 It's still January, folks. Sorry, Ted Rolster here. Friday afternoon, downtown Honolulu. Where are the drone leads? Our weekly show on Think Tech, Hawaii, where we bring you the latest news and latest opinions and information on this very important subject. Where are the drone leads? Today, joining us on our show all the way from Washington DC, which is probably not here in Hawaii, is Chuck Devaney. Chuck, welcome on board again. Thanks for having me on the show, Ted. OK, and you found yourself a loha shirt in Washington DC. That's pretty cool. Yep, yep. Chuck was probably our first guest on this show three years ago, or thereabouts, and has been on several times since. But we lost him from the Hawaii Enclaves to those of the halls of Washington DC. We're going to get you back sometime, Chuck. That could only be a dream at this point, Ted. But if there is an opportunity, I would definitely consider it. How about the GSA conference in May? Are you coming out for that? Actually, I'm probably not going to make that. I've got another engagement that has arisen, something that started a little less than nine months ago. So around that time, I think my time will be pretty much here. So probably not. But you're late to speak. OK, so things are changing, and that's all good, all for the good. Just in case people don't realize or recognize what that picture in the background is here in our studio, that's actually a close-up taken from a dash cam in a Super Cub PA-18 during a landing into a very complex environment. And that V-angle there is the old V-strut. For all people who fly PA-18s or J3s or even 7ACs, they'll recognize the V-strut. And that's a close-up from a dash cam. Anyway, Chuck, we got on the table here one of our favorite subjects, a UAS that you and I have been working on together for three or four years now. And things have gone a long way, Chuck, since we first met over this very exact object here on the table, which is a gate wing professional mapper. I think gate wing has gone beyond this to a higher level of systems that Trimble bought them. And it's a lot of motion in the business, a lot of motion in technology. And you've taken your experience at UH, where you were using unmanned air systems, UAVs, or drones to do beach erosion mapping and such. And you've moved off to Washington, DC, where a whole different world. Tell us what it's been like, Chuck. What have you learned that's different? Where do you see things going from your new perspective? Well, Ted, why it's different for me now. It's interesting. So I was using and applying UAS to a specific problem, in this case, accuracy of ortho imagery in denied environments. So kind of after all the work that we did in the Philippines, it kind of brought me to want to do disaster mapping and beach erosion. Of course, we did a lot of different work for a lot of different disciplines. Also, Army Natural Resources at the top of Kahana'iiki, the back of Makua Valley. So we had the opportunity to do a lot of work and a lot of mapping. But ever since I came to the DC area, I haven't been doing a whole lot of mapping. I've been doing some flying, but it's been predominantly building airplanes for people. So during the time, and I think that you can remember this, you told me, if I wanted to go to the Philippines, I had to have the same competency as I am to be able to build these things so I could be more effective in the field. Well, I took that to heart and I just locked myself in that lab in physical science for however long it took me. But that kind of put me in a position where I was able to build the aircraft, the open source stuff and the DGI stuff in both fixed wing and multi-rotor configurations. So I got here, people found out that that's what I could do. So that's what I've been doing. I've just been back in that lab, stuck building airplanes. That's pretty cool, Chuck. And a long way from the days in the lab down here at UH, in fact, you and I had a conversation once in those labs about using inflatable structure, inflatable structural technology in order to make these things shippable to the Philippines or any other place by rolling them up, letting the air out of them, roll them up and then pump them up on site. We just came across an operation up in Alaska that actually using inflated structures these days and we're working with them on how that might translate into configurations that are useful in the sense of the conversation we had. So a lot of things have changed, a lot of things have moved forward. The world of sensors, the world of miniaturization, LIDAR is now down to what, a half a pound for a LIDAR? About 200 grams, yeah. They might have a little bit smaller, but you have to go really, really low and you have to go really slow and you only get one return. But there's, if you wanna get up into the, more of the three pound range, you can get something that's pretty, pretty trick. And so things, even in that short three years you've been involved here, it's been a lot of improvement in capability and improvement in technology, miniaturization, reliability, all those things have changed a lot. Have you ever seen in your own life, anything change as fast as what we've experienced here? Probably kind of about the 97, 98 range where everybody was trying to go as fast as possible to make the United States digital before Canada, well, Canada beat us. But during that time is when you started to see the evolution of the cell phone. It started to be voice over or voice mailed and voice over IP, stuff like that. So people were moving information, voice data and data pretty quickly. And then this has been a complete and total eruption. We have seen so much change and so many different technologies and disciplines and processes drive the technology and vice versa. It's been kind of an exponential kind of crazy climb. So moving even faster than cell phones, right? Yeah. And then literally moving faster than cell phones by aviating. But that brings up another really