UAS News Podcast — 2013-07-04
Transcript
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. This week we have our guest Peter Von Bleinberg from UBS International. Peter's been around for a while. I've known Peter for a couple of years now but for the benefit of the audience, Peter, would you be so kind as to give us a little bio about yourself, how you got involved with RPAS and kind of where you're at today?
Okay Patrick, thanks for having me on the show. I'm a bit of a dinosaur. I go back to the 80s and I started my involvement with RPAS with the second experimental RPAS that went into service with the French Army and that was actually deployed by the French Army during the first Gulf War. So that's quite a long time ago.
After my short industrial period with this French RPAS, I started the association that is somewhere in 87. So that's a good number of years to be in the industry. A couple. Your involvement, you just kind of stumbled on to the RPAS that you were speaking about or was it something that you saw and said, hey I want to be a part of this or how did that come about?
No, it was actually more down to earth. At that time I was an independent broker for various types of military equipment and one of my customers had this contract, or one of my suppliers actually, had this contract with the French Army and he was not a systems man and he asked me if I wanted to get involved with him from a system aspect. So it was getting more and more difficult for me to get paid by the contractors for whom
I sold the equipment. They were getting penchi pinning or penny pinching all the time and it was more of a fight to get your money after the contract had been signed than getting the contracts.
So that's when I changed the focus of my professional life. What are you doing?
Playing with budgies? Yeah, well I know that was a, you have some colorful stories there but that might be a discussion for another day. You became a part of this and like I said I've known you I think now since, I don't want to say 2007 or 2008 but I've tried to talk about kind of what you're doing over there in Europe with UVS International. You've done tons of work.
I talk to people a lot of the time they say, oh you know I need information about this or I need information about that. Gee whiz, when's the world going to do this?
And I always say, well hey have you gone and checked out UVS International? Peter from Bloomberg, this guy's really, let's say gathering a lot of information and I'm jumping ahead a little bit. I want to talk about R-Pass 2013. That's one of the shows that I really like to hit.
Unfortunately I didn't make it this year. I had a lot of stuff going on. It's a show you've been producing now for how many years?
The RPS? 15. 15 years. Now you just had the conference and it was in Brussels this year. Maybe you could give the audience a synopsis of that conference and what transpired. Okay well I'll do that but before I do get into that I'd like to take a step backwards in time so a perspective is clearly understood.
The conference happened the week after the Paris Air Show. Now the big event at the Paris Air Show for the R-Pass world was the remittance of the European R-Pass Roadmap by the European R-Pass Steering Committee to the European Commission. At that little ceremony there, we didn't delve into the depths of the road map. It was more a formalistic thing.
However the conference was positioned the week after so that industry could ask all the questions. The road map outlines the framework within which the European community is now going to be working relative to the incremental insertion of R-Pass with a viable business case into non-segregated European airspace. So that's inserting into the existing ATM system which obviously is going to be transformed with the inputs of CSAR joint undertaking which is the equivalent to your American next gen. Now within the what is the road map?
The road map is a big framework in which that has been put together by three groups concentrating on three different aspects. First group was the regulatory group, the second group was the R&D group, the third group was the complementary measures group. Now this was all made up of experts chosen by the European Commission and as we went down the road of getting all of this ready there was contact between the three groups even though they produced three independent documents that are fused into the high level framework document of the R&D road map.
So in this we identify the regulatory issues that have to be dealt with. We also identify who has to be involved in dealing with this. The same thing for the R&D required to make this insertion possible. We're not talking about R&D relative to the production of a new R-Pass.
That's not the point at all. What is required to get currently existing R-Pass into European airspace?
So is that like validation of the standards that you guys are working on? Is that kind of what you mean by the R&D?
No, not really. It's more like what subsystems or systems have to be developed to make the insertion into the current and future ATM system possible. So that can be on both sides. It can be on the R-Pass side, it can be on the ATM side, but principally it's going to be on the R-Pass side.
So things like detect and avoid, data links, all the issues surrounding that are part of that. But there can also be, like I said earlier on in the discussion, this concerns R-Pass with a viable business case. It concerns R-Pass only for non-military applications. Now what do I mean by non-military applications?
