Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Weekly Wings, your go to podcast from dronelife.com, where we soar through the latest in drone technology, regulation, updates, and exciting innovations each week. Join Samuel, Terry and I as we navigate the drone industry, offering expert insights, interviews with key figures, and a bird's eye view of how drones are shaping our world. From commercial applications to recreational adventures, weekly wings delves into how these remarkable vehicles are impacting agriculture, construction, education, filmmaking, delivery services, and so much more.
Whether you're a professional drone operator, hobbyist, or just drone curious, tune in to stay informed and inspired as we explore the heights of what drones what's possible in the world of drones. Subscribe now and never miss an episode of Weekly Wings, where the future is looking up.
Welcome, everybody. Another fantastic episode of weekly Wings with Terry and Samuel. How are you doing, Terry?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Doing fantastic, man.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Excellent.
Right on. Glad to hear that. And Samuel, how you doing? How's.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: I was going to say I'm doing very well. Thank you for asking. Today is a great day. I'm excited to be here on weekly wings and talk more about drones and see where the industry is going.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Yeah, we got a great show here today. Great lineup. We'll be talking about tick tock drone guy. We'll be talking evtols, Archer aviation drone magnetometer, looking for unexploded ordinances or other underground items. We'll talk drone radar for beyond visual, line of sight, matrix space. Getting some funding as always, drone light shows couldn't be a episode without Samuel having to bring up some, some drone light show thing that happened in the previous week. And we'll end on a bit of a regulatory side. Fun facts talking about some data that came out in regards to Texas public safety drone operations. So really excited for the episode that we have here. And again, thank you to all of our listeners, viewers tuning in weekly.
Remember, any questions, comments, leave them on YouTube. You can email miriamronelife.com or myself, paul rossi, drones.com.
so thank you for tuning in. Hope you enjoy this episode. But we've got, what do we got, Terry? The, the tick tock drone guy just blowing up. What is it? The, the four you, the four u page. I came up with the, like, well.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: I don't even know page.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Is that that, is that the four u page?
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yes, sir. Just popped up randomly. As you can see. It's kind of a diamond in the rough. 19 likes, he's just popped up the suit. Tries to help find people's dogs in Arizona with a camera on his drone.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Got that matrice 30 t. Look at that. Zoom.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Just thought it was kind of sweet.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: You know, for clarity.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Is his name the drone guy, or is it. I think I'm seeing track recovery.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Track recovery spell with two track recovery. Drone pet recovery. Tracing. See? Recovery.
[00:03:41] Speaker C: Looks like he finds people's pets using infrared.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, no, won't be. Huh?
714 views.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Yeah. He uses his drone to find people's pets, basically. Or that's what he's trying to do.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: That's what we're seeing. That's what's being presented. I'm located in Arizona. Don't hesitate to reach out. Hashtag for you page. Hashtag fyp. Hashtag for you.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: The entire.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: What the hell does hashtag wholesome mean?
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Travel.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: What do you mean?
[00:04:17] Speaker C: What?
It's a good feeling. Hashtag wholesome.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Hashtag wholesome.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: And eight degrees on that pavement. Jesus.
[00:04:33] Speaker C: Oof.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: 20 time. Zoom there. For folks that are listening on the podcast, we got, I think, what, a german shepherd there. We're looking at just a street drone. Zooming in. Drones. Matrice 30 t. Right. Hovering. What's really cool about the. Like, the screen record, right? If I can kind of pause this. Can you.
What?
Oh, yeah, here we go.
Right?
Just love the overlay drones at 274ft. You know, you can easily spot dogs and things of that nature. But cool comment over there by the Matthews house. Too bad our government will soon ban this drone.
Yeah, really looks like that. You know, even after last week's episode and all that, we had to say.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: All of our influential words.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: And even what this guy's doing on TikTok is actually, you know, this is pretty. Pretty awesome here, because this is just like bringing the two probably most hated, potentially chinese things right now in. In society. Tick tock and DJI drones.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: What a combo, right?
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Is it like, the government trying to force tick tock to sell? Right? Or ban it in the, uh. In the US?
So what do you do? You bring them both together, put the DJI drones. Hashtag DJI on tick tock. Just feeding. Look at that. And now. And now in China.
Look, they know where Lassie is, right?
[00:06:13] Speaker C: They.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: They know how to pinpoint that german shepherd.
[00:06:16] Speaker C: If they found the dog. He did his mission.
I wonder what his success rate is like.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: So I think he just started as his only video.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: That was four days ago, so it hasn't hit maybe, you know, give it a.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: Maybe get more statistics.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: You gotta share it out there, Terry. You got to do your part to help track recovery.
Build that brand. If you're in. Yeah, if you're in Arizona, you should.
