UAS News Podcast — 2013-03-15
Transcript
Okay, welcome to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast Series where we discuss the news and issues relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I'm your program host, Patrick Egan, and as always, let's say a warm welcome to our co-host, Mr. Gene Robinson. Hello, sir.
How are you doing today? I'm a little tired. You know, it's been kind of a wild and wooly week. How are you?
Well, we're having more fun than one FAA safety inspector can shake a stick at down here. So we're doing a lot of things down here and just getting on with the business. You're killing me. That's funny stuff.
Well, all right, this week's episode, episode number 42 was supposed to be live from UAS West 2013, but I went down there and I was supposed to speak on, you know, the commercial side of things. And then they had asked me to moderate or emcee the show, which I did. And it was great. I really enjoyed myself.
Lively conversation. And that's kind of what I like. I like when the speakers are up there and people in the audience are engaging them and things went back and forth. I don't know how far I'll get into that a little later in the show, but you know, that's what I like.
I like spirited discussion. I want to hear manufacturers talking to component manufacturers saying, hey, you know, this is what we want. And the component people saying, well, hey, if you could carry this, we could do that and yada yada. And it was so it was pretty interesting.
We'll get into that. I wanted to do it live, but between the sidebars, the moderating and the speaking myself, I just was, I was busier than that proverbial one armed paper hanger. So I was not able to pull off from there. And then, Gene, you were also on the road and you were.
Well, I wasn't exactly as far down the road as you went. But here in Austin, we have this little shindig that they call South by Southwest. And most people know that Austin is, of course, the live music capital of the world and all that and South by Southwest is there to showcase new musicians, old musicians, indie films, you name it. What was really kind of surprising to me is how much technology you've talked about down there.
And I was asked to be on a panel for the rise of the drones, as we have heard them called over and over again. And the sponsor was a new movie that's coming out that looks very interesting. And it's your typical Hollywood fare. But we were guests of Viceland and Motherboard TV.
And we basically had a roundtable or an open discussion on the state of the industry today, the state of regulation, privacy, and where we're headed. And I think there were some other folks out there. I think some of the 3D robotics guys were out there the day before us. And we got out there and started talking to a lot of different people about the civilian use and the good uses, which was encouraging to me because everybody really didn't want to hear about how they could help fire a missile from their unmanned aircraft.
They wanted to see what we could do to actually do some good. And it was very refreshing. I mean, there were a lot of folks there that had quadcopters, multirotors of some sort. And of course, I was standing there with a specter wing.
And it always grabbed a lot of attention. And there was some flying going on. And there was some interaction going on where a group put three of the small little bitty microcopters up. And they were doing the Harlem Shuffle and did a flip right there in front of us.
And I had to swat one away from my airplane because it kind of got a little loose there. But it was a good demonstration of what was going on out there, what could be done. Some really impressive hexacopters out there and quadcopters. A lot of live feeds, of course.
And it's right there in downtown Austin. And I wasn't going to say anything whether they should do it or not. But I watched. And I held my specter in my hand.
And I didn't fly down the concrete canyon there. But it was still good. And we ended up getting a lot of good exposure for civilian use. There was an individual there that actually flew around the Texas Capitol for a news set up.
And that wasn't the wisest choice he'd made in a long time because they pretty much lying out of him over it. But it was a good show. And it was good seeing that there were some folks out there that said, you know, there's some positive stuff that we need to look at. And we're about to throw the baby out with the bath water because everybody is trying to shut it down, which I think to date we're up to what, 33 states now, Patrick, is that correct, 33 states that have some sort of drone legislation in play?
Yeah, that's totally out of control. I, you know, some people have been contacting me too about, you know, what's RCAPA doing and can RCAPA do this and can we do that?
And, you know, I'd love to, I want to offer, you know, out there, anybody who's listening, support, you know, if you need us to write a letter or whatever else. I mean, there's a lot going on with that. And I wish that we could do more with that. But I mean, it's kind of frustrating.