It's aerial work commercial, aerial work non-commercial, aerial work corporate. And then governmental use of R-Pass for non-military applications. So that could be fire brigades, it can be police, it can be border guards. It could also be the Ministry of Environment looking for seals or looking for oil polluters.
But each time it has to be based on a viable business case. That means that the flight hour cost has to be acceptable to the market. Now what we have seen during this entire process, which was preceded by the European UAS Panel Initiative, also launched by the European Commission, we identified a whole bunch of activities already taking place. And this has grown exponentially.
The majority of the commercial activities taking place are all being done with R-Pass with a mass, takeoff mass of well below 25 kilos. The majority is actually being done with a maximum mass below seven kilos. And if you look at the types of airframes, it's principally quadrocopters, hexacopters, octocopters, and relatively small fixed-wing aircraft. Now this is all ongoing.
They're out there and they're earning money. But if somebody comes to me and says, well Peter, I've got this male UAS that we want to use for ice flow monitoring, well that's not going to be acceptable. It will not get any priority because there's no viable business case that you need for it. Right.
And I like the way that you're approaching this because a lot of that I get over here. I've got a lot of the service contractors will call me and say, hey, we're writing up a business plan for agriculture and that sounds good. And I'll ask, well what systems do you want to use or do you propose to use?
And I'll hear something like Shadow, which to me it's kind of like, that's kind of a non-starter. But it also seems over here that when we're doing stuff like that, we will start off with the conversation and it'll be about five minutes on the smaller systems and then we jump right back up into the big systems and people start talking about business plans for these larger military systems. So you're trying to cut that off right from the gate, is that what you're saying?
Absolutely. And the other thing that I can add is that if you, now I'm going to jump back to something that happened at the conference. Okay. We had a presentation by Yamaha Motors.
R-Max manufacturer, correct? Now those guys are really, really organized. Today there are 2,400 R-Max flying in Japan commercially. Wow.
There are 14,000 registered and approved pilots. They have service centers all over Japan. They have training centers all over Japan. And all of this is Yamaha.
As some of your listeners will probably know, you could not buy a Yamaha R-Max without following the training that comes with it. That's smart. I think that's smart. Really, really smart.
Now this is obviously a viable business model because otherwise they wouldn't sell so many R-Maxes and you wouldn't have so many pilots. Now did they talk about, because you know really, I mean some people know about the Japanese thing. You'd be surprised how many people over here in the United States have no, I mean I'm talking no idea that commercial operations are let's say going on or legal in other countries. And you may say, wow that's amazing.
How could you not know? But for some reason the Americans kind of, we have sometimes we're a little bit of a myopic view of the world and what's going on here in the United States. And some people that you would think should know this, don't know this. So I want to expand on that but I want to ask you a couple of questions and maybe you know the answers and maybe you don't.
But one of them would be, do we know what the R-Max goes for? I'm not mentioning prices in any of the work that I do. Okay, well I was just kind of curious because I do believe, I mean I've seen this system and it's very robust and Yamaha having a training program is almost guaranteeing success with their aircraft. So with these operators that you're talking about, these 14,000 operators, these are obviously like professional level salaries that these people are making.
Safe to assume? Yes, but you have to be very careful. This is a Japanese model. This is not an American or European model.
So the majority of these R-Maxes belong to a one-man operation that maybe does it with his son and this way they keep the costs down. They do it in the region where they live. So a guy who's established in southern Japan will not try to get work in northern Japan. It is not a type of work that is done that is done continuously over the entire year.
We're talking about insecticide spraying, we're talking about fertilizer spraying and pellets dispensing. All of this is being done at low altitude and it's all done in visual line of sight. And that brings me back to what is happening in Europe where all the current operations legally taking place in Europe are all in visual line of sight. Now what does that mean?
It means that the maximum flight altitude is below 500 feet. It means that the maximum horizontal distance between the pilot and the aircraft is 500 meters. Now for many people that means they say well that's not sexy and I want to fly out of the light out of beyond line of sight. Well you can do that tomorrow.