[00:06:42] Speaker C: Reach out to them and let them know maybe, hey, we talked about you on our podcast.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: I will, man, I will maybe gotta.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Spread the word about this podcast and.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Get, you know what happens when one of those, you know, there's a fly away, right? You've heard of like the drone does a fly away. Like what happens when you're your spot? Have you seen the Boston dynamics robot? Like the river, the robot dogs that we've seen, it's just like, you just have like a walk away. You're like, hey, hey, get back over here, get over here. And the robot dog just said, keeps going away. Like, ah, we need the drone to find the robot dog.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Voice commands failed.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Get back here now. I said give stay robodogs not listening. Um, and then, you know, we can't. You, you don't have to worry about these robot, you know, bears and lions that I think we talked about previously where I said at the zoo, they're gonna have all these like robotic, you know, animals. And then the idea I was like, oh, yeah, but eventually it's gonna like die. Not cuz you like shot it, just cuz like, oh, the battery will die. So I don't know, we don't have.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: To worry about robot lions. Thank you, Paul.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: Not yet, not yet.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Next. So transitioning to other news previous week. Samuel, what do we got here?
[00:08:05] Speaker C: Oh, we have the archer midnight evtol just completed its first hover to horizontal floor light.
I actually had something additional in regards to Archer as well. I just kind of wanted to briefly share this headline before we jump in to what's presented. Archer Aviation signs landmark deal to operate evtol air taxis out of airports around the US. So they're, they're kind of making waves right now. Looks like they're going to be doing their first, I believe their first air taxi in Texas, which we've talked a little bit about. An air taxi airport outside of what was that army base.
It was like one of our first episodes, I think.
But I think we're connecting the dots here, you know. But it was port.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: It was port something.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Yeah, port looking at, looking it up.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: It was a. Yeah, it was port something. Something put. It's putting a bunch of money into developing it for the, that internal. And it's pretty cool. It says, you know, during this accomplishment here of its hover to horizontal flight, what that means is it's completed, right? It's, it's transition from that vertical takeoff to actual flight like an aircraft. And that is likely the most critical part of that evTol pilus air taxi operation is that transition that we've seen in traditional aviation with the osprey. Right. The CV 22 aircraft that takes off vertically and then it has to make that transition. So it's a huge accomplishment in demonstration that, as the article mentions, there's only a handful of other evTol manufacturers that have accomplished this to date. Joby auto flight.
And now, Archer.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Well, is this piloted by a manned, I believe.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah, manned.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Okay. I was about to say it has a cockpit window, so I just assumed it was manned.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot. Look at that. Coca Cola. Huge, huge coke advertising drink. Coca Cola.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: So, yeah, right now listening. EV told, taking off vertically, preparing for the horizontal flight, but currently looks like.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: It'S ascending at 3 miles an hour. Or it might be actually. That's forward.
[00:11:03] Speaker C: I like that overlay of the aircraft top down.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: The tilt, Paul, isn't the, that's the rotor. Til that's not the aircraft top down.
[00:11:13] Speaker C: I see that now.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Yeah, see the, yeah, so it's showing the transition of the rotor.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: I gotta reposition my screen.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Paul, isn't the osprey quite dangerous? I've heard. I think you might know that because you were in the military. Isn't it dangerous?
[00:11:29] Speaker A: It's certainly in pilot. Again, it's a Ritz again because of what it does in.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Well, as long as it does it better than the osprey, I think we're okay, but.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: This is really amazing to see it reaching 50 miles an hour, 56. Hitting 60 miles an hour. You still have, you know, seeing the, again, the overlay. You're at 45 degree of rotor tilt, but you still have like, the rotors in the back are always staying in the vertical position. So you always have that, that function during the transition. And I'm curious how those, those rotors must lock out once it.
[00:12:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I was gonna say so. The front rotors were aligned vertically until it hit the right altitude. Then it switched, I believe. Right. It repositioned at an angle.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Well, they just finally finished like they. Now that the vehicle is going about 93 miles an hour, you can see in this graphic, the front motors are just now reaching a zero degree fully horizontal.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: It's a helpful graphic.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: 95 miles an hour. And so now it's flying like an airplane.
[00:13:03] Speaker C: Wonder if it's always that long of a transition.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: I'm assuming the back props aren't on.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: And it's fully transitioned in under three minutes.
[00:13:29] Speaker C: Almost hitting 100.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Now look.
No, still going.
99.9. 499.9. 100 mph.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: It's pretty insane. We're getting airplane that are powered by batteries now, right?
[00:14:08] Speaker A: 100 and 101 miles an hour just cruising.
That is really, really cool.
And then they show it actually again in the graphic. You can just see it starts to pitch up those six rotors in front.
That is.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: So pretty innovative.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: You know, it doesn't look like there's a human in there.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: It doesn't actually.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: I don't think there is.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: I like. Yeah. Is over here saying it's man about.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Being unmanned in the article.
Yeah.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: When you look inside? I can't unless they're way back here. But.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: It weighs 6500 pounds and can hold up to 1000 pounds or four humans.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Momentous on June 8.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: And it looks like its range is back to back 20 miles. Trips with small charging brakes in between. Aka 20 miles, maybe 30 if you're lucky.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Back to back 20 miles. Trips with small.
