UAS News Podcast — 2015-10-15
Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast Series where we interview newsmakers and discuss the news and applications relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I'm your program host Patrick Egan and as always let's say hello and welcome to our co-host Gene Robinson. Gene, are you out there?
Of course, I can't hear Gene. Are you there now Gene?
Hello? This reminds me of how much I hate blog talk radio. Come on, can you hear me now Patrick?
I can hear you now but man this service really sucks. Audio quality is bad and everything is always different. I'm going to have to do something else. I'm always disappointed.
Anyway, enough of my disappointment. We'll get on to that later on. How are you doing this week Gene?
As usual, things are cranked up. We've got a major firework in here in Bastrop again and there's some hanky panky going on by the illustrious Lone Star Center of Excellence Flight Center and we're trying to get the resources out there to them and gosh there's politics as usual in Texas. I think there's politics everywhere. Is it the same group of experts who, well it sounds like sour grapes sometimes but it's just kind of funny how people are falling all over themselves to be the drone god or whatever.
What's going on with that? You think you're going to be out there flying or you've got to weed through all the politics first and then hit the FAA up for some slow down?
How do you think this is going to play out this time? It's interesting because we had the first at the outset of the fire when the first 50 acres was burning the red team, the robotic emergency deployment team, Austin Fire Department volunteered their services and Incident Command asked us to stand by and went from 50 acres to 250 acres and then by day two it was 2,000 acres and we still hadn't gotten a call.
And then oddly enough there's a TFR that's put up a temporary flight restriction for you folks that aren't pilots out there and as we tried to contact the FAA to find out just exactly who owned the TFR there was no ownership.
Even the FAA didn't know who owned it so there was no point of contact or anything like that. So it ends up being pretty frustrating when you're trying to go out there and you have the capability to help and gosh there's nothing you can do but make like Nero and watch as Rome burns. Yeah well I think that sometimes we're as a species create problems for ourselves and too much government regulation, too many hurdles to get over
but that's another podcast. It is and if you should happen to hear me drop out it's because I may get a call in the podcast and if I do have to drop out I'll let you know but I know we've got a lot more pleasant things to talk about than fires in Texas.
Oh you know okay well yeah just give us a little warning on that and then this will turn into like a monologue you know but maybe I'll do some advertising during this middle of that or sing a song. We'll see what happens. Anyway exactly so you know again one thing I mean you know we're going to talk about being on the road and all of the different shows we were at. First I want to say thanks to all the people that listen to the podcast and read the news.
You know really nice to when people come up and give you feedback and say oh god I listen to all of the shows. I love the program. There's great content. You know we're not just here speculating about possible uses in the future that have already been done but we have experts on that have actually been doing this stuff for 10 years.
No way! So that's kind of nice and you know as you would imagine I saw you at the commercial TV Expo. Sometimes people come up hey want to take a selfie or you know shake your hand or whatever. I really enjoy that.
What about you? Yeah it was pretty interesting. At the commercial show commercial UA show in Las Vegas how many people would come up hey you're that guy on the podcast yeah that's and you're the guy that wrote the book oh yeah that's yeah you know it was kind of interesting how that all played out. Yeah it's nice that people understand that we're trying to do something.
It's kind of funny people are you know what about the podcast how come you're not doing more? It's like oh god because it's hard to be on the road and do everything and be everywhere and all of the rest of the stuff that's going on behind the scenes I know you're always too busy doing stuff and I'm busy trying to do stuff and that we're already starting to gear up for the small and man systems business expo which takes a bunch of time. Veronica is actually over here reading her email. You're supposed to be working on the expo thing.
She's diligently working away right now on the expo stuff. Anyway so yeah I wanted to talk about some of the shows that we've been at. Some people don't like them they get called shows, symposiums, whatever you want to call them I don't know and I know that you were on the road and you started out you were on the road even before I was on the road last month. You had a few things going on but what was some of the stuff that you were doing?
Well we started out with the the inter drone there in Vegas again and to be honest with you I was quite surprised. Put on up a set seminar for search and rescue again was on a panel for that as well so that that's you know kind of right in my wheelhouse and it was very enjoyable doing that and there were a lot of folks that attended that particular session and it was pretty evenly split between first responders and people who wanted to support first responders and I would say in a room that seated probably 200 people it was three quarters full.
