Stories from 400 Feet

Jacob Taylor - CEO Indigenous Aerospace; Darian Edwards, Indigenous Air Mobility Specialist, Canadian Advanced Air Mobility; Kimble McComb, Drone Advisor, Moose Cree First Nation; and Jo-Anne Tabobandung Dean of Aviation, First Nation Technical Institute join us this week to discuss how the usage of drones is an important tool in the process of empowering indigenous communities.

Justin Simkins, a Technical Specialist from Emesent, joins us this week on how Hovermap is creating a new industry standard in autonomous lidar mapping. Justin discusses Emesent's SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) based lidar system and how it can be utilized for autonomous navigation on drone platforms. He also explores how this technology has been particularly useful in the mining industry, where it can provide safe, efficient, and accurate data collection.

What are the current trends in the drone market? What do investors think about the drone industry? How do the answers to these questions impact the drone industry and how do we bridge the gap between positive market trends and investor confidence? We spoke with the CEO of Drone Industry Insights, Kay Wackwitz and CFO of Volatus Aerospace, Abhinav Singhvi, to get answers to these questions and address some of the current trends, concerns and common misconceptions about the drone industry.

Richard Podolski, VP of Flight Operations, talks in-depth about the recent SFOC granted to Volatus Aerospace by Transport Canada to remotely pilot a drone using Remote Flight Control System (RFCS) software and optical Detect and Avoid (DAA) within an active aerodrome traffic zone. This is the first step toward commercializing their nesting station AeriePort.

While at CanSec, we sat down with Nigel Waterhouse, Delegate for Transport Canada, to discuss the challenges and nuances between autonomous passenger flight, remotely piloted passenger flight, and uncrewed cargo delivery when it comes to integrating them into the National Airspace safely.

Designed by Dr. Tad McGeer, the inventor of the ScanEagle (a UAV that defined a whole new group of military aircraft), the Flexrotor from Aerovel is a vertical takeoff and landing autonomous aircraft with a pedigree that predates most commercial UAVs. In this podcast, we speak with Aerovel's CEO, Ali Dian to dive into the dual-use applications and capabilities of the Flexrotor. To learn more about Dr. McGeer check out a recent interview with him here.

Colonel (ret'd) Michel Latouche, leader of the Veteran Training Program, Task Force Drone, speaks about the challenges veterans face when retiring from the military and how becoming a drone pilot can be a fulfilling second career that leverages their military skills.

We speak with Lieutenant Colonel Melanie Lake about what it has been like witnessing the Russian invasion of Ukraine after serving with Ukrainian soldiers as a commander during Operation UNIFIER from March to October of 2021 and how that experience led her and many others to establish Mriya Aid, a Not-for-Profit designed to provide non-lethal military aid to Ukraine.

What does it take to evacuate a family from Ukraine? What are the dangers involved? We spoke with a gentleman, who in order to keep his family safe has asked to remain anonymous, about what it took to not only get his family out of Ukraine but to provide six weeks of humanitarian aid throughout Ukraine.

Divy Shrivastava, Founder and CEO of Paladin, joins us again on Stories from 400 Feet to talk about working with the Elizabeth Police Department in New Jersey to obtain one of the first Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) waivers in Class B airspace for a Drone as a First Responder (DFR) Program. To provide some context on what this means: The FAA defines class B airspace as: "Generally, that airspace from the surface to 10,000 feet MSL (mean sea level) surrounding the nation's busiest airports in terms of IFR (instrumental flight rules) operations or passenger enplanements." This is among the riskiest and most congested parts of the National Airspace (NAS) to get a waiver here is a significant achievement for autonomous UAVs.

Latin America is an important emerging market for drone applications, but to understand its needs, culture, and regulations across many different countries requires a combination of demonstrated experience and local knowledge. We spoke with Bruno Leoni, CEO of EOLO Drones about his joint venture with Volatus Aerospace and how they will bring sophisticated drone solutions to Latin America.

What determines when an earthquake will happen or not? Slow-Slip Events are relatively minor movements that don't cause massive disruption like earthquakes despite having similar elements. Subduction, the process of a plate sliding under another plate, is still a key factor with slow-slip events. With the help of Pacific Triangle, Iowa State University's Geology Department is using drones for the first time to gather data on slow-slip events along the coast of California to learn more about how they happen. This research project will hopefully help us better understand its more violent cousin, the earthquake, so that we can better predict major events in the future.

