UAS News Podcast — 2014-01-28
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast series where we interview newsmakers and discuss the news and applications that are relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. As always I'm your program host Patrick Egan and as we testimally do let's say hello and welcome to our co-host Mr. Gene Robinson. You know Patrick I think I need to change my name to Amanda Cofinca Texas.
Hey it's a primer to get some work up there on the shelf you know we'll get you some mucklucks and a pet seal and you're ready to go. I'm talking to you, let me tell you this is the second time in as many weeks I have been unable to get to the Flight Search Research Center so it's been quite surprising for this Texan to have to go through a winter. I don't know what that's like but thanks for having me on the show I'm looking forward to getting back in the saddle again
so to speak. Well we've been on the honeyed it but it's been I don't think it's because there's lack of content out there in radio land.
It's been I would say it's almost been wheeled off for the last podcast. I mean personal appearances, drone TV, we were at the ANA expo there's a lot of good stuff there there's going to be we're going to do a there's a drone tv episode coming out about that with some some great footage from the FAA workshop. We just had another episode just dropped with Gene Robinson and we talked more about Switching Risk another one's coming up and Gene's been very busy flying from Yist and we're going to do an episode on that maybe give us a rundown on on the burn there Gene.
Absolutely we did some fantastic fire research here in the last couple of weeks went out to Bastrop Texas Camp Swift which is a military installation out there and we set up three prescribed burns with sensors and we had 75 scientists on the ground and 25 firefighters and we lost the super bat had the super bat in the air for four hours this was of course under TFR and got some astounding data both video
well I say both it was in many different ways that we got it we got video in IR we've got video in standard EO we've got still imagery high resolution still imagery my favorite multi-spec goal wind sensors all over the ground and it was just a phenomenal success just total success and everybody was very excited just after the first burn so we're really making some good progress there and getting really excited
but now that we've you know we've practiced for two years and we're finally out doing science and it's looking like everything has paid off in space.
Well I hear from you know the editor of the program that it's some phenomenal footage for the Drone TV episode and if people that's that's another thing we put up a page for the Drone TV it's drontvnetwork.com DroneTvNetwork.com you should go over there and check out that latest episode it's pretty good and in the following episodes or forthcoming episodes I hear the burn one is going to be excellent
and I'm looking forward to that I look forward every time to these new episodes. The only thing I wanted to kind of touch on the news real quick and a lot of stuff has happened since we've been on IA is that the test nights were announced which that's going to be we'll have to do a whole nother show on test sites push back of the NDRN until November there were a few other announcements that came out that that need to be discussed
but I think we can do a whole show on on those topics lots of stuff in the news there's been more articles that I've been in and stuff has been written I also noticed that a lot of people must have been on vacation the same time we were on the IA is because I've actually been putting out other stories that I've written later in December like the how the U.S.
fell behind on the airspace immigration effort and that people have gone nuts on that one again got a couple more in the works about how you know the UAS business got skyjacked here in the United States that ought to be another friend maker you know and then I know that other there's other than other news things going on with you did you want to discuss those real quick Gene? Well you know it's been one of the things that we've been contacted by many many news outlets that are wanting to do positive use stories
and it's gotten really crazy that the the feeling seems to be taking that that swing the other way because people are media is finally getting the message they're starting to learn that you know we want to see some positive use out of these guys and you know like you say it's during the hiatus I mean there's been more stories come out and and more things pop up that we should be reporting on but we're
so busy trying to keep up with it all it's very difficult to get the time to be able to explain it and hash it out and parse it so that it's understandable it's just been incredible.
It has been and I totally agree with you on people are now the face of this industry has been the DOD thing which has been our total detriment for so many years not that the DOD thing doesn't have its place okay it does have its place but there are very there are a lot of negative connotations couple things I want to clear up and this is something that I I the drum that I keep beating people keep saying this is military technology military technology military technology
and I'm calling BS on that you know you have to and one of the new stories today in the news was about cloud seating with unmanned aircraft which is this is a throwback story to 2003 with when I had lunch with Dr.