interesting point that you and I were talking about recently and have discussed before. That is the way that this information can be distributed, can be assimilated by people, can be understood, how it fits their lifestyle, how it fits their values, how it fits the threats against them and such. So this rapid evolution of technology that's kind of in your face is it requires a socialization, requires a community outreach, requires community involvement. So one thing that we've taken on here after realizing that and like to welcome you as part of that is for 2017, taken on the commission of community involvement as the main necessary piece to evolve and push this technology forward and make it useful. Have you seen that sort of sentiment being played out in DC? Well, there's a DC drone users group here and I think they have a lot of involvement, a lot of racers but they're all kind of stuck inside the SFRA. So they've got to come outside. So in order to operate a drone, it's been a little bit in terms of like outreach outside of academia, that's pretty much been it. There's a lot of, there's a lot of racing going on. So I think that's getting a lot more of the kids involved and then of course the outreach from certain individuals and certain institutions in STEM and STEAM programs and high schools. So take it out of the air, get rid of the whole FAA component and put a tether on it and stick it underwater. It's kind of the same sort of concept where you're taking the man out of the equation and teaching the kids. So I've actually been a part of a couple of those projects where we helped some 10th graders build a couple of ROVs and they put it together faster and I think we could have put it together. I had experience once, I was doing some work in an NSTA cage flying inside a cage doing obstacle avoidance and such as part of a human factors issue. They're looking at the hand controller, the video of the actual bird and then the obstacle clearance and all this and they're judging performance based on your ability to sense what's going on from the ground controller. I'm really old and it's been doing this for a long time. The guy who ran the cage came over and said, let me try that, he's like 45 or 50, picked it up and without much coaching he's able to operate better than I was. And then a professor who was there came by, this is University of Texas in that system and he said, look, my 12 year old grandson likes to fly these things, would you mind showing him what you're doing? And I say, I just gave him the controller. The bird's flying, it's in the cage, gave the kid the controller, no lessons, no words at all. He's making it hop around that cage, like there's no tomorrow. So that happened. So anyway, that whole issue of getting this technology accepted is really interesting and we're, I wouldn't say we're facing that but we're gonna be taking that on as part of this Pan-Pacific Unmanned Air Systems Test Range Complex, the Hawaii component of the Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Mississippi, and Iceland lash up. So I'd like to ask you though, on that same account, realizing we have this sanctioned laboratory concept of a test range, which is unlimited to, it's not limited to 107. The whole idea is to go beyond 107, which is the current level of certification you can get, and examine and test and cause to fail and cause to succeed, those things that go way, way, way beyond 107. Beyond line of sight, cluster operations, swarm operations, counter drone, and operations at night over people and such. And beyond line of sight doesn't mean just over the hill, it means operate the thing in Hawaii with a ground station in Nebraska, for example, or something like that. So again, from your perspective and experience, what you picked up in DC, how would you see the missions that would be important for this kind of a FAA test range to take on? What would those missions be? Well, one that comes to mind relatively quickly would be a large air shift to carry cargo across the Pacific. What a great test area to be able to do that because it's very sparsely populated. So that would be an unmanned, interesting, okay. If it would travel slow, it'd probably travel roughly the same speed as an actual freighter and probably consume less energy and carry a comparable payload. So that's one thing that kind of pops in my head that would be quick and easy and something that doesn't carry any ordinance. It's helping the environment. That would help people understand that those that are at least having a hard time dealing with it and kind of change the whole national and international conversation about the topic. That certainly would. That would be a long range, lighter than air transportation system. Yeah, and it's got lift, it's not like a multi-rotor that's got a bunch of scary spinning blades and horrible endurance. We're talking about something that would have a forward flight component and use, I don't know what they would use in terms of gas. I know we're getting really, really short on helium, but perhaps there's another lighter than air alternative. So that would be something if that could get worked out and I know that it's being worked out. Somebody just sent me a link to a company that's been working with NASA in carrying something the size of a container. Well, could you just scale it so it could take several containers, perhaps? Who knows? And then also search and rescue, swarm search and rescue. Multiple units out working with each other to completely blanket and map the ocean surface looking for temperature differences, things floating in the water after a crash. That could probably be very quickly deployed if it's not already airborne at 50, 60, 70,000 feet because you don't gotta worry about a lot of keeping a pilot conscious in an aircraft. So that's gonna take the cooperation of a lot of different parts and links. Let's hold that the cooperation word is really important here. Let's just hold that thought for a