I mean, we've been talking about this, Gene, for years that things like this may come up and we had to get in front of it and all the rest of that. And now, I mean, I'm just overwhelmed is what I would say. I, and I know we're getting off into the weeds here, but the requests for interviews is, it's just off the hook. I mean, even all of that stuff that I talked about doing this week, I had two interviews.
I had an interview with the National Journal and also Robot Magazine, which, I don't know if anyone's seen Robot Magazine, but I think it really caters to the next group of engineers and the people, the up and comers in this industry. You should check them out. They're pretty interesting. I don't want to get too far off of that legislation thing, but I can't, I don't even have the bandwidth to deal with it all.
I, you know, so I'm going to throw that right back on you. What do you think?
I'm kind of the same boat you are, Patrick. I've been getting hit from all sides on my, in my opinion and how have you been doing it and so on and so forth, especially since the search and rescue, the SAR side, really tends to be the most widely accepted if you look at the polls, that most people think that that's an appropriate use for drones. Huh. For some reason, I think we, we just lost Gene.
I don't know what happened there, but you know, isn't technology great? Anyway, that's okay. I'm sure he'll call back in, but that gives me an opportunity to talk about some other big news things and one of those big news things is the, I don't know if anybody had caught that on SUAS news, but we have decided to do the Small Unmanned Systems Business Expo and it kind of fed right into what Gene was talking about. You know, all of this privacy issues and the other issues with legislation and all of the states and you know, what are we going to do with that and the hand ringing?
We have offered up some solutions. I definitely believe that people should start reading their state, or writing their state representation and also their federal representation and say, hey, you know, there are positive uses of this thing. Even at the conference I was just at, primarily military, however, everyone was open to hearing about business and commercial uses for this and even those people have been doing business
and commercial uses. So, as I have been telling people, I see the iceberg out there, let's say, and I think it's time to grab the wheel and go hard over left and avoid it and really if we don't do something right now, we could be in danger of losing kind of the whole show.
And that may sound a little dramatic, but again, you know, look at what's out there. Even last night I was driving back from San Diego, it's midnight and coast to coast, they had a drone expert on and this guy is talking about the 30,000 drones that will be in the airspace, which I was one of the guys that came up with that number and that's a long story. I wasn't really happy with that number, but there was reasons that that came up. Anyway, I wanted to call in and talk about that because, you know, they had the drones dropping 500 pound bombs on people, yada, yada.
I mean, it really was wrong. The information was wrong. The guy was not really an expert. Gene, you're back on.
This is exactly the reason why I wouldn't use cell service for a C2 link to my unmanned aircraft. I love technology. Anyway, I used that opportunity while you fell off the turnip truck to launch right into the Small Unmanned Systems Business Expo. And the ethos behind it is I was explaining to the audience, you know, the iceberg analogy, I see the iceberg, I'm grabbing the wheel, we're going hard left.
Because of the subject matter that you were just talking about with all of the legislation and everything in the news, you know, and how we felt really there was no alternative but to plant the flag. And so we kind of dreamed this up over here at SUAS News. SUAS News is basically going all in as the angel investor on this one. We have no choice.
We got to put our money where our mouth is. You know, there's been lots of hand-wringing and I'm sure you got a lot of hand-wringing too. I get a lot of that. Oh, yeah, what are we going to do?
And I say, okay, straight off the bat, man, here you go. You want to know what we're going to do?
We need some money. We got to invest in the regulatory conversation. I've been saying it. How many years have you heard me saying this?
See, 2007. Let's see, carry the one. Oh, about five years or so, six years. Exactly.
And even before that, that we had to get in front of this conversation. So now we're here. I'm still talking about investing in this regulatory conversation and investing in the political conversation, lots of hand-wringing and I'm telling you I'm getting really frustrated with people. I don't want to again sound like Debbie Downer but they just, as soon as you start saying, well, it costs money to travel, it costs, it takes time to write letters, it takes time to call elected representatives, it takes time to do all of this stuff.
