation is definitely something that we need to embrace.
And I agree with you. There's a lot of misinformation out there about, you know, I keep hearing this, you know, oh, this is military technology. It's military technology. And I'm just, you know, I'm excited myself.
It's not all military technology. Was RC technology?
Well, that's the only way to grab headlines. It's a military application. It is a...I think it's a poor way to grab headlines. It is.
It's a good way to get clicks on your website or whatever. But realistically, I think that has really kicked this industry in the shins. But that's a discussion for another time because I want to talk about, you know, the Kickstarter. You guys have a Kickstarter going.
And I think, you know, people have different ideas about Kickstarters. I don't know how many times I've heard, oh, you've got to go do a Kickstarter. And I'm like, eh, you know, I think there's more to it than meets the eye. I don't think you can just say, well, I'm going to run out here and I'm going to fire up a Kickstarter and everyone's going to come and just, you know, load me down with money like I'm a DOD vendor.
You know, Kickstarter has been a really fascinating experience for us. We're about 20 days into our 30-day campaign. And it's been really fascinating. The results have not exactly been what we expected, for instance.
It seems as if hitting your mark in reaching your fundraising goals, while that's definitely considered a success, these days on Kickstarter, that's not enough of a success. Meaning, in some ways, it's relatively easy to hit your goals, but if you really want to be kind of a success, you have to do three, four, five times what your original goal was, which is a really interesting sort of competitive nature within the world of Kickstarter itself. So that's one thing that I noticed. We hit our goal within about 10 days and we're about 150% of the goal.
And we're really trying desperately to reach 200% of our goal by the end. And we've done all the Kickstarter campaign techniques, including adding stretch goals, added additional prizes and rewards if we reach that goal. And playing the Kickstarter game for all it's worth has been really fascinating. In addition to the fundraising, which is the primary reason we're doing it, one of the best things that has come out of Kickstarter is all the additional attention
and marketing opportunities that have come to us through people looking at Kickstarter for investment opportunities, for interesting stories for their blog or networks or TV shows.
And so out of the Kickstarter campaign, not only have we sort of got the early start of our business going, but we've got a lot of discussions going with television production companies who are interested in developing programs and shows around some of the things that we're doing. We've got investors that have kind of come out of work to talk to us about what we're doing and possibly working together on projects as well. We've got distributors who are looking to be wholesale distributors of the product.
And we've got a million fans that have kind of found us as well. And I think many of the other Kickstarters out there are finding similar, surprisingly similar results in that the Kickstarter is really one of the best marketing opportunities in addition to a fundraising opportunity. Now all of that being said, there's one other thing about Kickstarter, which is what you were starting to talk about, which is it's easy to kind of blow it to Kickstarter by not being well-focused and not really understanding why you might choose to do it.
We have been not doing a Kickstarter for about three years as we waited for the exact right moment, the exact right project that really actually required the fundraising. There are a lot of Kickstarters out there that don't really even need the money. They're just kind of doing it with validating the project. And those projects may have a harder time a little bit.
So by waiting and not immediately jumping on the first idea, we have the Kickstarter. And by really honing that idea by watching and waiting, looking at other Kickstarters' successes and failures, we've had a much better time of it and hopefully avoiding many of the pitfalls of some of the other campaigns that's hit. What if we can, Gene, we need to do a Kickstarter for a live band for the show, what do you think?
There you go. You know, I think we ought to do that as a reward for someone helping in this field. So, this story on the show, how's that?
Hey, there you guys. You got a band?
You got a band? You want to come up with a theme song?
You know, that'd be great. I'm a fan of that theme song. You like the theme song?
Yeah, I like the theme song. I think it's a beat. It's a beat, it's good. Oh, I appreciate it.
I dance to it. Okay, see, you know, we've got all kinds of fans here. Well, we're cutting down on the wire. We've got about 20 seconds left.
You know, can I get the address of the Kickstarter so people can go there and give you some more money? Absolutely. You know, the Kickstarter URL is long and complicated, but if you just search for Game of Drones on Kickstarter, you'll get right to it. Alright, and you can...
It's Kickstarter.com slash Game of Drones. Alright, excellent. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you guys for coming on.
We had a...that was a good conversation. Best of luck with the Kickstarter and moving forward with that innovative thought. And I guess we'll see everyone next week. Have a good week.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Keep the stick back.