moment and take our first break and go back and develop more of that concept of cooperation at that scale. Got it. Aloha, this is Kayleigh Akina with the weekly Ehana Kako. Let's work together program on the ThinkTech Hawaii broadcast network Mondays at two o'clock PM, movers and shakers and great ideas. Join us. We'll see you then, Aloha. Thank you for watching ThinkTech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at one PM where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and Aloha and thanks for watching. Aloha, my name is Richard Emory and I host Kondo Insider. We talk about issues facing the Kondo Association throughout Hawaii and talk about solutions. When you think about it, about one third of our population lives in some form of common interest real estate. We broadcast every Thursday at three PM. Please tune in and thank you, Aloha. We're back here, folks. Ted Ralston and our guest, Chuck Devaney, in Washington, D.C. We're having a 6,000-mile Skype version of ThinkTech Hawaii's where the drone leads program today. And we're just talking before the break about the incredible scale that Chuck just suggested of a program that would have a lot of immediate and long-lasting benefit that could be something explored and tested together and in piece parts in something like the Pan-Pacific unmanned aerial system test range complex. In fact, I don't think any of the other test sites could do that. We have Alaska, we have Oregon, we have, you get the whole ocean in between. So Chuck gave us a thought here of taking a real challenge, a real step forward here. But we'd have to probably start small before we scale up and think of things that would be within that scope that can be done locally here, which would be probably airspace integration in the approach and departure domains of something like that. So we'd have, just thinking that thing through, we'd have the air traffic situation, we'd have landowners to think about. So a location on the coast that would be on the island coast that has no significant land ownership issues in an area where there's not a lot of air traffic, sounds like Lanai, to me, would be... What about, what if the exchange doesn't actually have to happen on land? What if the airship actually deploys a pod and then it just gets kind of pulled in by a tug the rest of the way? A drop in the ocean and then pull it across? Okay, tug. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting, so there's all kinds of, but this then leads to the other issue. There's so much of this opportunity and flexibility in the future. How do we even grab our arms around what's a defined potential solution? How do we optimize these really complex potential paths forward and come up with systems that are gonna be useful, take advantage of the technology and not give us any threats? That's a philosophical discussion, John. Well, how do we do that? We just did it, we just put it out there there. Either somebody's already thought of it or it's gonna happen because that's usually just kind of how things go, I think. But I'm not really sure I'm the first person that's thought of this. That's the first thing that's popped in my mind about what can I possibly do that's relatively anemic or not anemic, I shouldn't say, but non-invasive and kind of docile and would help out many, many things and you can test it out over probably the most sparsely populated area on the face of the planet. Which would be the Pacific Ocean. If you really wanted to put something to the test like that, you'd wanna go maybe Lenai Maui and back a few times and get, you know, deal with all of the different approaches into Kahului. This is a most interesting and most complex thought that you suggested to us. Moving from Hawaii to Washington, DC has changed the things that go on inside your head, Chuck. Yeah, well, you know, I get exposed to a lot of stuff. I get exposed to a lot of people making claims that don't seem like they're possible and but they've got cool drawings. I get exposed to a lot of different theory about, you know, what the stuff could be used for. Especially in this area, especially with a lot of the, you know, up and coming infrastructure needs and inspections. You know, there's a lot of different things that it could be used for here and also with search and rescue. So, you know, kind of going back to the whole issue about, you know, the national conversation, social acceptance, you know, search and rescue is having an issue with that because of that issue. So, you know, a few positive use cases might, you know, remedy that. Also, if there could be, you know, you kind of have to have the mission in place, right? So, you don't want to have to have an aircraft sitting around that's purposed just for an accident, waiting around for an accident. No, that thing needs to be checked in the coastline once a day or once every couple of days. And all of that data, you know, looking for any, you know, change detection or object detection or any sort of environmental concern, question that. So, you have to think of multi-purposing these systems so that you do take care of the, spreading the investment over a range of potential users or applications, but have it available for disaster or emergency situations when and if needed and call upon it. Kind of like the civil air patrol operates or Team Rubicon. Right, and then, you know, we're not talking about aircraft that are, you know, a foam plane that I put together. I put a camera in, and I said, we're talking about a real airplane, but not with a human in it. That's what you need to be effective and reliable over a large body of water like that. So. There's rules of scale here that are, that we haven't reduced from a philosophical concept to a practice at this point in time. And in fact, I'm gonna go back to a point you made earlier about the claims that are made by some people or in organizations as such and the inability to deliver on those claims. You're seeing a lot of that from the