So we need, as a community, to start putting a little money in the kitty for this and that's usually where people fall off the turnip truck. So that's... Well, and you know, really, Patrick, when you get right down to it, businesses are being scared away. Anytime if any venture capitalist or any entrepreneur who was looking at getting into a potential market did their due diligence and looked and saw what the resistance was being mounted to it, they would run away in the droves and that's what we're getting right now.
Well, there's lots of uncertainty but like any other industry, you know, again, I'm going to point to the commercial space. They came together, everybody was in the tent and man, they looked at the problem as a whole and they went there and again, the FAA is more of a outside participant instead of what we have where they're a roadblock or a boat anchor as I like to call it. Anyway, so that was kind of what was behind the international business exposition. First of its kind, we are not going to...
you will not see any air superiority gray aircraft. They're not invited. The military, they already have shows. We're not really...
We don't want to reinvent that wheel. We won't really even have any police. I'm just not really interested again. That's another focus of other shows.
This show is a show where you're going to come and you're going to hear about people that have made this a business. You're going to hear about applications and I also want to invite people that need this. I'm going to invite the Rice Growers Association, Wine Growers Association, some other agricultural associations in Northern California and I would like them to come and say, hey, these are the issues that we have. Can you help us?
The people you're going to hear from is going to be Tad McGeer from AeroVell. This guy was Aerosond and ScanEagle. A lot of people don't understand that ScanEagle was invented to find tuna. When we talk about tuna, I wasn't really a tunaologist, but maybe you didn't know this either, Gene, but a sashimi grade tuna can go for like $6,000.
Yes, I knew that. Then somebody else was telling me that they sold some record fish, some record tuna for, I don't know, I don't know if it was half a million dollars or a million dollars. I forget the statistic, but I'm starting to think, hey, that might be a real commercial use here, the tuna boat, Charlie Tuna. Charlie Tuna was always kind of like they'd sandbag him as a loser, but I didn't know there was that kind of money in the tuna.
You're going to hear- Yes, I kind of got involved with that a couple of years ago. There's a couple of folks in your neck of the woods that are trying to push that. I know that there are several efforts in that arena. Well, that and then there's, I was talking to another guy at the UAS West Show who did some stuff.
They did some underwater stuff with salmon farming and the money that's in that. I mean, this is what you're going to hear. You're also going to hear from this Patrick Egan guy. He's going to speak and he's one of my favorites.
We're also going to hear from this other dude, Gene Robinson. Maybe you've heard of him. He wrote a book called First to Deploy. I didn't get into all this story yet.
Well, you know, I don't know, but I hear he gives a good presentation. You're going to hear from him. We're going to have Jerry Lemieux from the Unmanned Vehicle University, and they're actually going to offer some two-day seminars on UAV or Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle Fundamentals, Unmanned Ground Vehicle Fundamentals, Unmanned Sea Vehicle Fundamentals, and small UAV design. I know.
So you can come out there. These classes, these two-day things will be about, I think it's $9.95. You could sign up. We talked about them before.
You get a good high altitude, let's say, view of the industry. You can actually talk about it. You could probably go to a meeting and understand what people are talking about. You can do that.
We're going to hear from Chris Anderson from 3D Robotics. They're also a sponsor. They're going to be there. He's going to talk.
They'll have a booth. We're going to have Chad Partridge from 2D3 Sensing, and they do some nice stuff with geo-referencing video. He's going to speak. He's also a board member of AUVSI.
We have some other people that we're going to try and bring in here. We still don't have them announced yet because this is kind of a, I'm flying by the seat of my pants. There are sponsorships available, and people keep, I mean, my mailbox after we broke the story the other day, my SUS News mailbox is full. I thought I haven't had time to go through there.
I still don't have all the sponsorships worked out, and the price levels, and all the rest of that. But there are a lot. If you go to the news story on the SUS News website, there are contacts for people if you're interested in sponsorship opportunities. I still haven't even worked out the ticket prices or any of that, but I'm going to work on that this weekend, maybe while I'm sleeping.