Today this is what you can do and what a lot of these guys in on our side of the Atlantic didn't want to see in the beginning was that irrespective of what type of flight envelope you use the objective at the end is earning money. Now you can earn a hell of a lot of money in visual line of sight as long as you're not you don't follow the the technician and the engineer syndrome wanting to tackle difficult things because it's nice. Right. That's not the objective.
Well that and I think that you know people have to be realistic and those are some of the the complaints that I've heard over the years. One of them is what you're talking about the flight envelope but I think people have to understand that you know you're going to have to start somewhere. You have to start somewhere and you're going to have to build some credibility as an industry and that visual line of sight or visual VLOS envelope is the place to start. The other one and I don't know if you guys are tackling this is the definition of autonomous.
Well that's very simple. Let's lay that to bed right now. Let's do it. Throw away the word autonomous.
It does not exist. It has been banned from the IKO parlance. It is not used. Nobody has any autonomous aircraft at the moment and don't forget we're talking about non-military applications here.
Right. We have pre-programmed aircraft that can follow automatically a pre-programmed route. There is no decision power whatsoever on the aircraft and in the systems that we're using at the moment. Bingo.
Now another thing with this you know and the RPAS nomenclature is that there's always a human in the loop that can take over control of the aircraft should there be a let's say intrusion in the airspace or any other issues. That's correct right. Absolutely. Okay well and I think that's a really concise definition because a lot of people believe that their aircraft are fully autonomous and I hear this all the time and you know everybody's making up their own definition of autonomous.
Well I click the switch. I take off. I click the switch and then it's fully autonomous and does everything. You know is it learning?
Is it making its own decisions? Well no it's not doing that. Okay well then just as you said it's a pre-programmed let's say flight. So perfect.
I like that definition. I agree with that definition and I agree with the the VLAS definition and that's part of something that came out of the show but let's step back and talk about the the the conference a little bit more. The RPAS 2013. You've alluded to things that have or talked about some things that have come out of that conference and and I'd like to give people a let's say a better view of that conference.
This isn't just like a meet and greet where people come together. You guys are really talking about policy and nomenclature, classifications, things along these lines. Could you expand on that please?
Sure. So the the big thing of the moment was the RPAS road map. Now don't forget the RPAS road map and I probably I should explain because it's not always clear for people outside of Europe what the commission is. The European commission is equivalent if you want between brackets to the European government.
You have ministries in a government or as you say departments. In the European commission they're called director generals. Now all the entire road map was coordinated first of all instigated by the director general of enterprise and industry. It was done in very close coordination with the director general of mobility and transport.
Now enterprise and industry, why are they interested? They're interested because we were able to prove to prove during the European UES panel initiative that RPAS could create jobs. That's the basis of everything. If you have a viable business case for something and you can create jobs then you'll get political sign-off.
So all of this is governed by politics. So industry and enterprise and industry was there, mobility and transport was there, research was there, and I could name a whole bunch of others. Now during the conference the two major DGs enterprise and industry mobility and transport were up for questions. They explained their view on the road map from an industry point of view and from a transport point of view and then open for questions.
Very open, in public, anybody could ask anything and if you don't agree with something you better have a good reason for not agreeing because otherwise you're torn to bits. This is the beauty of having something in total transparency. A few very interesting things came up. One of them had to do with insurance.
And I made a very clear point of explaining to the people in the audience that the people in the audience that if you're an aerial work operator, you're using an aircraft. If you're using an aircraft, be it manned or unmanned, it is mandatory to have an insurance. If you don't have an insurance, well you're running an enormous risk and that could be a penal risk also. It's not only the risk of the damage that you could do, but you yourself have a penal risk.
If you're caught in France, for example, flying illegally and that can mean that you don't have the approval from the civil aviation authority, it could mean that you're not insured, it could mean a whole bunch of things. But the fine there is 75,000 euro and or one year in prison. That's pretty substantial, but that should keep down on the black market or in the closet guys like we have here, which is it's pandemic here. Well, we have it also here and this is why I focused quite a bit of attention on the insurance bit because there are other obligations.
