 It is a noon hour on Thursday, folks. Ted Rolston here, our show on ThinkTech, where the drone leads, where we bring to our highly anticipatory public news, events, personalities and developments in the world of unmanned air systems or drones or remote piloted aircraft. And continuing our recent string of incredible guests, we have on a returning guest all away from Wembley, Texas. We have Gene Robinson with us, who is the CEO, President, and Chief Pilot of Drone Pilot, Inc. of Wembley. You get it all right, Gene? Yes, sir, Ted. How are you? It's a pleasure to be back. Pretty good. It's a great having you here. And again, at some point in time, we actually have to have you sitting here in the studio rather than sitting in the comfort of your home in Wembley, Texas. But that time will come. Anyway, Gene, in the past, you've been on this show and talked about search and rescue and horse-mounted patrol and incredible, I would call it cutting-edge development of both operations and design development and deployment of unmanned air systems or drones, including some really long endurance functionality that you've demonstrated to us before. But that's, there's been a change. So you're heading in a different direction now or an increased direction, I should say. So tell us about it. Yes, sir, we have decided, we've taken that experience that we've collected over the past 15 years, and we felt like it would better serve the public safety interests if we began teaching and instructing on some of the things that we've learned. And probably the most important aspect of that is a standardized operating procedure for drone aircraft under Incident Command. So we have developed this great course curriculum. It is the Eyes Overhead Training Course that consists of 40 hours of classroom and quite unlike the Part 107 Knowledge Test, we have a proficiency portion of it that requires that you also log 40 hours of flight time. You're actually tested on your proficiency. We have a standardized test that we use, and we can establish a level at which pilots can operate at. And this has been very well received. That's decoding all that. That's pretty impressive. What you've taken is a book learning only orientation which 107 is all about, which doesn't really have any practical applications or practical transfer into real world associated with it, not required. That's the only training and only certification and all of the FAA that has no practical experience requirement or training associated with it. And you've added that element that's been missing in the 107 as it has developed. And 40 hours of actual flight experience on top of 40 hours of classroom work, that sounds almost like a private pilot level of intensity in the training you're getting. That's a copy of it. Interestingly enough, you should mention that. You know, I'm obviously a pilot, and I know how I was taught to fly an aircraft, and I know that I didn't learn it over three or four days. So we took that experience and we treat a public safety drone program as a bonafide aviation program. And everyone else should too, because if the FAA is going to call our birds aircraft, then we need to treat them like aircraft, and we need to learn them like we learned aircraft in the past. And it's pretty cool that you've tied that back to the ICS, the incident command system. And currently the manned aviation is part of the ICS system. So in the way you structured your program, which is new to all of us, that UAS program could attach to the manned air system inside the ICS system very comfortably because there's a common threat of understanding and common threat of certification going about the business. And one of the things that we wanted to do, we have actually worked under the NEMS protocols in ICS, Unified Command System, using drones. And yes, we have fit in quite well with the proper communications. And we fit under tactical, you know, just like any of the other manned units would. And we would take our orders from the air people, the air boss, the air manager on scene, or if necessary, we could transition into and help with the air boss role. So again, this is something, it's not theory for us, Ted. This is something that we have worked in the field, and we have used it, and it is proven to be a good model to emulate. Well, that's really interesting. It would be kind of almost cool to make a video of that, so it could be distributed and people could see it and think of it in their own context. I mean, so many times the use of systems like we've got here fit into the intelligence side of the equation where the operators aren't and where the intelligence gathering is. And they may not see the connections that are necessary to make it work under the air side. So if you put it under tactical within the ICS, you're going to automatically have that connection into where the air boss is and where the orders are distributed. So that's, I'd almost like to, on the side, have a conversation about a recent situation we had here. I don't want to do it on our TV show, but we had a fire and a high rise in Honolulu. And we had the police department, or fire department, I should say, running in Strones. We had a lot of paparazzi running theirs. And we actually had one of our people from the legislature inside the building. So we have like three points of view on how that particular event went down. And of course the manned aircraft was sitting on the ground all that time. It wasn't going to go anywhere with all these drones going on. So we had a great example to see how that would be addressed by the tactical side of ICS, the way you've thought it through here. So I salute you for that. Now this 40-hour of practical training and 40 hours of classroom training, how does that distribute itself over a work week or a bunch of work weeks or a semester or a calendar? How do you structure that? Well, we recognize that public safety agencies are typically stressed with man problems and being able to keep their post-man. So we don't ask them to do it all at once. The IZOberhead program has worked best over a 90-day period. So we do the first two days. It's