But I'm really excited about it. The feedback has been very, I'm overwhelmed with the feedback. People are all in. They want in.
And I guess maybe I should give the dates. What do you think?
All right. You think it'd be a good idea since we're pretty much committed on this. Maybe. Okay.
Everybody get your ciphering devices out. July 25, 26, 2013, San Francisco, California, at the beautiful Golden Gate Club at the Presidio Trust. This venue, Gene, is beautiful. One whole wall is all windows.
You look out on the bay, you get to see the Golden Gate, Alcatraz. There's a lot of stuff to do. We tried to line the show up. So people come out, you can maybe do a little sightseeing.
You might have heard that San Francisco is kind of a nice city. Or Napa's only, I don't know, half hour away. You can shoot up there if you're into wine. Some folks like wine, or so I've read somewhere.
It's beautiful. You know, come on out and hear some good conversation. And then, you know, hang out and do some sightseeing. Come out and see us in California.
It's going to be fun. If you want more information, you can go to www.susbexpo.com and learn more information. The site just kind of went up. Again, seed of the past.
Keep checking back. We'll have more information as we work that out on the site. Yeah, and you might want to reiterate there, Patrick, that is not SUAS News. It is SUSB.
Correct? B, that's correct. Expo.com. You are correct.
Thank you. Want to make that clear?
Everybody knows what that one's about. Exactly. It is a little bit different. But we grabbed that.
Again, this is the first of its kind international business exposition for unmanned systems. We already have media interest. I think Reuters, they're going to come out. MSNBC said they want to come out.
Robot Magazine talked to Tom yesterday. He wants to come out. He wants to be more involved in what's happening. So it should be a good time.
And I'm looking forward to it. Again, you can come out and you can meet Gene and myself and the rest of the SUAS News family. It's going to be a shindig, as it were. Sounds good to me.
I'm ready for it. Well, I'm getting ready for it anyway. We've got a lot to do. We do have a lot to do.
Talk to some other people today that see, you know, that we're saying, wow, you know, this idea is great. It's not going to be too techy, not too geeky. You guys threw business in there and that's great because there's a lot of people who are ready to do some business. Now, one other footnote and then we're going to move on.
I did call and leave a couple of messages at the UASIO, which is the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Office. And I did invite someone or some representation from them to come out and speak at the show if they so desire. I've not heard back yet, but I think it would be an excellent opportunity for someone from that office to come out and address the business community. Your thoughts on that, Gene?
Well, if we can get somebody out there, that would be a great thing. There's a couple of people that come to mind that I think would be pretty good and some folks that they could send us that could scare us to death. But, you know, hey, that's just the way it goes, right?
You throw the invitation out there, you take whichever one comes up in the travel pool next, right? Exactly. And I mean, you know, it's just one of those things. I mean, some people, it's part of the conversation.
I was supposed to, I was interviewed for, there's a thing coming up at V Lab here in Silicon Valley and it's some Stanford and MIT alum and they're going to have a talk and it's basically the drone revolution or something like that. I'm paraphrasing takes off. They had asked me, I got interviewed for about an hour. They were asking me about some of the issues of this and they told me that I was too negative for their program or pessimistic.
And, you know, I disagree with that. I don't, I think if you're not educating people or giving people the whole story, you know, I could do rah rah all day long and people kind of beat me up for not doing rah rah all day long. But the reality is before you invest your money and we're speaking from experience here. Yes, we are.
We're definitely speaking. Yeah. I mean, before you decide you're going to jump in and, you know, drop, you know, $100,000 or $50,000 in three, four, five, ten years of your life, you might want to get, you might, my advice, get educated. Gene, what would you add on that?
Well, I couldn't reiterate that sentiment more, Patrick, because you and I both have done it. We've seen many, many systems go up for sale for pennies on the dollar because that education wasn't undertaken and they didn't realize how much they were going to have to do to get their systems in the air. And I bet the education is the most important thing that any business person can do. And I think that it's going to, the business expo is going to help either allay a lot of fears or give them more confidence anyway of which direction to go to in this industry because it is coming.