If you are an aircraft operator, by law you are obliged to report incidents and accidents. Of course, at the moment this is not happening. First of all, because the structure to do that doesn't exist. Secondly, a small operator doesn't want to flag up that he's crashed his thing, possibly flying illegally.
Now within the road map, the importance of insurance was identified and this was done together with the insurance companies. We have now in discussion with the insurance companies come to the conclusion that industry and that's the insurance company as a service, a supply industry, and it's also the operators together have to define an accident and incident reporting scheme that has to be implemented European wide. That means that the same form that you use to report an incident or an accident in UK is also used in Spain and Italy.
So what we're looking at now is forming a group of operators on one side of the table and insurance companies on the other side of the table to tackle this problem, come up with a proposed form. In the second stage, this proposed form will then go out for comment from industry and again the same type of industry. So now we're talking about operators and we're talking about insurance companies. Once we have the form ready, then we go to the European Commission, DG Mobility and Transport, and then it filters down into the European Aviation Safety Agency to see if they agree with all of this.
This reporting will then have to be done on a national level and all the national level reporting will then have to feed into a central database where all the forms will be available online and where statistics will be made. Because the insurance companies do not want to deal with 27 different countries, they want one centralized place where you can get all the information and that information should be the same for every single insurance company. So this is one of the stumbling blocks that has to be overcome.
But right next to it, there will also be, most probably, and I hope it's going to come about quickly, a website where you can identify if an operator is indeed insured or not. So that the customer who is contracting for the flight services can do his due diligence and see if what the operator is telling him is actually true. Right, so that the purpose that contracted service was going to be able to indemnify themselves from liability by making sure that the the person or company is who they say they are.
Absolutely, and what was explained very clearly at the conference is that if you're a small operator and you don't have the money to pay a third party liability because you're not insured, then they're going to go after somebody else. Right. The insurance companies are not going to give up, and this is a whole pyramid. There are all kinds of people out there that they can go after, and this is something that is totally misunderstood or not understood by the current operators.
So it has to be a substantial amount of education, dual directional as always. Right, and you are hitting on another fantastic point. I think that that's one of the issues over here that I've been talking about, and over here, I mean in the United States for several years, is really the way that things are set up now. There is no real education for the operators.
The people that are out there operating illegally, and a lot of them think that they can, oh well, I don't charge for the aerial photography. I charge for retouching, or I sell coffee mugs, or whatever, which is, I just don't even get it. It's absurd. But there is that issue.
One. Two, a lot of these people are not aviation people. Even like myself, I'm not an aviation person. However, I realize that there's got to be rules of the road with the airspace, and we have to think about that.
And then also the insurance part of it, a lot of people don't believe they need insurance, which is a big mistake. I keep telling people, if you have a mishap, and God forbid something happens, they will come for you. And that's going to be an issue. And then the other thing, and I don't know if this is quite as prevalent over there as it is here, we have every Tom, Dick, and Harry is a manufacturer of unmanned aircraft.
And they believe that because a lot of this stuff is cobbled together or ordered off the internet, or I downloaded my code for my autopilot off the internet, I am indemnified from product liability. Forget it. Is that crazy talk, or what?
Totally. I don't even know where this absurdity comes from. I don't know if it's part of the prevalence of the medicinal marijuana thing over here, or where it came from. I've never heard of anything so absurd in all my life.
But anyway, do you have the same issues over there where people think that they're indemnified from product liability, or do you think they have a better grasp on the business side of this? Well, it's going to be forced under throats, because what is now going to be coming law in Europe, thanks to the roadmap, and it's all been charted out. Your equipment, your aircraft, has to have an airworthiness certificate. Your pilot has to be approved, has to be certificated.
As an operator, you have to be certificated. Now, if you miss one of those three, you are not legally operating. Now, being a pilot, an approved pilot, is not only a question of being able to fly your artipass next to a windmill or in a straight line. There is also a theoretical knowledge that you need.
And all that is going to be harmonized over Europe. Now, that's not going to be an easy task, because we already have legislation in place relative to our past use for civil commercial applications in countries like France, UK, Czech Republic, Ireland. It's upcoming in Italy, in Spain, in the Netherlands, in Norway. It's totally sorted out in Sweden.