very intensive classroom. And then we give an assignment, a flying assignment, if you will. They're given a trainer aircraft, and they are given an assignment of a test that they have to perform and prove at the second session. So they get 20 hours over approximately 30 days time. So that doesn't preclude them doing their other duties, and it doesn't put pressure on them so much that they have to hurry through it. When they come to the second phase, they will test out, and they will have to perform what we call the crazy eight. It's a defined pattern to fly, and they have to do it successfully. And then they get the second portion, which is emergency procedures, flying without sensors. What happens when your gyro goes out? That sort of thing. And then you get another assignment, whereby you have to learn how to fly the copter. It's almost always a copter. And manual mode. And by the time you get to phase three, 90 days down the road, we are actually doing scenarios. We will take you out, and whatever your jurisdiction sees the most of, whether it's search and rescue, active shooter, fire, wildland fire, we will put that scenario in place and have the teams operate just like they would operate under incident command. You know, a 90-day spread with students able to work it at their pace, and I suspect they can go faster or slower as long as they are within a 90. That almost sounds like a semester breakdown, as far as we and the education business would see. And what we've been asking everybody about, who is in training, is how can we work together and bring that sort of thing into our community college system here? We have community colleges on all the islands. We have the main central in Manoa at UH, main central university function, but the community colleges are the places where this kind of work is best distributed, because it is distributed, and people who are in the community colleges often are people in the public safety domain getting some additional training of some kind. So without asking proprietary information or business rights questions here, do you think there's a way we could take a look at your syllabus, your mission plan, program plan, and think how that might fit into our community college system here? One of the things that we are striving towards is accreditation. And much like the red card is available for walled-in firefighters, we want to be able to do the same thing for drone pilots. Having a community college accreditation like that would certainly be something that we would, we would, we are striving toward and we consider. And there is, it's no mistake that it does sound a lot like a semester course, because we kind of tailored around that as well. So we're just waiting for the right partner. And could it be U of H? Never know. Okay, well that's certainly something we'll talk about among ourselves. In fact tomorrow, this is actually going to be a big subject tomorrow. Tomorrow we're doing a first ever boot camp at the university. It's a holiday in Hawaii, but I think we had it limited to 65 people, but people who have drones are encouraged to come on down, sign up, and we'll go through some boot camp type work. Basic, very simple understanding of what the rules are as a starter, and then examine the individual people who bring their equipment in terms of their knowledge of putting things together and their knowledge of what it takes to get into the air and get out. However, it's going to be with 65 people in four hours. We're not going to have much personal attention. But that does bring to the point that the issue that you have so nicely put here, it's not the normal operation that matters. When everything's working, that's great. It's when it's not working right. A sensor's missing, GPS missing, you lost the North Seeker, or the wind's very strong. And we've had more than one occasion here of extremely strong winds and no plan to undo ourselves from a dire situation created by downwind drift in a high wind. We have some very high convective activity here in the thermals. We have high orographic winds along the mountains, and we've got to be able to operate there. That's where search and rescue takes place. It doesn't take place where you can find people. It takes place where you can't find them. And that's the mountains or the ocean. So we've got some interesting challenges in front of us. In fact, what I would like to do is ship out to you a list of about two pages long we've made that kind of collects the mission segments, the mission elements that our search and rescue people and our public safety people have identified so far. And for your cognizance, take a look at them, see how they fit in the program. And maybe together we could build a robust set of mission needs that all of our public safety people would recognize. And if we can make sure that our collective work is relevant to that list of things that they have to do, I think that would be a good credibility builder going in. And don't forget to, you know, I did happen to fly on Maui. I did do a search on Maui and I am very familiar with those sea winds and what can happen there off the cliffs. But yeah, the whole mission profile and setting up your mission scope is so important, especially to your public. If you narrow that mission scope down to something that they can understand, they will be quicker to accept it as well. Because one of the things that we did learn that if you leave any blanks, if there's any blanks at all in your narrative, it will be filled in with the most negative thing that you could think of. So you need to make sure that you're open and transparent about it. Well, that's, I mean, there's so many lessons you've learned that you're telling us and that's so important. And that goes along with, I think, an action yesterday took place in our legislature here where we have a drone or UAS permanent working group now established by the legislature. It's got one more boat to pass through but I don't see any issues there. And this will then have a wide ranging participation of folks who are involved in whatever aspects of droneism make sense. Education, environment, public