McCready from AeroBird and it's actually pretty funny we touched on a lot of different subjects but he was working with a scientist that also did cloud seating operations in the early days and I said oh you know okay well we talked about cloud seating my dad's an environmentalist environmental consultant and some of the havoc that's been with that I said what did you think about unmanned or what do
you think about this cloud seating he said they're mad men they're nuts these people were totally crazy and then it's kind of funny as you know hey we're going to cloud seat with drones you know kind of a funny funny thing but Dr.
McCready you know was a avid RC modeller also an aviation bus and he had also won awards for free flight RC models and that whole aero environment came out of the RC hobby world remote control hobby world the aerosond aerosond came out of the hobby world the airframe was built by a company that did you know remote controlled gliders scan eagle came in a must of parts that came out of that were RC hobby parts
and that was also a system for commercial use fine fish aerosond do science so when people go oh this is military technology and we're finally turning it around on calling horse poo on that a lot of the systems that are out there a lot of what's out there now came out of the hobby world people were using that and I think we should accentuate that get away from the missiles get away from the air superiority today because it's done irreparable harm to this industry
and what it has created in my mind and people that I talk to is it says I call it like dronism where people make like a statement out of ignorance about this technology and it's one of the things that that military spec milspec gave us was the 800 dollar hammer and obviously you don't get that out of you know the the offerings that are coming up today they're certainly not as hardened and they may not be gene-approved
but you know they're out there and and they're they're certainly not military grade and military specification yeah but just thinking on the flashlight 800 dollar hammer that's what we're centering the bear down the barrel up in the regulation department and in the letter of force are at the regulation and the standards are military god people I can't stress that enough so when the legs come out and you're dealing with uh
you know standards that get you the 800 dollar hammer that's where it came from so you know things to think about um you know as we move forward definitely people are starting to think like hey you know wait a minute here there's this like whole thriving community I just did a interview for blondeberg yesterday and the gentleman is like it doesn't really look like the faa's got a handle on this they got a tiger by the tail
and I said all right bingo you know um he's he's not the only guy that that's starting to come around to this that this thing is totally taken off and the faa is many years behind the curve and doesn't seem to understand the problem and I was like well that's why they got the sharpest guys in the dc bureau right there but anyway since we're short I want to bring on our guest and our guest is the director of the unmanned aerial systems workforce development
and corporate services dr.
Andrew Shepard Andrew could you please introduce yourself to the audience for a little while and how you got involved with uh unmanned aircraft systems sure and uh thanks for having me on the show it's a great honor to be on here so a little bit of my background um I've been involved in aviation for my whole life my parents were pilots and I got my uh my pilot's license when I was 17 so it was always a narrow interest for me
and I stayed with it as I moved into uh originally I wanted to do the sims industry and so you're talking about um some of that technology and you're right a lot of what we were using there was um leveraged out of the building world and it was technology for a lot of time cost off the shelf and one of the things that I helped work on was an aircraft mission planning software that was for uh unmanned aircraft
and worked in that industry for a while and I came back to uh St.
Clair Community College now as the director for UAS and uh it's been a great experience um I run the uh knock the credit in the pilot program we also have the for credit side and I enjoy adjuncts and instructing on that side um supported uh Amber Riddle uh aeronautical university course development and adjuncts instructing for them as well but you know my primary job is as a director and uh so we have a great program I'll be happy to share with
you today all right well I you know I hope it didn't come off like we were deriding the VUV side of the you know I mean it has a place and you know there's definitely um I'm gonna you know anyway you look at this thing I tell people you know some people you know this this technology as sure as I'm standing here now or sitting here now this is the future of aviation and I really don't care what anybody says this is it
and so whatever whatever of course there's going to be military there's going to be civilians and there's going to be and we need to train all of those people um for for this upcoming technology and the other thing is that it really excites me about this technology is the promise that it holds for the country um this technology holds the promise to you know and I'm sure you see it I'm preaching to the choir
you guys here I've got to convince Gene because Gene's still doubting Gene.