Lots of good questions and you know you have a good panel when everybody bum rushes the table and you know they have to hustle you out because the next session is starting and you're taking up too much time with with the questions. So you know you got to figure that's that's all good when that happens and and to be honest with you I thought the show was pretty well attended. The exhibit hall was very full of people all the time. There was something going on
you know of course all the big names were there the players that you would expect were there and flying something or demonstrating something and there was some some really good cutting edge technology out there that we saw and sense and avoid.
So you know I got to say yeah kind of thumbs up on the intergrown one. It looked like it was pretty well put together the sessions were spaced pretty well so you could get you know a wide variety of topics in. So you know good one on that one and then of course you know you and I met up at the conference the commercial conference show whatever they want to call it in Vegas at Caesar's Palace and I don't know about you but you know a ten dollar bill is a Caesar's Palace one if you know what I mean.
It was pretty expensive to get around in that place just to buy food or do whatever and I you know that venue is pretty steep but and it was about attended by about half the people that we saw at Intergrum which I thought was very interesting because I thought in a bigger venue like that and a richer venue that you know you'd see more people. Well I would definitely say I don't know there were other shows in there and I just want to run through those real quick but I will share some of my feelings too.
I thought the commercial UAV Expo was nice put on by nice people but all of these are the thing some of these commercial shows or the newer shows that are coming on that bugs me is that the people are not drone people. I did a panel on international regulation which was an hour which I think I had four people not including myself on the panel. Definitely too hard to try and cram that into an hour. I don't think anybody was done justice on what they were talking about way too complex.
I see a lot of people looking out there you know they don't know what we were talking about. It was a condensed thing. You really have to be kind of in the know to be taught strata of what's happening to be able to figure out what was going on there. The other thing you know is that I asked another question I don't really go to a lot of the panels because I'm getting tired and this might sound a little negative but I'm getting tired of hearing the same conjecture from the same people who don't know what they're talking about.
It's a lot of feelings you know. It bugs me. It's a waste of my time. It's a waste of everybody's time.
But anyway one thing there was another panel and it was about the pathfinder in the on visual line of sight which seems to be a hot topic. I don't think that people fully understand that. Aren't you on the beyond line of sight committee?
You are aren't you? Yeah the inaction team yeah I'm on that. We've had one meeting in over a year. That's really a let down too.
I got to get back on that one. That was the FAA committee for beyond visual line of sight. The action team. That's another one.
So you know I'm asking and Rob I forget what his last name is. He was the guy that was doing the 333 exemptions but now he's moved on to the pathfinder thing. My question was is you know was there any written criteria to participate in the pathfinder program?
This isn't only my thing but many people in the community believe that the companies that were chosen for the pathfinder thing have no experience whatsoever. Basically newcomers to the industry and there's people out there and I brought up like Ted McGeer who've been you know they're talking about oh we're going to do tests with a with a scan eagle. Ted McGeer invented the scan eagle. Ted McGeer has been eating this drones for breakfast for 25 years.
How come you didn't go to somebody like him who's actually a scientist who's been doing it and knows it understands you know the nuances of it. If you're really looking to move the ball forward instead of going to a company who's got a product and it's not a bad thing that they're trying to push the product but you know really is there you know is this thing certifiable?
I have my doubts and I'm not the only one and there are a lot of people in the community that are saying the same thing. Why did you there's other companies out there and we'll say even the what's present company included that have been flying for years out in the field know what's going on and they weren't picked. Gregory McNeil did try and chase the question down and get you know heavy about it
but he did he did try and push Rob to answer but Rob just wasn't touching it with the 10 foot pole and then after I even approached the FAA and I got and I just told him I said you know this is off the record because people who are the lapper heads talking to the press but I'm just like you know the FAA is not doing itself any favors you know doesn't do itself favors when it picks companies to do technology or technological things that they have no experience in
you know or have let's say a low order of probability of being successful and then also the other thing I brought up was the the measure 333.