So like everything has to be within 20 miles and.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: But it's an e taxi, right? That's its whole point purpose.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah, just like quick short hops. Really.
The flight suggests that Archer may be able to put the midnight into service as an air taxi in the near future.
Hmm.
[00:16:27] Speaker C: It's funny since I just read that headline about them signing with all the signs. Deal to launch its evTol air taxi service across the United Arab Emirates.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Target, we're always targeting 2025, but that was like the numbers we were, that was the year we were hearing like two years ago, two or three years ago. And it just, it comes down. What's that?
[00:16:54] Speaker B: They're confident.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Well, they're, they should be confident in the aircraft. Look, what the video they just posted. The problem is, where's the documentation? Where's the, you know, your manuals, where's your certificate? Where's your airworthiness certificate? Or, you know, where's your operator training? What does that look like? Being operated remotely. And I think while the technology is here and this thing is sweet and that video is awesome, I think that's the biggest hurdle. And then how do you land this in a city where it needs to go? What does the vertiport look like? The UTM, the deconfliction?
It's kind of like, I don't know, much like drones were 810 years ago where the technology, thermal and stuff, and folks that could afford it, you know, for some people, money and budget isn't the number one, you know, constraint.
And even though they could afford the systems, there was all the section 333 and, you know, early 107, the night ops and all those weird things that just now seem ridiculous. Those things aren't in place, even though the drone and the vehicle can.
Can make it happen.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: I mean, it looks like they have a ton of funding, I think. I'm reading an article right here. United Airlines placed a $1 billion order, and they have an option to place $500 million more in orders if they want to.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's crazy. And then that's when you start looking at it. If you look at Joby, I think Joby's the one that's closely partnered with Uber.
Like, Uber? Uber? I was going to say Uber elevate. Like, people know what. What. Do you guys know what Uber elevate is?
[00:18:55] Speaker B: That's the helicopters correct service.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Right, right. Like, so their air service that probably very few people, I had no idea using again. Because you're.
Yeah, like, you can open your phone, just get a helicopter, and they call it Uber elevate. So they're looking at it as, hey, this is another way to where we. We give you that premium car share service, and we take you, you know, instead of getting you from the airport in the car, and it's a 45 minutes ride, we get you into this pilotless air taxi, and then we have the car waiting to drive you 1 mile or, you know, two or 3 miles, because that's way more convenient to position a luxury vehicle in that location than trying to get cars back and forth from the airport.
[00:19:49] Speaker C: I'm excited for the day I get to ride in the EV pole or even just air taxi in general. But, I mean, hand in hand.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's. It's coming. And then even just that excitement makes you think, like, think about a universal. And this is what you saw. And in China in the very beginning is it was like. It was a destination attraction. So this. This, um, this hotel, not even like a resort. Right. This resort partnered with a company, Ehang, and they just made an agreement that, you know, we'll put one or two of these here, and then it'll be an exclusive thing. If you want to ride in this Ehang pilots air taxi, you have to book a stay at this hotel. And I'm sure it wasn't just like, you know, the base stay. It was like, oh, you're getting the.
The airventure, you know, package. The premium portion of that money went to. Exactly. So it becomes this destination type thing where it's. It's not like a ride.
You know, like, you go to the. Get on the roller coaster because it's not gonna be like flipping and making your heart beat. It should be very.
[00:21:10] Speaker C: I hope it's not, you know, but.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Even, even like, you know, you go to the Grand Canyon, so it's like, you know, having the pilot and the great. If the folks that do the Grand Canyon flights out of Las Vegas are listening, you know, didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, but, you know, to have that pilot's air taxi that just flies you to that tourist attraction and then it brings you back and lands. I mean, New York City every day, you know, people are getting in helicopters circling New York City, circling Las Vegas. Circling, circling, circling.
That's what these things might be able to do. And with that, moving on to our next topic that we have here for this episode is really interesting technology.
Not typically, you know, discussed necessarily with drones, but drone magnetometers in this company sky front, the magnify or skyfront magnify enhances surveying, mineral prospecting and unexploded ordinance detection. UxO, if you didn't know, now, you know, UxO stands for unexploded ordinance detection. What is an unexploded ordinance?
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Bomb.
[00:22:37] Speaker C: Sounds like a landmine.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Landmine, yeah, a landmine. Right.
So it's really neat this story to come up because, um.
That's crazy.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: That's a. Yeah, because. How would you describe that?
Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to give the listeners an idea of what we're kind of looking at here because that's, that's, I don't know if that's kind of crazy.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Sun setting over mountains. Golden hour. Boeing aircraft flying at 30,000ft with drone carrying long object in drones.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: Center frame.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: AI response right there.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been. Yeah. So like years ago when I was talking with one company in North Carolina that does surveying, it's crazy because this conversation came up about drone magnetometers and like, what, what do you mean? And this, this surveyor explained to me that overseas there, like, where we used to have these military installations, the common. And we're talking decades ago, right. The common form of security around these military post bases and installations was setting landmines.