safety, you name it. And they'll come together as an advisory group to present to our legislature before the next session begins in December. What's going on in the world of standards, correct behavior, rules that are effective versus what the kind of the helter skelter approach we've had to this point in time, which is throw together some bill and see if it works, but have some an order to that. But having the kind of structured thinking you've got that is relative to what the users actually need and is transparent, as you said, and something the public can buy into would be a superb target to have on their desks in November of this year when the next legislative session begins. We believe that that is a doable action item, Ted. I think that's something that is very easily defined and I will be tickled to death to help you guys with it. Okay. Let's talk about that, how we're going to go forward on that after the at the end of our one break here. The show is now only 30 minutes long, Gene. We used to be 45, I think, when you were on. It's now two 15-minute segments, so we'll catch you back in one minute. Yeah, this is, this is, uh, how do you... Good afternoon. My name is Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, a program on Think Tech Hawaii. We show at three o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday. My guests are specialists both from here and the mainland on energy efficiency, which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket. Hi everyone. I'm Andrea Gabriele. I'm the host for Young Talent's Making Way here on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matter to tech, matter to science, to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests. The students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talent's Making Way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. It is still the noon hour on Thursday, folks. Ted Ralston here in our studio in Nolulu and Gene Robinson is standing by in Wilmerley, Texas, where the sun is about ready to go down and the saloon will open, I'm sure. But we're talking with a very excited subject here, a very exciting subject, and that is the subject of training as a entry bridge into the world of operational unmanned air systems for city, states, public safety agencies, and even I think your work is expendable to environmental, to agriculture, the same basic policies underlie. So in the short time we have on this show we're not going to be able to get it all talked about, but the means of what we're talking about at the break is the means of taking what you've done, the structure you've got, which is so much better than these 107 courses and since it's based on operations with operational people, it's going to have a lot of actual relevance. Taking the fact that that training exists and getting it agreed to and bought into by the counties and by the the cities, the tribes in this case may be. Tell us how that's going. We're prepared for the explosive growth that we saw as the word got out that we were training proficiency and we were doing scenario-based training and we were being completely open about it and we have a complete public information package. It took off on us and it took off very quickly. As a matter of fact there are a few folks that are trying to catch up with our model because it has been so well accepted. Again when you give information, when you give complete information and answer the questions and the doubts, it sure makes things go a lot smoother when you're trying to introduce a very disruptive technology like we have with drones. So this has been a proven way to get these processes in place at our county level which does cut across so many different disciplines. It cuts across IT, GIS, health and human services, environmental, law enforcement, fire and when you get that sort of interoperability within all those departments, you can have one person easily step into the role of piloting command or piloted controls or visual observer or payload operator no matter what the incident is because everybody is working off of the same standard. Completely important. I think the fact that once again you've talked about the incident command system and the mission that it is designed to achieve and that all came from Cal Fire and some others who then made it even more impressive than it is, provides a structure and a significance that has no equal really and just to make sure anybody doesn't think this is a late night TV show, you are not selling ginsu knives here at the end of this, right? There's not a number you can dial for 1999 and get a bunch of ginsu knives in the mail. That's not going to happen, right? No. Okay, this is all legitimate. This is just draining. Yeah, all right. So a technical question. In terms of the teachers or the instructors you get, what kind of certifications do you get for them and as far as the students are concerned, do you run this under 107 or under a core under educational interpretation? How do you structure this thing within the legal framework that we all enjoy out of the FAA? And you know that's a very important selection process to go through. We advise just about all of our clients that they should get both. 107 is fairly easy to get. The COA process is a little bit more of an effort. If you have complicated airspace, then yes, you should get a COA because that gives the FAA the plan that you wish to operate in their restricted airspace for and eases your entry into it. If you have class golf G airspace and most of your jurisdiction, it's very easy to fly under part 107. But still you need to have the proficiency to be able to perform the flights that public safety has to perform. And they're very different from the hobbyist or even the professional photographer is attempting to do. And that's an important segregation, so to speak, of the mission. And then you're quite right. And of course, somebody can assert they're going to operate wonderfully on golf airspace, but the event you're dealing with may not be in golf. And so you've got to be prepared for all of it. So that then takes you to the public safety COA, part