Denmark is coming, Germany is coming. So it's all over the place. But all of that is going to be used in the future. It's all over the place.
But all of these nations have national rules. What we're working towards now is harmonizing all these national rules and coming to a common regulation so that you actually have an open European market, so that an operator registered in Belgium can take a job in Germany. And vice versa. Right.
Now, we saw that in, and that was a story we also ran, was where that German company, I believe it was a German company or Austrian company, went to the UK and did that commercial job where they basically flew the swarm of quadcopters in the symbol of the Star Trek symbol over London at night. And I used that as an example even with some folks that are in our aviation authority that what's going on in Europe that
you can go ahead and you can do this accompanied from another country, can go to another country, do this under the legal blessing of the civil aviation authority, make money and do things.
I thought it was kind of funny is one day we're running that story about that in London, which Heathrow is the third busiest airport on the planet. And then the next day we're running a story here in the United States that we're going to fly one small unmanned aircraft system in restricted airspace. Kind of I think it's a sobering a story for the U.S. how far behind we are on anything like's going on over there.
Well, let me throw some figures at you Patrick. Please do. France, they put their first ever RPAS regulation into law in April 2012. December 2012 there were 80 approved operators.
We go to April 2013. These 80 have become 189. We're now in the beginning of July. We're at 260.
Wow. So this is a gigantic growth. We go to UK. There's 200 approved operators commercial in UK.
There's 12 of them in Ireland, 140 in Sweden. And we don't have any legal commercial operators over here. Some will contend that they are, but we're not doing that. So it sounds like the civil aviation authority is working with the commercial community and whatever you guys are doing over there is working.
It's building on itself. Yes, but there's a very major difference that I should highlight. If you take a small country like the Netherlands where I come from, how did it all get started there?
There was one manufacturer of a RPAS system that after a lot of bashing finally understood that it was in his interest to certify his system. So he wrote an official letter to the national civil aviation authority and the national civil aviation authority receiving an official letter had to give an official reply. And the official reply was we don't have the rules in place. We don't have the standards in place to certify your system, but come and see us.
The end result was that the national civil aviation authority together with this manufacturer produced the basis of a regulation. That regulation has now gone to a higher stage where JARIS, which is a grouping of the national civil aviation authorities of a whole bunch of countries, have all agreed that they will jointly work on RPAS regulation to avoid duplication of effort, stay lean but be mean and be faster. And what was started in the Netherlands as a service for one manufacturer has now gone to all these countries.
The documents, the documents, the final draft of the document was open for comments on the JARIS website. They're now incorporating all these comments and then there will probably be a new comment period of the revised document. But all of this started in a small country with one small manufacturer asking to be certificated. So this is slightly different from what is happening in the US.
That is true. The other thing is that when was this started?
Maybe just as a frame of reference. Let's see. This goes back, if I'm not mistaken, to four years. Because that's another issue that we're having over here.
We've been at this for a long time. The US ARC has been over for four years. Our TCA has been going on for many years. ASTN has been going on for many years.
And we're not really seeing light at the end of the tunnel, let's say, on standards work over here. And it's very hard for smaller companies to participate in these types of standards groups for these types of years. I just actually ran across the material that I was given at the ASTN meeting in 2005. And I pulled that out of the basement.
And I'm going to reread that and go over the timelines. But it's just so hard to stay part of the effort for that long and not see the light at the end of the tunnel like you guys are starting to see over there in Europe. So the small manufacturers and the small producers are seeing a value in participating in this. Is that the feedback you're getting from the conference?
Let me phrase it in another way. In the drawing up of the RPAS roadmap, the European roadmap, we came to the conclusion that by far the majority of currently ongoing and or anticipated viable applications for RPAS was with small aircraft. We want to, and that is a political wish, we want to show that things are moving and avoid companies going bankrupt because they can't sell anything because there aren't any rules. And if there aren't any rules, your operators will not buy anything because they can't fly.