There is no two ways about it. It is coming. But timing is everything. You got to get that timing right.
You are correct, sir. It is coming. There's no stopping it. I mean, we witness that all the time.
And people, it's starting to make it out to mainstream. The media are starting to understand that this is already going on. It's already happening. You know, you've been interviewed about it.
I've been interviewed about it. It's happening. So let's start getting out some, the best practices type of thing so we don't have a JFK. Let's, you know, there's insurance available which kind of, it just blows me away.
The people that provided insurance or provide insurance for this, I've tried to drag them along, tried to get them to advertise on SUAS news. I've tried to get, I've even offered, I said, come on out to the expo, nothing. I don't know. You know, maybe they don't want to sell insurance.
You know, I'm in business. I want to sell stuff. You know, I want to make money. Doesn't want to sell insurance?
Wait a minute. That's what I said. I mean, it's like I'm down a rabbit hole here or something. I don't know.
You know, that's okay. There's other guys. I talked to a guy today who's interested in coming out and he tells me he represents a lot of insurance companies, underwriters, and these people are ready to do business and want to get in. So there's going to be, that'll be great.
We'll have some insurance people there. I think we're going to have some legal considerations there. It's going to be great. Don't miss it.
We're also going to try and another thing that we're going to do with this show is we do have, since this is a small business expo, and if you look at that at the SBA, you'd be surprised how much money a small business can make and still be considered a small business. I haven't hit that yet. No, I haven't hit it. But one thing we do want to do is I want to offer a table setup for small businesses that make say under $200,000.
That's reasonable. And instead of paying $10,000 for a booth or $5,000 for a booth or even $3,000 for a booth for a really small or micro business, I want to offer some tables out there. I don't know how many there are, again, flying by the seat of my pants, but we do have opportunities that are actually under $1,000 for a small business to set up a table and show what they have. Again, go to the, go to the SUS News website.
There's a contacts are on there for your country, who to contact for these opportunities. This is something totally different. Most people I talk to, I got a small business, I can't spend $10,000, you know. I understand that.
We're trying to make something for everyone to come and be part of the conversation. Also, we're going to offer some discounted student entry tickets. I want some of the new blood in here, some of the new generation to be able to come in here, and look at the opportunities, realize the opportunities for the future. So we are putting our money where our mouth is.
The other part of that too, is we are going to, some of the proceeds are going to go to the Silicon Valley chapter of AUBSI. We do a lot of educational outreach and community outreach, and I want to be able to fund some of that. And as always, just like we do here at SUS News, some of the, if there's any profit, some of those proceeds will also go right back into the global air space integration effort, because we believe in being part of the community. That's kind of our ethos here at SUS News.
And, you know, same deal, and that brings me back to the safety meeting thing, you know, because like I said, we were going to give Gene money to cover some of the overhead to go to the safety meeting thing. Anything back on that, Gene, while we're here?
Well, actually, contact was made, I made some contact later on, and the individual that was originally heading that up is no longer with that agency. And there has, to my knowledge, there has not been a designated manager for that program. So it apparently is a pilgrim, I'm sure, affected by the sequester. So nothing yet, and it's unfortunate because I thought that was going to be a good start at getting a good conversation going.
Yes, that's too bad, but, you know, what if the offer still stands, so hopefully that thing will come back and we can get some guy that, you know, has a little bit of experience with the technology on one of these things for a change. Yeah, you know, something to consider. Yeah, let's get a guy. Oh, we could go into that too.
There's so much we could go into. There's another show being put on here, and I don't know if I talked about it on the podcast. It's being put on by a pro-aviation group, and it's the California perspective for civil law, civil operations. And I called the gentleman up that was putting it on, and one of the keynotes, speakers, is the director for the Center for Asymmetrical Warfare.
Oh, how nice. Well, you know, we got a little more hothead going here because I'm slow on the uptake, you know, but maybe you can explain to me where asymmetrical warfare dovetails with commercial or civilian, for that matter. I thought that, oh gosh. I'm going to go on, Patrick.