of the public aircraft operations. And that means understanding the policy and having all that paperwork in place and whatever MOU is. We have an interesting advantage here to a certain extent in our University of Hawaii operation where we're part of the Pan-Pacific Test Range, which is Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Kansas, and Mississippi. You didn't know Kansas and Mississippi were on the Pacific. But if you look at certain maps, you can find them there. And so they're okay. But this gives us a sort of a global universal COA that can be executed very quickly. So in Texas, I think you would have that in Texas as well. I believe there's a University of Texas or Texas A&M. One of them is part of that structure. So I think we should all capitalize on that and take advantage of it. In terms of the classes themselves, do you require that people have achieved their 107 off online or something before the classes begin? Or is 107 part of the what they get out of the classwork? No, we don't. We have no requirements other than the discipline that they're in before they come to class. We will teach 107. We will teach the more difficult parts of 107, which is the airspace and the operations in the airspace. We also provide an ASA guide so that they can take the online test, take five practice tests, and self-study that part of it. But some of our best pilots are the pilots that have never touched the control sticks before. What's behind that? We kind of look at it this way. We don't have to untrain any bad habits from folks who have been out there flying for years and years and years. So they have no preconceived notion and they accept the training that they get without question and execute, which has been kind of a surprise to us because we expected the guys who have been flying for a while or even full-scale pilots to be able to deal with the kind of instruction that we're giving them. And sometimes they're the ones that have the most difficulty, which is a bit of a paradox. Interesting. And that brings us to the other issue, which I find fascinating, and that is the transition of equipment like we see here, these kind of systems from where they came from, which is basically cell phone technology, model airplanes or RC airplanes and probably video games combined made what we have, but moving them slowly but surely into a more resolute, more performant, more trustworthy, trusted operation system. And so we're talking about people are putting like duplicate GPS on, for example, these days, but the whole issue of fault recognition and response to the recognized fault, I think is short in all of these systems we've got. We don't have the master caution, master warning orientation yet, and we don't have the training that I'm aware of that tells you what to do should a equivalent of master caution or master warning show up. And I think the interesting thing, I'm a pilot as well, and we quite well know that 30, 35 seconds is a reasonable recognition period when you're dealing with a confusing set of instrumentation and a cockpit. 35 seconds in this game is between getting the thing back and not getting it back. So there's a whole different dynamic of fault response and the training and the preparation for what to do. And as we get into the online of sight and some of these more challenging operations, that whole issue of fault management, fault accommodation, and the training, the rapid response training for the fault is going to have to be a major part of our thinking. Yeah, the road process is very important, and we recognize that, Ted, and that's why we've taken some of the public safety training precepts from muscle memory into what we try to convey. You shouldn't even have to think about which way to move the sticks when you are looking at the aircraft. That should be just a process that is immediate, but you're absolutely right. A matter of seconds and you could have pilot saturation and you could you have an aircraft in trouble. And what we do, what we have tried to do is take a proactive approach to becoming very familiar with your aircraft. You do a full preflight checklist, you start it up, you listen, you feel, you touch the motors and make sure they're all conging correctly, because the aircraft in most cases will give you an indication that, hey, something is wrong or something is about to go wrong. And we err on the side of caution. And if you run into something like that, you scrub the aircraft and pull out your backup. Because as we say, two is one and one is none. Right. And here, we have the particular issue, as you know, of the high winds. You experienced that on Maui. And if you're looking at, say, 30 knot winds and you're in deliberation with yourself on what to do when you see a fault that is occurring, 30 seconds later, the aircraft is drifted downstream and that are half mile and you may be out of radio range. And so whatever you're thinking, it may not matter at that point. So the whole domain here of identification of faults, accumulation of faults into a warning and a caution, I think is a discipline we have to feed back into the manufacturers and have that come forward as part of the operational system we've got. So this has been most interesting. Jean, I don't know where to, even to, there's so much you've suggested. And I'll say this, I'll say that we've had Gretchen West on this show more than once. And she said, her analysis of through the commercial drone alliance is that training right alongside analytical software and right alongside counter drone are going to be the three dominant parts of this game for a long time to come, for as long as it matters to us. So training, and you're right on that one. And I really appreciate how you've made this training inclusive and broad and connected. And we've got to get together and figure out how to bring that into our community college system around here, which means I'll have to get you out here. So I'm ready to go anytime. Okay. Well, let me thank you, Jean Robinson, for coming on again, and all the way from Wimbledon, Texas. And at this point, we'll sign off and see you all next week.