Let's see anything. I know come on Gene really you know now uh so you know this is great and I think it's great that you guys are doing it so you know let's um maybe you know you kind of touched on a little bit of what's going on over there at Sinclair and you know you guys have been in the news and we've carried some of the stories about you maybe you can tell us about what's kind of currently going on over at Sinclair. Sure
so uh for anyone that's not familiar Sinclair is a community college it's actually the oldest continuously operating college in the country um starting in 1887 and we're in Dayton Ohio and so it's uh not really you can't really find a better place in terms of aviation heritage in my opinion but I'm by uh but um so a few years ago uh Sinclair leadership came out so you know given our heritage or economic um abilities in the area
and you know the manufacturing sensors that type of technology um and our defense side they wanted to look and see what we could do with our own systems and so uh really our vision was it's a partnership model um with the region of the state of Ohio with the broader Midwest and the country really um and so uh over the last couple years um Sinclair has made uh quite a sizable internal strategic investment um in terms of capital um that's that's amazing uh a large investment in May of 2013
and uh put us into into phase two of our program which is um you know we're out we called phase two uh partly because it's easier to say one of the things called phase two uh but that really we had a lot of a lot of information you know already developed that we had a large uh innovation technology program we were leveraging and um so uh today we have three main uh areas of focus in our program we have uh aerospace uh which is
you know the airspace and will maintain and stream fill the class delta air spaces uh we have um six coas three of each of those uh for platforms uh we have uh the curriculum piece which is both for credit and not for credit and then we have our modeling and simulation piece and kind of imagine those as three legs of the stool and they're all supporting the broader UAS training and certification from it
so uh as I mentioned with the coas um we have three platforms uh one uh the the other one is called the uh the sphere we have two of those uh aircraft and they were actually manufactured locally here in in the Dayton area um bought those part of about four years ago now uh then we had the uh the Vario which is now manufactured by a company called uh uh fourth wing uh formerly we have a new schematic technology corporation
and then we have our uh our nova block three which is a nine foot wings and geospatial mapping platform uh built by a company called Octane in Adafora uh and our most recent uh uh participants is going to be uh the uh VTOL called Indigo from Washington D.A.R.T.N.
so uh with those we can do uh platform specific training uh we've done sensor integration test slides with multi-spectral uh sensors um high definition uh video um in addition to the normal student training that you would expect that's part of our integrated program um data collection with our geospatial part we call WOLFERT um so what's going on there um mobile ground control uh DCS um and uh I know we're going to talk a few seconds here about the curriculum
but uh I'll touch on the model and synthesis um we have uh a 10-seat uh model and simulation lab that uses L3 sensor symbolizers um and that was the first time this system was used in commercial application so we have a partnership through uh AICRL and that allows us to customize the code and do a lot of team performance type research that we're planning to talk through in the spring.
Well it sounds like you guys have some stuff going on over there. Sure. A couple of things to you know whet away the time there. Yep we're pretty busy if I feel welcome.
I'm sure it is and uh so you guys are doing the uh training for the uh NX series of uh ELIR sensors? Yeah so uh it's part of the training uh on platforms uh you know when the students come in um you know we do platform training and we also train them on the sensors that are on board platforms um we also have a sensors course as part of the academic program so students can get a good handle on what they're capable of how you interface with platforms and that type of thing so um but you know we actually had the first uh multi-spectral sensor test flight on the URIA platform uh at Stratford.
So that was a fun to get that data for them. Can you do any distance learning because I think I could look at the sensor class. Sure. Or the two of them.