Yeah, me too, but then things started to get contentious. And then I asked, I was like, well, you know, is this group, are you guys, I'm just asking, but are you guys a pro-aviation group?
It started going, it was going south. And then the last, the kicker on the deal before I was hung up on it, I'm sure that's going to probably really surprise some folks. Not only, not on the Christmas card list, but yes, the phone's been slammed down a few times on the kid here. But the last one was, one of the big vendors was going to speak about search and rescue.
And I thought that was kind of interesting because I was like, wow, really? Who has any search and rescue experience among the DOD vendors?
And they will remain nameless because for some reason they think I'm after them personally. I'm not, but you know, anyway, the guy says, yeah, yeah, they're the only people in the country that have got any experience with SAR. And I go, really?
I didn't hear that they had been doing any SAR. It kind of comes as a shock to me. So where have they been doing the SAR?
Well, you know, over there in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I said, well, you know, I don't know what your definition of SAR is, but those are combat operations and that's not SAR. And I don't see how click. So anyway, as far as they knew, they were the only people doing SAR.
I didn't even get to Mr. Gene Robinson. But anyway, hey, man, you know, we're out here. You really want to have a conversation about business and civilian uses for this.
I'd be happy to talk about it. I don't know. We've been trying to talk about it for a long time there and we've always been ready to talk about it and hey, we take our show on the road, right?
We do take our show on the road. I did call some of the state folks that are sponsoring that and I said, you know, we talked about it and went through it. It's funny when I call people up and they give me this. I get this.
It happens everywhere and I call it the sandbagging. But I'll tell you right now, there's only a few people out there that can sandbag me. And so they give me this long gobbledygook and I'm like, I try and cut them. I'm like, hey, save yourself some time because I've been there.
I know it all. I know the players. I know where the bones are buried. So all this stuff you're telling me here, you know, I've already heard it all.
My concern is when you start saying, well, you know, we got a huge DOD vendor X and they're going to tell us about business uses. I'm going to tell you right now, I don't know any commercial uses for something that costs $36,000 an hour to fly. Sorry. I just, I don't know of any.
Can you think of any off the top of your head, Gene? There's a couple of Rockstar applications, you know, that we've heard about. Yes. That's about all I can come up with.
I don't have that kind of money and, you know, most municipalities don't either. So it's got to be in the Rockstar category. You know, I'm just thinking, actually I do. I just have found a use.
And when Brangelina or whatever they're calling that pair get married. Oh, there you go. Global Hawk, TMZ, you might want to call them up because I think, you know, you can see a lot from 65,000 feet. I think we found a commercial viable mission for Global Hawk, Gene, today.
Wow. More than fair just for them. That's what I'm saying, man. So, you know, when they're having that wedding, TMZ needs the photo for, you know, people or star or whoever they sell that to on their website or whatever.
They can afford to hire the Global Hawk. So I guess, you know, maybe I was wrong. We found a use for that. But besides that, most of us that have regular lives, like you said, I live here in California.
They're talking about closing schools and getting rid of cops and all the rest of that. And I just don't see where we're going to be able to afford that. But anyway, I want to talk about the Technology Training Corporation show, the UAS West. That was actually a great show.
I will say it was definitely more military centric, but I actually like going to those shows because I give those people a perspective that they have, don't see or don't get to hear. And I've got to the point now where almost everyone in the room had heard, either had heard me speak before or knew who I was or saw UAS News or listened to the podcast. And I will say that everybody was very encouraging. When I got people, they wake up every morning and the first site they go to is SUS News.
And they love it. And I say, well, you know, we're trying to offer service to people, trying to be objective, we're trying to find income streams for people. And even some of the people that were at the show are looking for capabilities that have come out of, let's say, the business perspective or let's say business sector. And I would like to also say, you know, even the DOD vendors and so they have their place.