So what we're looking at is minimal certification, maximum safety. This means that we're probably not going to go for full blown certification for a little quadrocopter that weighs two or three kilos. It doesn't make any sense. However, we have to have some kind of system to evaluate the worthiness of the system and the safety of the system.
And we're trying to do that in such a way that the obstacles to getting into the business are as low as possible. And that makes sense because all of the things that you're talking about are things that we're suffering from here. If you are a manufacturer or small business guy or end user, there are no legal income streams. So you're basically, you can't make any money, but you're expected to participate.
And I don't know how you're going to participate with no money. And so it doesn't really sound or feel like this is an inclusive effort, one, because those people, like you said, they can't make any money. So how are they supposed to do this?
Are they supposed to go out and get a loan so they can participate? I don't know, or print money in the basement. I don't know. But the other thing with this road map, so are you coming up with, let's say, the data that needs to be validated for the safe operation, or is it just something that we're going to take incremental steps?
Or how does that work in combination of the two? We're looking at doing simple operations in the beginning. What do I mean by simple operations?
If you've got a wind turbine, the blades of the wind turbine have to be checked on a regular basis, because if there are cracks in there, these things go out. Chunks could fly off and hurt people. But secondly, you could also damage the turbine itself. So this is part insurance of the turbine operator.
It has to inspect. Right. You can do that with a little quadrocopter. You're going to fly the maximum horizontal distance of 20-25 meters.
It's going to go up and down, up and down. Very simple operation. Another simple operation is flare stack inspection, where, again, for insurance purposes, the funnel at the top of the flare stack has to be inspected once or twice a year. So at the moment, what are they doing?
They're sending people up. Now, to send people up there, you have to close down the flame, which means that you're out of production. So you don't have to close down the flame using a little quadrocopter. That is all being done today.
These are not sexy operations, but they're possible. By doing this type of operation and collecting the flight data, we can evaluate the maturity of the engines being used. We can see what kind of interference in what type of operation takes place. So a major part is going to be to gather all this information, because once again, the insurance companies are going to be evaluating all of this to be able to come out with a reasonably priced premium.
They're not going to suck this out of their thumb. It has to be based on hard facts. It has to be based on hard facts. So the data collection is very important.
As we get to bigger aircraft, it becomes even more important. But it's an incremental learning curve for the manufacturing community, the operating community, and the regulators. Well, that sounds pragmatic to me. I guess that's a really interesting way to work it, because it sounds like that should work pretty well.
Now, we're almost out of time, but I do want to give people the opportunity to, let's say, come to your website, learn more about this. Could you please give us the website?
Yep, it's uvsuniformvictorciera-info.com. And the things to look for, most of the stuff that I've mentioned can be found under European matters in the main menu bar. Something that we haven't touched on that you can also find there is the operator's survey. Now, that's a survey that we're launching worldwide.
It's not only for Europeans. And the idea here is to be able to produce statistics on what type of operations are taking place, with what type of equipment, for what type of duration, at what altitude, things like that. Everybody can participate. The form is up there.
You can fill it in online. Everybody who participates in the survey will receive the final statistics. The personal details supplied, contact details supplied, as indicated on the forms, will not be communicated, not even to the regulators. So we're using only the statistics.
I like that. So you're interested in collecting data. How's the feedback been thus far?
Well, the first time we did it in 2012, we did not get sufficient input to draw statistics that are worthwhile. There was something like 65 inputs supplied, and that's not enough. We have to go into the hundreds. Right.
And is that, let's say, some of the new things that you described, like being anonymous and things like that, is that where that came from? Trying to capture more people?
No, that was the same thing with the first survey. But what has now caught on is the business potential for operators. That all has come about over the last, or become clear and clear to the community out there, over the last eight months. And we're seeing operators jump up like mushrooms in a forest all over the place.
And the biggest growth that we're going to see is on that side of the fence. It's the operators. We're not going to see all of a sudden an explosion of manufacturers of equipment. We're going to see an explosion of operators.
Now, the operators at the moment are still not, they don't form their own stakeholder group. This has to be done. They have to be given a voice in the process of the implementation of the roadmap. So by doing this survey, we are not only looking at the statistics, but we're also trying to gather information on who is out there, who is part of this community, so we can help them come together and form common opinions.