And, you know, the US has been involved in so many conflicts across the globe. When we left decades ago, you know, less people were tracking this stuff and then they just packed up and left and these landmines were left behind. And then now these countries that were previously underdeveloped are now, you know, building economies and developing and they're going into these lands in order to build homes and businesses and they're actually finding these, you know, unexploded ordinances that, you know, you end up finding out are connected to us military operations. So years ago I talked to this person and he was explaining that, you know, the US government is doing, you know, some things to clean up their own efforts. But then there's also, you know, reasons to use this in areas where you're not sure of it, but they have a cart. So like the way to do it now is you actually have to push a magnetometer, which a magnetometer is just a device that's, you know, using magnetic fields in order to detect underground items. So you have to push a cart up and down and through this land. And so they'll clear these swaths and paths and it's like extremely high risk job that you could lose your life. Doing what?
[00:25:43] Speaker C: Give us an estimate. What is the cart kind of weighing? Is this like a heavy car to lightweight guard or. I'm visualizing this in my head because I'm thinking of like a little trailer hitch that someone could push. Is that kind of what, roughly?
Something like that?
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Yes.
It's like a push cart. Just a couple wheels.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Couldn't imagine. Imagined it way too much based off of seeing the drones magnetometer.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: So like this, you're gonna see a shopping cart.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Census. What am I going to see?
[00:26:27] Speaker C: A shopping cart.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: So census. It's funny, census is the company. So when I just type in magnetometer, there's not a lot of companies that are here.
You know, it's like, there's a lot of companies that are making this. So here's a cart. So you could tell it, right, with an ATV.
But these tubes.
Right, these tubes right here are the magnetometers.
[00:26:51] Speaker C: I'm not seeing anything.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Oh, well, there you go. I click stop sharing instead of share this screen.
So again, census, remember this is, uh, or sky front. Sorry, Skyfront has this other one. But census is a. Oh, that's right here.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would say that's what, 8ft, almost 7ft and.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's probably almost ten. Yeah.
And in these tubes, you can see the connections in those tubes are the actual magnetometers.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: Tracking. So understand what's happening here.
[00:27:27] Speaker C: Yeah. We have that ten foot line with four bicycle wheels that has what, four or five, six magnum magnets?
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Go ahead, magnetometer.
[00:27:39] Speaker C: That's a word. Yes.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: And so, so like here again, looking at this, there's the mag drone.
So this is just modifying a DJI drone and using the tube that, that's the magnetometer. So companies have been kind of, you know, creating this product.
And so census is now, or sky front has come out with a new.
A new product that allows it to be, you know, suspended from the drone.
And also having this suspended from the drone gets it away from any interference that the drone itself could cause.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: Hmm.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: And so any. The other thing, too, is like magnetometers. And using this type of technology is used at grave sites in order to find, like, unmarked graves. Because when you're, you're basically scanning the, the ground beneath the earth in order to make determinations as to what is there, locate subterranean objects.
[00:29:03] Speaker C: I'm just kind of curious, is that kind of like a sonar but with more metallic minerals and whatnot?
Or is sort.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: But, yeah, except it's a magnet. It's using magnetic fields. So anything that has that, like, it's not going to bounce off. Just. It's not just going to recognize any hard object like sonar, you know, it's more so that he's kind of doing in that sense.
[00:29:30] Speaker C: Okay. It's more so that metallic mineral substances that it's finding and then reporting back, hey, this is. And providing a scan.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: A scan, correct.
[00:29:42] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Because then you can take this information and you process it into like a, like a visual almost map.
[00:29:49] Speaker C: Wow, that's so impressive. That's crazy.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: It's like a metal detector, kind of.
[00:29:57] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly. I was thinking of that thing on the beach. You use the metal detector.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Very similar in that sense to that. That because it's scanning it, it's measuring it and it's presenting it to you. So if you had earth that's been there for a very long time, all those layers are going to have a very, you know, the, the qualities, the features are going to be uniform, but if you go dig it up, dig it up, you're going to change the uniformity of that material and what's inside of it.
Sky front magnetometers using drones. And then so what it is, is right, actually driving a vehicle, you know, if you have a really large area to cover and you have to drive the four wheeler, what if you don't want to, you know, go on the ground itself? And so by doing just like, if you would map, you know, photos, you do the same thing with the drone. You put the drone into an automated flight and you literally just have the drone map out that portion of property, and then it creates a data set that you can view and determine where is there any anomalies in the soil, like how much.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: I see. Let's see. How we can word this like, like. So I seen the cart had like eight of them, and then the drones only have one magnetometer on it. So I wonder, like, how much area that can clear at once or if it matters.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good, that's, that's a good question.
And look at this. Fielded in the Ukraine, the perimeter eight detects plastic anti personnel mines and anti take mines.
[00:32:19] Speaker C: That's just very impressive.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: It.
[00:32:23] Speaker C: Butter, look at all those mines. Jeez.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Did you even know that? Samuel? I see I'm getting familiar with the butterfly mines.