And when it's supporting the war fighter, I'm all for it, you know, and there is definitely a place for it. Yeah, and I don't think anybody disagrees with that. It's like, you know, there's some other gray areas and I'm not going to get into them now because we only have 10 minutes left. But supporting that and doing the job and the ISR, I mean, yeah, that's what I do for the Army and stuff.
I don't know, yeah, I'm all for that. And I would like to see even the small business guys, if there is a possibility for income streams or whatever, I would at least like to put those people in touch with those people that are looking for capabilities and certain applications. It's all about income streams for me and the introductions, whatever else. I'm going to talk about some of the speakers.
Like we had Dr. Alton Roe Migg Jr. from, he works at the Skunk Works. And, you know, he brought up some interesting idea.
And one of them was, he was talking about the smart crow. And it was a video he was referencing on YouTube. And we were talking about the word autonomous. And what does that mean?
Some people say, well, you know, if you program something, it's light-of-way points, it's autonomous. But he disagreed with that. No, I agree. Go ahead.
I'm sorry. No, no, that's exactly, you know, where this is going. So he says, well, is it the ability to also learn and or adapt?
Okay. And the example he gave was this crow, right?
And somebody did a study and it was in Japan. And the crows would get a nut, you know, and they can't, they don't have opposable thumbs, I don't think. So they can't use nutcrackers. So they got to open the nuts, right?
So they would fly over a road or concrete and drop the nuts. And then sometimes they would break open and sometimes they wouldn't. So then eventually the crows started dropping them on the road and the cars would run them over. And they could get at the meat or whatever.
But the crows started to learn that if you were out in the roadway, you might get run over. So this whole deal progresses, right?
So the crows are dropping the nuts in the crosswalk, you know, and the cars are running them over in the crosswalk. But then the crows realize that, you know, the cars aren't in the crosswalk all the time or whatever. So they would wait on the curb. The nut gets ran over.
The light changes and the cars don't come and they go out there. They waddle out there, pick up the nuts and walk off. And that is, you know, an example of a community or several members of that community learning and adapting and overcoming a problem. And that's, is that autonomy.
I agree with that. We're not there, you know, with the flying robot thing. But very interesting subject matter and something to think about. I haven't went and looked for the video, but I do want to find that.
Because that's interesting. I have seen that video that you referenced. And even on the panel that I was on, I've made reference to that in that, you know, even though it flies from point A to point B, it's just what it's been told to do. It can't make the decision how to go from point A to point B.
Right. There's no way to decide which, you know, if there's an obstacle there or if it encounters an obstacle, what should it do?
I mean, our aircraft, I hate to say this, but to put it bluntly, are pretty stupid. How about the operators?
No, I'm just teasing. Hey, hey, hey, hey, wait. I'm just joking. But it's something to think about.
But these are the types of conversations that are had at these technology training corporation shows. You know, people ask me about these shows and I tell them, look, you know what?
I mean, I'm going to try and talk about a couple more people, but it's an intimate deal where you can come off and sidebar with people. A lot of the other shows, I go to the different shows for different reasons. But the real beauty of the technology training corporation shows are they're usually, you know, 150, 200 people. People get up there and talk and there's a lot of opportunity to sidebar with people that have certain solutions or certain application needs or, you know, some of the other people.
Like I'm going to talk about some of this real quick. Another guy that spoke there was Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Murray, call sign Astro. And he is the commanding officer of Marine Unmanned Vehicle Squadron 1 at 29 Palms, California. And he had a pretty impressive manned pilot career.
Anyway, he's running one of the shadow programs and some other programs. And he's very big into accident investigation and faults and what happened and from certain deployments. He's got a wealth of information. Now this guy, I'm going to try and put him in touch with my contacts at NTSB because he's got a lot of information to share.
So this is the cross-pollination that I'm talking about. And also, I sidebarred with him and I talked about that. Remember the story that we ran at SUS News about the exclusive we had with the collision or when the C-130 kind of overtook the shadow. You remember that, Gene?