Oh you do? Yeah we definitely uh we have uh we've started transitioning some of our not for credit classes online and that was partly due to just demand. We had students actually moving in so we had one week to date in Staten Island and we worked to take classes and we have students traveling in from all over the country to take different short courses and so they were asking if we could get some of them to online
so we're actually running um two sections of the class about the COA application development process right now online here in January and that's been going very well so they actually get to go through a lot of the process of developing the required documentation and materials and getting feedback on the data.
On what you might be doing through. If you ever need anyone to like you know uh say no. Gene is very um he's very experienced in that Gene. The double note without.
Well anyway so okay well it sounds like there's a lot going on there but um you know I will say uh when the test site selections came out and were announced uh there were there were brows raised that uh date in Ohio was not listed as one of the test sites. Do you care to talk about the test site selection?
Oh sure. Obviously we had we had high hopes and being able to move forward as one of the selected sites but um you know as a region you know we still have all these things that we had before and we've actually um you know had a contingency plan and it's always good to have that backup plan and we have really strong leadership here in the state with the DATE Development Coalition who's spearheaded a lot of the organizational efforts and in our governor's office with Governor Kasich and so we've had a lot of good feedback.
And so we've actually had an increase in student interest and partnership opportunities and all that just since a decision has been made. I think a lot of people were waiting to see what the result was and now that there is a result you know it feels like people are more willing to move forward and make some decisions and we've even gotten a few calls from people in the test site state that were selected asking if we might department with them and collaborate on their test site. So I think we're really optimistic moving forward and I think we're in a good position.
Sure. And you know I mean I don't know some of that maybe you know the funding issue is a big issue for people. You know some of the concerns that were brought up to me I'm working on an article like when I sleep I'm working on this but you know these test sites there's an infrastructure and money to stand them up. Funding qualified people, paying qualified people to kind of get these things rolling is not going to be cheap.
The other thing that I kind of noticed from my experience and I was in on two of the different test site efforts kind of and I think people were you know we want to fly everything here and I don't think that they were really understanding what the infrastructure would kind of cost to fly predators and global sharks. Sure. So you know it's going to depend and then the other concern I had on the back end of that was the overhead sea level high. How are you going to have small commercial guys come out there and afford to play?
So all of that I think still needs to be worked out. That's supposed to sunset in five years so it wasn't that wasn't something that kicked in and then you know you were going to ride that one in for 30 years. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out. It will be interesting to see if we even get a bit of a set up and get the data prior to the September of 2015.
But interesting insight from your side. So you guys are just going to you're going to kind of march ahead with what you've got and partner with people and try and keep the ball rolling then. Yes definitely and you know we've got plans in the works and we already have our short term technical certificate on the academic side and we're going to be expanding the focus areas of that to address precision agriculture. Another specific on geospatial and a third on first responders and those will kind of cheer up into a future associate program.
We're working on articulation for the students on the areas and from the airspace access issue you know how we know the test like we hope that we're getting ready to see this double new co-application with additional sites and new platforms. And so you know from our perspective we're just rolling on along and part of it really goes to outreach and engaging the next generation coming in and there's a community college that's part of what we're aiming to do. And so we've been happy to support things like the real world design challenge this year for its focus on precision agriculture in UAS.
We helped with the development of that content and the competition so just getting the kids excited about it getting them interested in the program as a potential career field at all is a big of a part of what we do as anything. Right well I'm going to touch on that and I want to touch on that the technical certificate a little bit more but also let me just ask you from your early experience. I've noticed kind of
I want to call it the drone bug and you get these younger people exposed to this technology and they're just like oh my God this guy this is you know and just like run off and that's it you know.
They're just running in there because are you are you anything any of that over there. Oh yeah definitely. You know being bar has been a big tech town and I went to speak at actually a middle school about truth and sin of science technology engineering math and I had a call the next day from one of the six grade is mother is saying that you want to come to classes and so we were looking at some options for them. I'm not going to be you shouldn't risk your college transcript in sixth grade.