[00:32:33] Speaker C: Yeah, that's.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: That'S a fun one there.
And the other thing, too is like, again, it's like the grave sites and stuff, because up until what, 1020 years ago, like, electronic documentation, especially of just, you know, your more uncommon things is when you think of like, gravestones and headstones and cemeteries that have been around for a very long time, you have like, headstones have gone missing. So you can't just assume like, hey, no one's buried here. How do you know that? So another thing where years later, this came into play was actually using a drone to fly and get a visual image that was then used to overlay a field report from a company that did a magnetometer scan at a cemetery. And what they said is like, you know, based on the headstones that are here, you know, these, these are grave sites. But then they also said, hey, here's like, bunch of areas where the ground looks disturbed, but there actually isn't a headstone. So they determined, like, this could have been a burial site. There may be someone buried here 70, 8100 years ago, and it was never documented because there was not. Everything was written on paper. You know, you go by churches that are like 100, 150, depending on what part of the country you're in. You go past, you know, in towns and cities that are 200 years old, 200 and 4250 years old, people have been living and dying for as long as that place has been there. And, and where did they go? So anyway, fun topic there. How about radar? How about speaking of radar? Right. Way to lead into the, to the next topic there, Samuel matrix space.
We guys think about radar systems. You heard a company called Matrix Space was awarded a $1.25 million af works contract for UA's sensor development.
A low swap C UA's payload to enhance replicator initiative counter UA's payload, Matrix space has been awarded 1.25 million direct to phase two siber contract to develop a low size, weight, power and cost multifunction multiband antenna. Payload working with department of the Air force to support a replicature initiative. It's a twelve month contract beginning immediately. What you're seeing here on the screen is a current product matrix space is providing.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: So is this similar to what they're doing in Syracuse with all the antennas, but you're just putting it on the drone, so it's like it's on antenna flying around.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: This does not. Well, I don't believe this is to go on the drone.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: This is stationary, so. And what's here right now, this is about the size of a claymore. So, speaking of unexploded ordinances, it is about the size of a claymore. And inside here is some really fancy technology that's sending out, like, a massive amount of beams in all directions.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: So one of these is going to.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: Be good for about.
[00:36:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Sorry to interrupt for clarity. That's probably the size of a suitcase. A claymore.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: No, no, it's about this. That's about the size of your. Like.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: Like an average book, I would say, is the size of a claymore.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like a coffee. Maybe a coffee table sized book or something like.
[00:37:07] Speaker C: That's quite small.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:37:08] Speaker C: That's a lot big. Yeah, exactly. That's holding up your lego pieces. That shows scale.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: And.
And that's the whole part here is when you look at it, it's a low swap.
Right? Low swap. C. So, size, weight, power and cost. So it's a low, small size. The weights very low, very little power consumption. And the cost is affordable.
These things, I believe, around. You're on $25,000 for one of them. And again, it's only going to cover 90 degrees.
You need.
Right. Radar and lots of directions. So you'd have to put.
Right. You'd have to put four of these in a configuration. So $100,000. But then it's like, what's the range? It's this big. How far can it actually detect?
You know, the bigger the object, the further away it can detect. But the smaller the object gets, the less likely it is to be able to detect it as it gets further away, because it's trying to. It's trying to ping it. Right.
So my understanding is you're looking at, like, a two kilometer range, two and a half kilometer range, with this current technology. So it's.
We are headed in a very positive direction.
But why is this important? And for those wondering. The AF works. It's the. The Cibber. Right. Grant is small business innovation research.
So it's the government being able to put funds into small businesses that have demonstrated, like, quality technology in order to really help drive, drive that to the next level.
Why is radar important though?
[00:39:13] Speaker B: So you don't have mid air collisions with other drone pilots.
[00:39:17] Speaker C: That's one of your instruments in a.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: Sense, safety manned aircraft. Right? So for drone operators to be able to detect non compliant and uncontrolled airspace where you don't have traditional radar. So uncontrolled airspace operations. But even more importantly now with the global climate, this is counter UA's like, this is going to help you do beyond visual line of sight because you have an electronic visual observer. Right? This, this matrix space, it doesn't watch TikTok, it doesn't do YouTube, it doesn't eat food, it doesn't have emotions.
Right. You buy it once you plug it in and put it online, it's low power consumption, it's low cost, it's not biased.
Right. And so you can scale operations safely with this because you know it's online and functioning. If it fails to function, it's going to tell you. Right.
So beyond visual line of sight, this is, you're looking at an electronic visual observer.
And this can look in point in 90 degrees, constantly where the human is, right. Scanning. What does the FAA say? You know, nice short segments, ten degree intervals.
But then also, what if you are trying to detect drones in areas where they shouldn't be?
Like the air force, the army, like we just saw the magnetometer finding landmines. What if you're trying to detect enemy drone, enemy aircraft, especially like looking at.