Yeah, I do remember that. Okay, well the investigation is done. That's what he says. And that should be public information and I'm going to try and locate that.
But I will kind of, I'm paraphrasing, but and the shadow crew was cited for something but it was a capability that they didn't possess. But the C-130 had some issues that they were cited for. So I'm going to try and find that information and we'll follow up that story. But again, this was something I was able to find out or ascertain through sidebar.
Very interesting. Yeah. And he's got a lot of good information to share. So hopefully we'll get him in with the guys over at NTSB and he might have something to add to that conversation.
A lot of people about, you know, less risk, cheaper, faster testing and evaluation capabilities for UAS. That was Mr. Steve Palmer talked about that. That was pretty interesting.
They're talking about setting up test programs for that. Let me see here. I'm looking, some of the stuff was military stuff that I had been a party to with some of the programs that I was on but wouldn't really apply to this show. You know, there was some stuff about incorporating UAS into the National Airspace System.
And I will say that people are all over the map on that one. Boy, I'll tell you about the timelines, when it's going to happen, how it's going to happen, how advanced that's going to be. Oh, another deal that we had Colonel Dana Hesseimer and he, Air National Guard, RPA, Domestic Operations Integration. And one thing that he alluded to is they had a PUM.
And I don't know what the acronym is off the top of my head. I wrote it down. But I asked him about that if it's public. Because basically it's there, how they're going to operate, how they can operate in the NAS and what they can do.
And I asked him if that information was public because what I'd like to do is probably FOIA that and then do a new story about that. And again, bring some daylight on these operations and let people understand what these things will be doing. And I think if we're more informed about that, then there'll be, let's say, people, less to fear. So I'm going to, you know, try and come back and then follow up on that one.
We're almost out of time. We're at about 2.30. So I did want to talk about Mr. Chuck Johnson was there.
Good guy. Talked to him before. His talk was on NASA's UAS integration of the National Airspace System project. He is heading that project up.
Some of the people that worked for him were already on the podcast for the NASA RPA science episode that we did, which was, that's been our most popular podcast with over 26,000 downloads. Mike Logan and Jeff Bland. And they're working a project. And actually, that was another thing I did on the drive down to San Diego on Monday.
I was interviewed by one of his people about some of the human factors issues for unmanned aircraft systems. And I have this thing about GCS and interface common operability and trying to come up with a standard for that that people can recognize for different systems. That was very interesting. He expressed interest in coming on the podcast.
Some of these guys, I'm going to try and get them on the podcast. And he expressed interest in coming on. So that will be a good show for the future. We had David Crutch from Aeron Labs.
And he talked about small UAS on the front line, military and public safety. And rubbed it in a little bit about, because they're up there in Canada. And he rubbed that in a little bit about the SFOCs and the operation that they are allowed to do in Canada. And so we talked a little bit about that and the difference between the SFOC process and the COA process and then being able to do commercial operations in Canada.
Very interesting conversation. Maybe we'll have him on. And one of my favorite guests was that Patrick Egan guy. He came on and talked about a few things.
And I'm hoping to, I think we may have a slide share for SQS News. And I'm going to put that PowerPoint on that. If not, I think the Technology Training Corporation, they have a website. And they have some of their stuff is up there.
But we'll get that out to people so they can see what I talked about and some of the issues that I brought up. Again, 45 minutes is gone, Gene. Believe it or not. Yeah, I'm not surprised.
And you know, interestingly enough, I'll just get this in real quick. Apparently another business in Minneapolis was called and told to cease and desist their photography operations. And you know, the FAA is still out there and they're still working. So, you know, let's people be lulled into a false sense of security.
They're still watching. They are still watching. And again, you know, I'm going to close with the get involved in the regulatory conversation. Maybe we'll talk more about that next week.
Anyway, Gene, thanks again for your insight and input. I don't know. These shows are gold, man. I just, I wish there was something out there like this eight years ago when I started.
And I might have got into something else like dog catching. I don't know. Patrick, have a good week. You too, sir.
Bye bye. See you, sir. Bye.