So we're looking at some not for credit options for him just to kind of you know what is that part of it. But you know we host competitions around here for from and just from you know at air and ground and there's a lot of great great opportunities for the students that you involve or even get to college. And great internship opportunities for high school and college students to partner so you know luckily when they get that they've got somewhere that they can go. You know they've got the opportunity to participate.
Sure. Sure be smoking cigarettes behind the bowling alley. Definitely. But you can have a good time out there too.
So very good for the career. But anyway let's talk about the technical certificate program a little bit more you touched on that there's more in the pipe. You know if you could could you give us kind of a nutshell with that what we're doing there. Sure.
So the current short term technical certificate is a range of 21 to 25 semester hours. Classes you take into options but you know it kind of seems that you come in with no aviation or on the system background. So obviously they're good with the tour introduction high class but you know we cover things like the private part of ground school and the circuit meteorology standards right as a wall related to
I mean the same solutions to resource management and then they want to focus on modeling and simulations and using the program whole system toolkit which allows you to visualize and plan with data collection advice.
And then you've got a capstone or internship that's required for all the students. So we placed that down either by companies here today or not. They don't actually differentiate and they get to actually go in and work on the UAS related project. So you know it's a great experience for them.
So you know that was our foundational certificate and then like I say we're looking at shorter term certificates that are aligned at this semester hours and then be more focused and then we'll have that all kind of speed up into a two year degree in the next year or so. That sounds very exciting. I'm ready to move to Dayton and do it myself. And I'm going to have to wait until summer time.
You know it's t-shirt weather out here in California. A little overcast today but it's been nice. Okay well and you know we're almost at the three minute warning but you have some one day courses and maybe you can talk about that. Sure.
So we have a not for credit workforce development side and that's really for people that need either a faster spin up than you want to take out over a semester or the people that are employed in the industry. And so topics that we cover there are you know the age role. We have a precision agriculture for UAS course. We have U.S.
spatial information for UAS. Current standards and regs. We have a USMOL on that side as well. We have a class called COASMARK which is that aerospace active course that I mentioned and that one also is also online.
And we also just added an airwaves course which we've been kind of in a Latin component in our program. And in March here we're adding a first responder leadership course. So it's focused on the decision making process of how you apply as a leader in first responder communities. So those have been successful and we're happy to see enrollment actually as I mentioned increasing as the test sites were announced.
And I think people realized at least some decision was made. So a lot of good interest here in the state. Yeah, an excellent subject matter. So are any of these learning courses out in the field?
Yeah, so they don't have to be here at Simplair. We can travel to customer sites. Since they're not for credit they can be really run anywhere in the country or in the world. We've even gotten calls with people asking how can we go to the U.S.
and the public and run a course on precision ag. So some of those are just asking the question, but the fact that they're coming up on the radar is in line. And then again putting more of them online makes them a lot more flexible for people that can't take 500 a day or have to travel to their location. Sure, sure.
Gene, do you want to, I kind of ran with the ball here. Any comments?
No problem, no problem. I think what they're doing is, Andrew, is fantastic. A lot of your one-day courses I think there's a lot of folks that need to go through. Obviously the one that particularly intrigued me is your first responder course.
And I think you get that sort of thing out into the general public. I think we're going to get a lot better understanding of what you guys can do. Yeah, definitely. I think it's all perception.
People need to understand that there are all these benefits and like you said earlier, it's not all military application. So it's all the perception correct and everybody on board. Well, and you know the thing is when you do get it out there and you talk to people that are anti, you say, hey, we want to talk about feeding the hungry world. Who doesn't want to feed the hungry world and let's see your hands?
You know, our hands go up. So you know, it's incumbent upon us and the community to get out there and show people that we have their age. But anyway, we're out of time in our new half hour format. And Andrew, I want to thank you for coming on.
It was very informative, sounds very exciting. And I look forward to reading stories about Sunclair Community College in the future. Well, thank you very much Patrick and Gene. All right.
Well, good luck with that and we'll talk to you again in the future. Yeah, looking forward to it.