 It is a noon hour folks, Ted Ralston here on January 4th, 2018, the first show of our next of this year coming up of our show where the drone leads at Think Tech Studios downtown Honolulu, momentarily transposed to Waimanalo Beach for the day here and welcoming on our show a great way to start the year is none other than Jim Williams, consultant of vast repute in the world of drones, Jim sitting in Washington DC and therefore all covered up with your winter finery and the snow piling up outside. Jim welcome to the show. Thanks, we're glad to be here. I bet you're glad to be here but that's that's cool. Anyway I just think for our show you know on this show we normally have a piece of technology on the table we talk about a particular issue but this time we're going to talk about what the year the last year has brought to us and what we see going ahead for this year in the world of drones because it's certainly a really active time, a lot of changes. In fact I heard today as I'm sure you heard a great sigh of relief at 1400 EST today as the world of drone people in the United States finally put down their pencils hit the submit button for the last time on the FAA IPP website for the solicitation for what is going to turn out to be a really interesting opportunity here for folks to think about how drones are going to enter their own life in the local and state jurisdictions which is something that we've all been thinking about but haven't really put pencil to paper and this is now that opportunity. So here it is the 4th of January and we've already exhausted ourselves like it feels like it's the middle of June already in terms of the effort put forth just since the first of the year but Jim welcome aboard again and from your perspective Jim what did you see is kind of a couple of highlights from last year that we ought to chat about as they set the stage for next year. When you asked me to be on this I went and looked at sort of a summary of what happened that was a big year for 2017 was a big year for drones and ups and downs you know the down was when we didn't we didn't get a rule for flyover people as we thought another down one was when registration went away but then it came back you know so a lot of us who believe that registering registering drones is a positive safety thing or we're glad to see that when Congress corrected the the issue that was that was very enjoyable. I think the highlight of drone operations as a low light for the country was the response to the to the heart case. I mean the FAA took you know pretty much a 180 degree turn from the way they'd handle disaster response and drone operations which was you know don't bother us with that we're too busy to let's see how many we can get in the air to help out and the responses were just amazing what was able to be done. If we talk about that that one event just for a minute that's enough to set the stage for a lot of activity in 2018. How is that how is the total result of that experiment if you will or that exercise for real how was that being pulled together being distilled being assessed and and the good and the bad being sorted out and how was that informing the future that particular six-week long event. Well the the biggest barrier previously for use of drones post disasters was the fact that they weren't integrated into the normal disaster response airborne activities. What happened in 2017 was that they were given the opportunity to be integrated in and a lot of lessons were learned a lot of state and local FEMA type organizations have written policies now about you know how they go about doing it who who helps whom how the they can hire people to come in and do work for the states for the local governments to help assess and then also how to integrate the commercial ops because one of the big users was the big insurance companies they wanted to know what their liabilities were and it helped them to give people compensation a lot faster than they could have otherwise so it was good for the people it's good for the governments I mean and and they learned a lot less about how to how to make things go better next time around so it's uh you know it's a really upside all around I mean in a you know in a very sad situation but it was a good good thing for the drone world. Well that's a good thing not just for the drone world but the people who benefited from the use of drones in that response but so so once again the question comes where would you think the center of information collection is at DHS perhaps or maybe we should do turn to our friends right down the street at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center and ask the same question to them in fact we can do that we can call them up and get them up here for the next week show and talk about that in particular as it applies here in Hawaii but good idea you know how do we how do we harvest the value out of something like that that and I'm sorry to ask the question again but I think that's a really important thing for us all to figure out because certainly the manufacturers the people and the in the various standards committees and things like this would have no end of value if they could get access to whatever the compiled total result is from those events. Well the only one that I'm really familiar with is what went on in Texas because the the head of the Texas test site just happens to be a classmate of mine from Georgia Tech and we stay in touch and he he told me that they led the effort for the state of Texas and the state of Texas emergency management agency coordinated everything and they they work with them but they also connected directly into the regional office of the federal FEMA organization there are regional offices there there's one in Texas and they coordinated closely with them so DHS is is where it is coming together at the at the national level you know I don't know if Florida did the same thing but I would assume that they they would have given that and the FAA was in the middle so the FAA collected a lot of those lessons learned when it came to airspace management and how to manage the the manned aircraft and the unmanned aircraft at the same time in the same airspace to accomplish the permission so that's pretty cool in fact that when you said that the FAA in the middle action acting as the airspace manager that almost sounds like EAA which is another good example of really complex air interaction it would be cool I just just thought about this but at EAA generate a UAV function that requires integrating of the airspace operations at in Wisconsin in the in June that would be a really learning a great learning experience you know I wouldn't surprise me if they hadn't already done that if I remember correctly it was either last year the year before they actually flew a unmanned aircraft in and out but I don't remember exactly the details but I thought they may have already done that they're usually on the cutting edge doing that kind of stuff well you know it's it's I again belayering this issue but it's a lot of value in it