Andy Lacher is currently the Chief Technologist for Future Airspace Operations in the Intelligent Flight Systems organization at NASA’s Langley Research Center where he works on the safe operational integration of new aviation technologies. His deep knowledge and experience made him the ideal person to talk to about defining and standardizing autonomy and automation in aviation. In this not-to-be-missed podcast, we talk about his work on ASTM's AC377 Technical Reports (1 through 3), M to N operations, the BVLOS ARC, public acceptance and adoption, and more. Highlights from his extensive career are below: Lacher is a subject matter expert on the safe and secure operations of unmanned and autonomous systems. He was the Director of the Aerospace Systems Research Center at Noblis and was the Senior Manager for Autonomous Aircraft Integration at Boeing working with the NeXT team. Before that, he was the Autonomous Systems Integration and Adoption Lead for The MITRE Corporation where he worked for 30 years. In his MITRE career in addition to his unmanned and autonomous systems work, he was a founding member of the Collaborative Decision-Making working group; supported the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO); and worked on a variety of ATM research projects. Mr. Lacher took a break from his MITRE career and was an information technology consultant for small airlines and worked on satellite-based asset tracking. He has experience with unmanned vehicles, technical standards development, software assurance, trustworthy autonomy, research planning, modeling and simulation, aviation rulemaking, safety risk assessment, ATM operations, airline operations, and operational decision-making. Mr. Lacher has served on a number of research advisory boards and standards bodies including the National Academy of Sciences’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and the Federal Aviation Administration’s RE&D Advisory Committee. He has contributed to Aviation Rulemaking Committee recommendations and several National Academy of Science studies related to aerospace. He has over 35 published papers, studies, and reports in the public domain. Mr. Lacher is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA where he is active on the Intelligence Systems Technical Committee. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Operations Research both from The George Washington University.

By embedding a position sensor inside their propulsion system, IQ Motion Control is enabling better position control and safety protocols and advanced health monitoring that eliminates the need for a swashplate. We spoke with Co-Founders Jon Broome and Matthew Piccoli to learn more about their technology and what benefits this can provide OEMs looking to build next generation drone platforms.

We spoke with Dan O'Toole about drone delivery infrastructure and how reimagining secure mailboxes is an essential element to scaling autonomous package delivery.

If your drone crashed, would you be covered? This is a question every end user and drone pilot should be asking before starting a mission, because finding out afterward is too late. Crashes can be costly and dangerous, and you want to be protected if the unforeseen happens. But, the answer on whether you are covered or not are not always simple, which is why an Insurance Broker that specializes in aviation can help you sort it out. We spoke with helicopter pilot, UAV insurance specialist and Account Executive at James A. Gardner Co., Joni Schultz, about the importance of getting the right UAV insurance and more. To contact Joni you can reach her at Joni.Schultz@jagardner.com or on her direct line at (832)585-4110

We asked Troy Hittle, Managing Director of North America for Elistair, what can you do with a tethered drone? More than you think. Tethered drone solutions are starting to get more traction as industries look for 24/7 overwatch solutions, but, as Troy points out in this episode, there are more ways to leverage the power of a tethered drone.

You've inspected one bridge with a drone, you can inspect them all, right? If only that were true! Unfortunately for inspectors, engineers and architects have deployed multiple designs and materials in the building of bridges all over the world. This is the story of one particular bridge in California that needed its O-rings inspected. The only problem? They were inside concrete pillars. Sky Ladder was called in by ConnexiCore to tackle the job. We spoke with Steven Katz, founder of Sky Ladder, about this challenging inspection and how they eventually were able to conquer the mission impossible bridge.

Back in 2019, Dawn Zoldi, Founder and CEO of P3 Tech Consulting LLC, had a vision to bring attorneys and the drone industry together to network and share knowledge. In 2022 at AUVSI XPONENTIAL, she finally got to realize that dream. After attending this groundbreaking event, we spoke with Dawn about the event's highlights, content, and lessons; the inspiring connections and opportunities that came out of that event; and more.

In this episode, Adam Bilmes, Director of Sales at Inspired Flight, talks about Blue sUAS and their American-made drone, being prepared to handle supply chain disruptions, the growing maturity and savvy of end users, and what this all means for the industry.