Oh but I'm his golfing buddy. Nobody thinks that's that doesn't pass the sniff test and you know whatever I'm not even talking about his comments but I just think it's from a community standpoint of view I think it's important that we point that out and say hey you know here's here's how the community sees this you should think about that and so when people beat them up I think they bring it on themselves
but that's just feedback from the show again that session you know one hour to talk about all of the intricacies and nuances of beyond visual line of sight there's no way you're going to be able to capture all of that.
So saying that the shows that are put on by people that aren't using this this this technology they they suffer and I think substance but I will say some of the other shows I was at I was the keynote at Geotech at George Mason University. That's right. Presentations that the presentations that were going on there Gene most these people like you like me have been around you know seven eight ten years whatever been using this technology and the and the work that they're actually doing is mind-blowing.
No speculation about how farmers can use drones no speculation about uses on on different sensors these guys they're out there they're good they're killing it right now and they've been killing it for for years so excellent presentations those are the ones that I'll listen to you know some of these guys a scientist not that he's a scientist but you know he's got ten years of experience using unmanned aircraft systems in the field they're actually doing they're not speculating
and talking about what it can do they know what it can do because they're out there doing it they've been all around and they're kind of like the unsung heroes there's a lot of people that you know there's that have been out there doing it and they're just out there kind of doing the work and they're not all wind and smoke and mirrors and talking about how they're the you know drone guy or whatever they're actually out there learning
so I will say that I've invited a few of those folks to come and speak at the expo and talk about the science that they're doing I think very important the stuff that's going on so you know this is how to really use the technology which I'm into then the next one I went to I went to the UAS mapping show in Reno which was a nice show it's actually people doing GIS stuff with with with drones right people were the mood at the show was it was it was pretty
well attended and I moved at the show as it wasn't as good as last year although I didn't see much of a difference from last year a lot of end users and people that own companies that want to use drones for mapping I think I will say that I think some people have come to the realization that the drone is not magical and you know wait a minute it's a little bit harder than just flying a phantom or a y6 or a solo or something else
and doing mapping and getting something that's actually let's say I'm calling it either you know commercial grade or regulatory grade data yep kind of it was likened to either a geotech some of the people there were you know when Google Earth came out and people were going to be able to do their own surveying and yada yada well that didn't really work out so well lots of promise but the reality of it was a little bit harder
I think people are starting to realize that with the drone shows end users gonna have a little bit harder time than just going out buying a drone throw in the air and make it work a little bit tougher than that and again the quality of the output you know would you are you hearing the same type of things or sure and it's going to be the we've said it before years ago Patrick that the data is going to be the meat of the matter
and being able to interpret that data get collect quality data is going to be it so yeah that that trend is showing itself in that conference so that you know you can collect a whole bunch of data and if it's no good or you can't interpret it it's what as they say worthless or you know computer turns with G I E O you know garbage in garbage out yeah I've seen that even in this the consulting staff talking to companies fortune 500 fortune 100 companies are afraid that they won't even be able to do it as cheaply as people they can hire
and then you ask them about you know they hire people and you say what was the quality of that what you got well we got some shaky video and you know is it something that you can use you know for like say regulatory purposes now no it's not that good and it's crap garbage you know you're paying for what are you paying for I don't know if I'm going to be worrying about the bottom falling out of the pricing on the drone thing or the strong service thing because quality of what people think they're providing is just not
so good I don't think it's gonna be usable other thing I'm gonna say is and I've been saying it for a while and it's funny it's starting to resonate but I think there's a the drone bubbles really getting ready to burst and I think when the regs come out and people see how limited they are whoo it's gonna be ugly what do you think yeah but as you as you and all of our listeners know that it's not gonna happen anytime soon
and we're still gonna be under the exemption process the co-process for I'm gonna say I'm gonna go out on them here say at least another 14 months yeah I don't know if anything keeps saying and it keeps getting reported by a lot of the news sites that are now in the drone news business that you know June 2016 we're gonna have the regs will be out don't tell me you're not holding your breath yeah no
I have I don't like looking like a smurf so no I'm not well I think even whatever does come out from what I've heard you know inside the circles people that are pretty well connected is you'll be able to do the real estate photography which I think people are starting to figure out that the real estate agents are just buying their own phantoms and doing their own photography and there's not really any money in that sure