Right. Well, and that definitely needs to be done. I think there's a lot of that, especially here is a lot of a kind of a maverick type of mindset. And a lot of people I have found or are afraid to talk about their operations, you know, not really so much the, let's say, getting in trouble, but also they believe that a lot of their operation is kind of like a secret sauce and the way they do things, they don't want to give that away.
However, I would encourage people to go to the website and do this survey because I think it's going to move you in the future. I think things will, this will help us also in the future. I mean, I point to the work that's going on over there in Europe all the time and say, well, geez, you know, they figured out how to do, you know, airspace separation, or they've figured out how to do these operations. And again, it may not be ideal operating envelopes for everyone.
However, you can at least go out there and make some money and support yourself. Absolutely. Now, what was really interesting also at the conference was the comparison between the type of aerial work being done in Japan with the arm axis and what is possible in the same flight envelope also for agricultural purposes in Europe. And one of the things that jumped out at everybody was the vineyards.
In many cases, they're relatively small plots, very difficult to get to, cannot be handled with manned helicopters because it's too expensive, too noisy, and half of the stuff they're spraying goes on the other side of the fence with the neighbors vineyard. So these things are now going to be looked at and have already been looked at in a number of countries. But the other thing that was really interesting was there's an organization called the European Spatial Data Research Group. Now, this group federates the European National Mapping Agencies.
And these guys have clearly understood the advantage of using RPAS, have done experiments with them, and have come to maps, producing maps that are unbelievably precise and can be done in a time span which is incomparable with the normal mythology that we're using up to now. Now, it cannot be used for everything. It would be a fantastic time saver for quite a few applications in the mapping world. So one of the things that we're looking at in the implementation of this roadmap is finding existing user groups, stakeholder groups, and giving them a voice in what is going to be done.
Not reinventing the wheel. There are many groups out there. They just don't know that they're potential RPAS operators. Right.
And I think that's the promise of the technology really is the efficiency and productivity that it can add to almost any business, existing business sector. And I mean, really I believe that there are so many out there that we will not know about until we have common sense regulation. And then I think this thing's really going to mushroom, probably like it's mushrooming over there. People are like, hey, wait a minute, I can use this for this.
So, you know, I look forward to hearing more about that. And I appreciate your time today, Peter, coming on the show all the way from beautiful Paris. I'm sure it's nice over there. But I appreciate you coming on and I appreciate you enlightening the podcast audience, and giving us a view into what's going on over there.
And also some hope because, you know, I really believe the work that you guys are doing and the IKO exposure and everything else is going to have to, let's say, come over here with the cross-pollination. And I look forward to that. I want to thank you again. Before I buzz off, Patrick, I'd just like to mention that this is not happening only in Europe.
Australia is well advanced, much further than Europe. But things are also starting in Russia, in Brazil, in India, in China. Now, in all those countries, we are helping the national authorities in the field of regulation by making it possible for them to avoid the mistakes that others have already made. So this plays into the terrorist group and it plays into the traveling circus that I go to these countries.
We're not doing this for the money because there's not really much money in it in spreading the gospel. But if we want to have a global, safe airspace, everybody has to understand what that means. And all these budding countries have to be involved, have to be educated. And that's part of what we see as part of our task.
Well, we appreciate the hard work that you're doing. Again, that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show. And maybe we can catch up on that in the fall when things kind of die down a little bit. We can talk about some of these.
I know that you help produce these shows in other countries and maybe we can talk about that come the fall. Right. And the last thing I'd like to give your listeners is for God's sake, speak the same language, learn the terminology. Don't just use any words.
You're part of aviation now. And in aviation, there is a very clear terminology that is defined, that has to be used. I see in magazines all over the place, they're using all kinds of terms. They're not the right terms.
So try and stick to the correct terms. God, as far as terms are concerned, is Ikeo. Nobody else. That's good advice.
All right. Well, that's all for today. Thank you again, Peter, for coming on. And we will be talking to you soon in the future.
Thank you, Patrick. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.