[00:41:06] Speaker C: Having russian stuff going on right now. You can imagine how that would be extremely useful.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: In the, the low size and weight aspect means, just like the small unmanned systems, you can throw it in a backpack. So if we have to go set up a temporary base, what is one of the threats we have to worry about nowadays, a drone attack? Well, we can take this thing out of the backpack, set up a 360 with this thing on the pole in the center, and now we're getting information to, to secure the air.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Honestly, it's pretty affordable for what you're getting. I mean, not to your average customer, but for these companies that are potentially doing drone delivery and whatnot, it's perfect for them.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Yeah. When you look at like labor costs for an individual person to, to be on site and in a position, you just do the math at $20 an hour, you know, times 40 hours. And that's, you know, that's only a limited portion if you're doing twelve hour shifts or you know, as you're trying to max out the day, you're going to be pulling in, you know, a lot of, a lot of labor costs. So the biggest thing now is it gets point where like, how do we know how reliable this technology is?
Reliability.
And, you know, we just trust humans. They, you know, human pilots are flying passengers every day and, you know, you have two. Well, are you supposed to have two visual observers just in case one person, you know, accidentally has an allergic reaction to something and then it gets just. Yeah, it's electronic visual observers.
[00:42:57] Speaker C: I think the biggest thing, kind of like you said, was scalability of it.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: Sorry, scalability, yeah, and scalability. Right. Because it's standardized, these sensors are going to do the same thing no matter where you position them. And then you're feeding that data into your system. It can automate things. You can feed it into the drone. You know, you can have all this, you know, there's no delay in saying, hey, there's an aircraft here. Oh, where? Where is it? Well, mister, Mister Samuel here. What, what kind of light show stuff is it?
[00:43:31] Speaker C: My time to shine.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Bring that. Bring.
[00:43:37] Speaker C: Sorry, no. Yeah, we are coming back with another universal light show. This is just kind of, kind of hyping it up. Essentially. The light shows are now public.
There, here's a. Some video, some photos. They're doing some really cool stuff. Over 600 drones in the light show. They're showing off some of their brands, like the Transformer stuff going on. Let me pull up the article myself so I can reference that a little bit easier.
Here we go.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:44:09] Speaker C: 228 fountains, mist screens, 4k projections, mapping on buildings around universal Studios, Florida lagoon and fireworks. And as I mentioned before, the 600 drones in play. And you just have a very colorful selection of images right here showcasing their. Like I said, they're different brains from the mummy, how to train your dragon, Ghostbusters minions, all sorts of different properties coming into play. But it looks like Florida is heating up with the drone game, if I can say that.
But yeah, no Texas, man.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: They're on top of it.
[00:44:51] Speaker C: What's that, Terry?
[00:44:53] Speaker B: I said Florida and Texas are on top of the drone.
[00:44:56] Speaker C: They, they're moving fast with it. Paul's got a really cool video pulled up right now. As of June 14, the shows have started and I think they're performing weekly, I believe. Let me see if I can find a quote on that.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: Wow. And you can see here we've got the video. It's just like, I don't know, I'd be like.
I'd be like spazzing out. There's so much happening. What are you supposed to look at? The water, the lasers on the building. Oh, you got an alien. And.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: Oh, that's how to train your dragon. I don't know if you saw that with the.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Oh, is that a dragon?
[00:45:36] Speaker C: Yeah, it was one of the iconic shots from the movie et.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Et.
[00:45:42] Speaker C: So cool. Yeah.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: This is crazy because it's. We're looking at the drone light show. It's a piece of a larger picture. And you can clearly tell that shrek and donkey. Right.
Well.
[00:45:59] Speaker C: Seizure watching this said you're having a seizure.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: I'm like, all right, you turn. You can turn the water off now.
[00:46:11] Speaker C: You see, on the water, you gotta miss.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Screens are nice.
[00:46:15] Speaker C: Yeah, they have projections on the mis screens, which is just insane.
Bring back the drones and the late.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: The late. The lights in the. In the. On top of the buildings and.
Holy smokes. Can you imagine being a kid? Kid here? You're just like, wow.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Aliens looking down at Florida at nighttime. Just scared.
[00:46:48] Speaker C: Looking at you. Orlando.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: So cool. But, you know, it's. Why, why is what?
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Oh, and we got fireworks troll.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:47:00] Speaker C: I feel like while they're doing the fireworks and everything else, they're getting ready for the next fleet to go up. This is their battery swap. This is when they switch out the different drones so they can get another set to go.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Dude, it's still.
[00:47:11] Speaker C: They still have. There's another fleet right there.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: They're doing it all.
It's.
It is just crazy, though, because I've yet to see, and maybe someone needs to show it to me. But, like, the light shows that we've seen overseas, like, even universal, and they're like, yeah, it's light show, but hug time.
[00:47:34] Speaker C: I'm not aware of that.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: Yeah, you need a. You need a hug.
[00:47:39] Speaker C: Maybe that's the trolls movie.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: Yes, but. But it's like, you see the videos that are coming in from. It's got to be China, right? Or overseas. And it's just like. Like the dragon and the bending of the body, and it just. It just seems like next level drum.