I think that that that is kind of a harbinger of how limited things will be and when the rules come out and all these VC people have been pumping tens of millions of dollars into businesses to go out there and capture commercial users and all the rest of that figure out that it's gonna be invisible line of sight and most of that stuff can be done by people not go out and buy a phantom or something else sure it'll be hard to be in business
you know some of the other business models are funny one of the one of the news stories from yesterday was one of the the ski results in Colorado will be offering you'll be able to get there they'll have a guy been they'll be able to do the drone video of you skiing down the mountain which I don't what I do down the mountain I don't think you call skiing that's more flailing motion but anyway you know
so I can hire the drone to watch me wipe out you know down the mountain but there's a lot of you know I have the 500 feet the rule and there'll be other people and you know all the rest of these things and they got ten million dollars of investment to you know set up this you know videography service for the ski slopes and you know is that really gonna work how is that gonna work you know I don't know
I think it's kind of funny but the wall it leaves me thinking is how come I can't find some VC person that doesn't add a do-mass that's just looking to write a check for some total talkamame idea where are you call me my contact information is on the SQS news page I got a lot of good ideas yeah they're even better than those I guess I'm just not traveling in the right circles I wonder I wonder if they're gonna change the the lift that the chair lifts around if you've got drones that are
you know flying zooming all over the place you know you could be you could be a target sitting in a lift chair as you went up the mountain as the drone was trying to keep up with the skier coming down yeah I don't I don't see how that's gonna work well we'll see how that pans out this winter but there was one other show that we didn't cover that you went to and I didn't go to was the bar to barstow our city thing yeah they've been doing this for 43 years
now so this show or this it's just it's actually not a show it's a two days of training and they they bring people in from all over with all sorts of skill sets for you know man tracking and in search and rescue and evidentiary collection and just you know you just go on and on and on and on litany it just cares how to ride a four-wheeler you know in a situation it's just man it's just soup to nuts on this thing
and it's put on by the barstow community college and these people come from all over the place we there were of course there was a lot of California cert teams sheriff's offices and things like that and of course I went and presented on using unmanned aircraft in a search situation and it was very well received and then just about all sheriff's organizations that I talked to are interested in implementing a drone
and the search and rescue scenario and of course it was good news because you know as we went to the commercial show there the new numbers were out and again search and rescue has a 93% acceptance rate for the use of unmanned aircraft in the next so you know it's up there it's up front and it's always going to be something that you know near and dear to my heart and it was very interesting to hear the different comments from for example the Orange County Sheriff were like nope we can't fly a drone we have restricted airspace from one end of the county to the other
and we've got MOAs and the military operation I was like wow you know you can right you can do it they said no no we can't but it was interesting having those discussions with them and and and providing them with some glimmer of hope that they could actually use these things operationally but they had a couple vendors there we put up our airplanes and show them you know what we could do with the specter
and the vigilant copters and that sort of thing the Innova drone was there with us and all very well received and people very interested and asking really good questions and I think one of the most important things that we got to do there is we got to talk to some of the pilots to some of the full-scale pilots and get their feedback and their input no you know certainly they're they're they're concerned about your livelihoods
and they were very glad to hear me say that you know look these little guys are not going to replace you guys we're always going to need you guys sitting in the left seat or the right seat depending on what you're flying to come in and get these people into it we can't do that we'll never be able to do that it's always going to be one of those things where there's going to be a human in the loop so they were very happy to hear that
so that kind of rounded out my road warrior trip yes and I'm pretty much I'm done for the year for the year although there's one other show I may go to or should go to we'll talk about but I did want to touch on one thing I think it's we have been bad let's say ambassadors as a community you know like you were saying if you're going to talk to the man pilots and say hey you know this is a tool and we want to augment
and it's much better received then we're coming for your job you know and I don't and I agree with you I mean I don't know even you know that's another thing is like these disaster relief people people going out to the fires and all the rest of it you know it's great that people want to be helpful but you know just like you even said there's a way to ride a quad when you're doing an organized search