ebb and flow of traffic that you see? I have, I've seen more than, more than I care to. So. When interesting role that these, that these FAA test sites could play is sorting out those, the truth or consequences of those various claims. And act like sort of like an underwriters laboratory coming up with figures of merit performance measurements and this sort of thing that substantiate. Yeah, all those metrics. Yeah, and then, and you need some sort of compliance check. So, I mean, there's already been a standard put in place for image data by the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. So they, people like FEMA go to them and say for floodplain maps, what should our repeat square area be? And then they kind of stay within that, that, you know, that policy or that standard. So. So they asked for, let me go back to the point. I'm starting to find now. You asked for people have put the other standards? Well, I'm just gonna say that survey companies are actually using the technology for surveys and are actually, you know, putting a dollar value to it. So that's the first time that I've seen actually somebody putting any sort of value to the data and the image recovery as well. But going back to some social, that's professional except. Chuck, for a minute, going back, I think you mentioned that Asperin's is putting together standards for photogrammetry from UAVs? Not for UAVs, but for like, for actual manned aircraft. Okay, and UAVs would follow the same path, right? Right? So, you know, that, yeah, it's been difficult in industry for companies, survey companies, engineering companies to be able to accept that, that, you know, products from that imagery because it hasn't gone through any sort of quality control. Okay. Well, we're gonna see the same thing. That means the company can provide. I think on the technical side of the aircraft and aircraft performance, whether it's a helicopter, UAV, I mean, a fixed wing, whatever it might be, we're gonna see some of those standard issues starting to creep into the design. The ASTM is beginning to work on standards associated with structure and with performance and some operations issues. The RTCA is meeting even next week in Reno and they're gonna be talking about standards in the software side, trusted software as well as the spectrum and the radio control aspects. So there's, we're starting to see motion in those areas. Are you paying attention to that sort of thing which kind of comes out of Washington DC? Are you seeing a lot of that moving from the concept and what the need is down to how we actually do it? Not so much from a commercial standpoint since I've been at DC because most of the work I've been doing has been primarily Department of Defense or Navy Special Warfare, something like that. So they have their own set, you know, mill specs that we have to adhere to and they're very, very mission specific. So there is a way of going about doing that but it's for a specific aircraft that's going to do one thing and then it's mission is over and that's it. But what I am seeing from the commercial side is standards within the aircraft's ability to navigate and to collect data using either real-time kinematic or post-processing kinematic, so that you're not getting one of the benefits of this that you can get the data a lot faster than you normally would from, you know, conventional methods. So by staying within 48 to 60 hour delivery date, what kind of aircraft do I need and what kind of sensor does it need to be carrying in order to get this specific resolution and accuracy of data and there is a bit of a standard that's starting to develop around the aircraft type and what kind of electronic it needs on board to be able to achieve that. That's very good. So that means that the customers are actually beginning to assert what their needs are in some form and they're going to work their way back to the manufacturers. Exactly. So, you know, now we're seeing survey companies working with, directly with, since Fly or CASTL, CASTL, which is a Slovenian company working directly with them to get the type of product that they want. And then that company also offers them, you know, six months of support and training and the whole ball of acts, but you're not dealing with a $4,000 or $5,000 aircraft anymore, you're dealing with a $30,000, $40,000 aircraft. Chuck, in the last two minutes we have here and it's been a super pleasure having you on again. I can't wait until you're actually here at the table and we can do this face to face, but as you may know, I'm signed up to do a talk at a conference coming up in May, the GSA conference, you may have had something to do with that. And yeah, anyway, I need a little couple of clues on what would be the most useful information that that audience would want to take away. Well, you have a lot of connections to the policy component of it. I think people want to know what exactly can I do in the airspace and a lot of these people are data people, they want to use the technology, they don't know how to go about the, you know, how to enter into using the technology, how to go about giving their 107 license and frankly, where they can fly, what the constraints are, so on and so forth. So they'll be that and then, you know, some of the technology components that you're probably getting more and more exposure to in your new position at UH. Okay. So they're gonna be looking for that, they're gonna be looking for you for policy and trends, let's say. Okay, well, Chuck, I thank you very much for that insight. That'll allow me to get some work done this weekend, starting to map out what the talk will be all about. And once again, hats off to you for making the transition you made to DC and the new things in your life that are going on and can't wait to see all of you back here. Come to our house, your canoe's still sitting there, ready to be used, along with the others. It will happen. Okay, man. Chuck, thanks a lot and we'll see you all next week.