[00:47:59] Speaker C: Like a pokemon. I don't know if you saw that.
[00:48:03] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's just like, it hasn't hit the United States and maybe it never will now that we're banning.
[00:48:11] Speaker C: Well.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: Well, it's DJI, but who knows? Chinese, drones, the whole. The whole lot is next. Ghostbusters.
[00:48:20] Speaker C: Who you're gonna call it.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: You said ban the notes.
[00:48:25] Speaker A: Yes. Timing, Terry. Life is.
Life's all about timing. But this is crazy. Yeah, that's really cool. Would you say it's totally integrated it.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: I gotta admit.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It says blown up every sense that you possibly could have. It's. I'm sure the audio is there, and I'm sure you're getting wet right now. It's spraying everybody.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: And what does that sound like here, right now? I only have to wonder how loud it is blasting.
[00:49:05] Speaker C: Whoa.
Not the audio I was expecting.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: I don't know if I'd be able to handle this in real life.
[00:49:17] Speaker C: That is overstimulated.
I can't blame you. It's. It is a lot, and.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: But it's got me pulling up my leg pants right now, bro. I can't. I can't watch this video.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: And so it's just crazy. There goes et. That is so cool. Look at that.
[00:49:31] Speaker C: But you know what I want?
[00:49:32] Speaker A: It's like they fully integrated it into.
[00:49:35] Speaker C: I want to see et actually fly across the lagoon in drone form, you know, as a silhouette. That's what I want to see. That'd be sick.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: And then they hit him with the. The universal at the end, so that's really cool.
[00:49:55] Speaker B: Oh, my lord. Bro, you'd have a headache at the end of that.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: You do anything for your kids, Terry?
[00:50:04] Speaker B: You gotta have kids see colors, like, more vividly. I think I've heard that somewhere.
God, that's got to be overloading. That's like.
Tried to beat that. Tick tock.
[00:50:15] Speaker C: Well, I would say as your eyes age, you probably lose the same sense of color that you had years ago. You know, it's just a part of aging, just not as vibrant.
[00:50:26] Speaker A: Your cones in your rods are turning into more of, like, I don't even.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: Know, black and white, grayscale.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: Turning into more of, like, phones and.
I don't know, it's terrible.
Cones and rods. I don't know, it's.
You gotta eat carrots, right? If you want to keep your false. Not your good eyes.
[00:50:53] Speaker C: So I've been eating all those carrots for nothing, Terry.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Correct. That was a pro. That was propaganda started by Britain, I think.
[00:51:03] Speaker C: Trick, you're gonna see the farmers of America.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Not entirely.
Oh, and yeah, that was. That was a fun one. Carrots, you will leave it up to you. You decide on the carrots.
Final wrapping up here on a kind of a regulatory piece article drone life fa data highlights predominance of chinese made UAV's in Texas law enforcement fleets.
Editors note while the author examined data for the state of Texas, the data reflects trends found throughout the country. And as someone closely involved here in North Carolina. I can second that. We are seeing very similar numbers. So. So this article that came out was pulling data from the state of Texas, where drones have been, you know, integrated as much as any other state, if not the most great people out there doing some really, really great things. Brandon Carr Perlin, Texas is a good friend who's done it in law enforcement and is also helping organizations advance their technologies.
They've got their public safety unmanned response teams in Texas. So regional collections of drone operators that come together when things happen, you know, natural disasters.
And they've been flying DJI for years. And so now what the data that we're seeing presented here is, you know, as of March 18 of this year, there were 966 drones registered to police and sheriff's departments in Texas, right. Just under a thousand drones.
Of that total 879 products produced by DJI, the company specifically targeted by this act and the drone as the first responder act. Right. This. This act that was supposed to be like, oh, this is good for drones, for first responders, and it's gonna get rid of chinese drones. Well, who's that helping? If 900, or if 879 of the 966 drones are DJI drones, does that say anything about the products quality or cost or what could happen with a ban of DJI products?
Are these numbers intriguing?
[00:54:10] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, I mean, band, the number one drone. I don't know.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: Well, us drone manufacturer. And you're looking at these. If you're looking at these numbers, right, and you're. You're an american drone manufacturer, you're like, oh, wow, 879 drones banned. So basically, basically, 85% of the drones are gonna. Could be banned. And now that's like, oh, well, we need to sell drones. Like, if you're an american manufacturer, doesn't that sound like something you would support? Because that's creating a market for an american company.
Go ahead, Samuel.
[00:54:55] Speaker C: Well, I was just gonna say, I think it's kind of what you said earlier, timing is everything. And it's the fact that I. I really don't feel like our industry, the drone industry, was prepared for anything like this in terms of, like, in five years time, DJI drones banned. You know, maybe then you could have more of a transitional time period, placement, whatever, because then you can prepare. But this just feels you have a whole fleet built up that's just going to be demolished, and then you're going to be left with nothing, essentially.
That's how I'm looking at it.