you know yeah I don't think that people think about this so when you go out there and you go to a disaster area and you show up with your drone and you're taking pictures you don't even need to be there with the internet you could they could just put a camera on a man vehicle they could email you the pictures you can do the mapping and send it back I'm getting I don't know that I'm getting tired of it
but I it just seems to me it's like you just want to be a drone hero so bad you know you're gonna throw every call car into the wind and just run out and do something but what are you doing you need to think about what you're doing and who you're who you're talking to and who you're interfacing before you go out there and that's still a problem with the wildfires which have you noticed the wildfire people
and I introduced you to that woman from the forestry each they're all the shows now and they got their big red poster don't fly here you know yeah that's all over the world Australia people think you're gonna run out and they're gonna be you know use the force and the drones and you know whatever be Yoda's buddy I don't know what the hell they're thinking but anyway I think you really need to think about what you're doing before
you get into something that professionals do for a living and save people's lives and property but the one other show I wanted to talk about was tack I don't know have you ever been to tack no I have not and I've never had either I've been wanting to go and I was working for the army we would do the white sands thing and I would usually go to the International Symposium of commercial and personal space
and not hit tack but I think it might be time to revisit tack which is TAAC and it's at the physical science laboratory at New Mexico State University which is part of the they're one of the original test sites and I think what I'm gonna do is I will put the internet address because it's long I will tweet that out but it might be something that people might want to think about because I will say and I've been meaning to write this article about a sure UAS which is a effort that the FAA has put together let's say that the original kind of DOD
and the vendors and there are people that were really working these standards and other efforts are kind of coming back all out and there is really a let's say a split and thought between the those guys that have been working this thing for the last 15 years whatever and the new commercial crowd or the Silicon Valley crowd and this this might be a good place to tag up touch back and see what's going on what they're thinking
I will say been digging into this and they're talking total aircraft you know with certification and apps being certified and you know certified partitions and all kinds of things like that and some of the work that's been done in the standards group which kind of fell on the wayside that's what they're talking about and they're not talking about the certification being a big deal then you have people over here on the commercial side are like oh we're coming up with new products
and I'll have an app for that on my phone to do XYZ or the cell phones going to be controlling the drone or whatever else they're not thinking any of that and those aren't the work products that the the FAA is asking people to do research on all this stuff that's going on out there and I was also interested to kind of find out that the NASA UTM project is not meshing with what the the work that FAA is putting out or the work requests that they're putting out
now kind of strange so I think it should probably behoove people to go to it and see what's really going on from I say the aviation side of this thing and again I'll put that link link on the twitter for people to check out and maybe I'll go if I you know I get all rested up Albuquerque is is great this time of year it's a great time to be out in the desert and we can visit you know it's close to El Paso
you probably fly in there you could fly in there you love Albuquerque all right Gene sure yeah right right there in the battle zone love it exactly I was like oh this is nice anyway all right well that's pretty much it for today sorry we've been uh you know on hiatus guys we're going to try and pick it back up now that uh we're not on the road so much we can hopefully do some more of these um pick it back up it's still that surprises me too we we get there
I mean I look at the statistics and not on the weekends excluded because it seems like the internet goes dead on the weekends but during the week the the podcast gets about 100 listens a day from the archive listens yeah it's pretty impressive so uh people are listening to all of the shows uh great feedback on that I get people they're like oh there's a podcast to get introduced to and then they listen to all
I think this is episode like 93 and they listen to all of them and make comments about the ones they like or dislike got it again it's great so we'll uh we'll try and pick it back up so anyway any any closing thoughts from you sir well just apologize for the bumpy start this morning well in this podcast you know we were all connected it just didn't seem to come together for some reason I don't know why
but uh we'll work on that we'll we'll try to make it better next time right absolutely yeah it's just that the service just seems a little clunky but um I don't know I'll uh I'm gonna talk to uh let's say customer service on this deal and see what's going on see if we can we can get things smoothed out maybe it's an what do they call that one it's an error between the guy and the chair and the computer keyboard the short like an internet yeah there's an interface error
so maybe it's just me but we'll see anyway okay well thanks jean for being on it was good talking with you was good seeing you at the show I didn't I didn't we didn't see him a lot of time it was good seeing you too all right and I will be seeing you soon and have a good week sir adios my friend you too bye