[00:55:38] Speaker A: And of the Chinese, of the non Chinese drones, seven are American made so of 970 drones, seven are American made goPro drones, five Skydio drones, four Arian drones, two photo kite drones, which is a Swiss company.
[00:55:59] Speaker C: Hmm.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: We got a couple parrot drones, two drones made by instant eye, two drones made by brink.
So, like, see the numbers? Like, one flir, one teledyne Flir drone.
[00:56:20] Speaker B: Drinks getting in there.
[00:56:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
This is the biggest state. This is one of the biggest states of drone integration for public safety. So this here it just speak.
[00:56:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:37] Speaker C: I was gonna say those numbers are very.
The numbers are kind of speaking for themselves. I mean, what are you left with? You're left with ones and twos of multi. Multiple different companies.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: It's a. Onesies. Very differenties.
[00:56:55] Speaker C: Yeah, onesies and two zs.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: The department of Public Safety flies four dragonfish drones produced by Autel and two blue suas. So here's that. Let's go. The dragonfish. Right?
90 minutes flight time. Super far distance, but yeah, onesies and twosies. So these american companies are selling drones in the onesies and twosies in one of the biggest markets. Right. If we look at.
You're looking at each state as its own market, right? Each state is its own market and it's its own size market. Rhode island, this tiny little state is a. Is a fraction of a market compared to Texas. So when you're looking at the largest market and you've only sold two of your brink drones, how. How much money is going back to your investors?
Zero.
Zero.
If you're Skydio, you're a billion dollar company.
You sold four drones in Texas to public safety. It's. It's insane. Now they ban DJI drones in Florida last year. Go look at their numbers. They'll be completely different. And you'll think, oh, well, they're pro America. No, they had. They literally had their drones taken out of their hands at the state level.
So it's.
That was really, really, I don't know, interesting to see, again, 966 drones, 879 or DJI and onesies and twosies of everything else.
And so, I don't know, it was interesting. Had an opportunity to talk to someone I've known for a few years now who's, you know, very tied to the law enforcement community in the state of North Carolina at the executive level with the police chiefs association, someone who talks to the politicians regularly, someone who was a police chief and who knows people. And it was just curious. I've been telling people for a while, like, hey, DFR Drone is a first responder, and all this stuff's coming together. And so that person had messaged and was like, what's up with this article? And I was just like, well, here's a lot of the facts, here's the information. And, you know, at the end of the day, 910 drones is always going to be here to support public safety agencies in North Carolina. And, you know, a little beyond that. And what that means is whichever way this falls, there are non chinese drones. As you can see, the numbers show that there are some out there. They're just more expensive and they're not as functional. So when you can pick, you know, good or best, you're always going to say, go with the best. But if the best gets taken away, there is still something out there. So it's hard to say that to folks because you don't know how they're going to respond. Like, oh, if there's other stuff out there, that's fine, let's ban it. But they're not listening. There is other stuff. It's more expensive and it's not as good. So we have to come with a real logical approach to banning DJI drones.
[01:00:24] Speaker B: I feel like it's just a bit too steep. I don't. I think we should be able to use them after the ban. Maybe not law enforcement, but consumers that just have had them. Who cares, you know?
[01:00:35] Speaker A: And at the end of the day, we'll probably see something like that where you can't buy any more new ones, but the old ones, it's, it's, you know, I don't. I said to somebody, I was like, look, one day soon, you're gonna wake up and overnight you're gonna have to make a decision that something you've been doing for a very long time was completely okay. But now, all of a sudden, if you fly that DJI drone, you're a criminal. Like, you make your own decision, right? I don't. I'm not putting that person in jail or calling the police on them or what. But it's kind of like you have to be able to, you know, take in all the information and then assess your specific scenario and decide, you know, what is, what's safe for the community and what's also right for me as a person and be practical about it. It's crazy. I can't wait. I mean, we got so excited, like, this year and there's so much pot and then, and then this, this comes down in the middle of the year, and it's just like, all right, can we.
I don't know, hopefully a conversation I had with this person yesterday because then a politician ended up walking into their office. So they were able to sit down and hopefully share some of this information and, and we'll see what happens. But there's, there's certainly, there's certainly still time and, and there's still a lot that that's gonna happen between now and NDAA 2025 and the CC countering CCP drones acts and drones drones for first Responders act. And so it'll be fun. It's another great episode. Appreciate it. Terry, Samuel, guys, got any final thoughts there on DJI drones or episode in general?
[01:02:41] Speaker C: I hope I can fly my drone, but we'll see. Hope it doesn't get banned. We'll find out.
[01:02:49] Speaker A: Well, we'll keep you in the loop. Just, just stick with Terry and I will stay on top now.
Well, thanks you both. Thanks to the listeners. Appreciate everybody for tuning in again. Reach out with any questions, comments, leave something at the YouTube channel in the comment sections, any questions you might have. We appreciate your time and attention and we appreciate you following, subscribing and reading dronelife.com. thank you, everybody, and we will see you next episode.
[01:03:23] Speaker C: Have a great week. Fly safe.