I know that when we had when the hurricanes hit certain of our agencies here in Hawaii that operate drones like the power company and such asked the question how do we help how can we how can we take our stuff load it in the airplane get over there and help these guys out and we I put vectors into the people I knew but it turns out we didn't really have a easy channel in a place to call I was no 911 number to call to say how do I bring my drone into this game so maybe one of the things coming out of this would be some way that we have a national registry or some means of putting the the need statement forward and then having people be able to respond to it with some level of certification that would be kind of the ultimate goal here and we could actually mimic that at the at the local level that is it doesn't have to be a national issue it can be very much a local issue as well so but that's that's what happened in Texas is that they have set up now in the state of Texas coordinated by the the Texas version emergency management folks to do just that where they they do have a way to coordinate the activities and they who know who's who's available and who isn't like stuff so it's it's happening that's that's a good idea well I again I will take the story right down the street to the folks here at NDPTC national disaster preparedness training center and see if it isn't material for writing a couple of papers on that that is bring these things together and apply it here in Hawaii anyway that was a major event last year unplanned and and great value coming out of it but there was a lot of planned activities also there was the DCA out of our TCA there was F-38 moving forward and generating standards on the technical side jim what's your view of how that is all proceeding and and once again how do we all tap into it well the biggest technical barriers when I started working unmanned aircraft in general were detective avoid in other words how to stop running that other aircraft especially manned aircraft and how to how to have a secure safe and secure command and control link so those were the big technical challenges and we needed standards so while I was at the FAA I helped kick off the the standards body so last year was a big year for them because they all they published the first versions of a detective avoid standard and a command and control standard so that now companies have a much clearer path to obtain FAA certifications for unmanned aircraft to operate unrestricted in the mass the FAA conducted a safety risk assessment that put out their their portion of the of the documents needed to make those things real so you know by the end of the year we actually had a path forward for detective avoid and approving a command control link as well so that was a big big step forward for the industry the beyond visual out of sight portion of the industry and what that'll now turn into is the engineering activity to figure out how to execute with those standards in mind and keep the cost down keep the reliability up and keep cybersecurity in the game so nobody can interfere with you there's a this this is actually a a technical version of what we just described in the operational side to the hurricane so we have both an operational and a technical point of view that'll take us into next year with some sound guidance but this will also result in changes in the technology that is we're going to have to do something in the in the c2 link area to think about interference and think about the the topographical effect and urban canyon effect on multi-path there's just no end of factors that are going to affect that communications channel that are going to be important here but those are those are technology issues that have been you know work for years and i'm confident that they're you know relatively easy in comparison to the to the policy issues that were really holding the industry back so i'm confident i'm much more confident than the engineers and i am in the bureaucrat let's say okay we defined the problem right the engineers can take a crack at it and start working working on a piece of time i can tell you we certainly found here in hawaii that the all the work taking place on the in the public unlicensed channels can be heavily influenced by urban uh rf noise in the 2.4 gigahertz band and such all the cell phones going off on the printers and the routers and such can really give you a rf background that is tough for the drones to penetrate and unlike what you find out in the in the open field so there's certainly uh a lot of work to be done in establishing really resolute and and durable schemes that operate in these complex environments and we need a on on the on the ground control indicator we need an analog dial of some kind that gives you a relative value of your ability to actually operate in this area and uh some some kind of an alert to the there's a kind of a human factors going on here too alert to the operator as to when there's a problem because these problems can especially rfi those problems can be switched on and off daytime is going to be one thing when all the businesses are up nighttime is different when things are shut down so this will be a most interesting uh a challenge as we move drones into the core of the urban quarter right kristin then that raises up one of the other big things that cropped up last year which is the remote identification and drones colliding with with manned aircraft which all sort of fits together in the general you know airspace security kind of questions and we had our but we unfortunately had our first um recorded you know confirmed collision between a drone and a manned aircraft up in new york city it didn't get i didn't think it got that much news coverage but the reporters i talked to seemed to think that it was but there was a uh during the uh u n one of the u n meetings i think it was a general assembly meeting there were helicopters flying all over the place and one a black Hawk collided with a um a dji fan i'm flown from a guy who was who was outside of the tfr but flew into the tfr and had of course he had no idea there was a tfr and it hit the hit the rotor and was thrown into the aircraft so there were pieces of it that were left on board that's and from the motor that they found wedged in the helicopter they were able to track down the individual who was flying and um let's just say that it's you know it was a very bad day for him because the the ntsb report came out and identified you know that it was all his fault and he was you know all of these things you can go look up the ntsb reports out publicly and i just that the faa is going to fall on that poor guy like a ton of bricks it's it's a bad day but the good news is nothing really significant happened to the helicopter i mean it's the black Hawk designed for combat of course so it was pretty pretty resilient but in along with that our friends in um Mississippi state at the faa center of excellence published data on you know what their studies show what impact would be if a drone hit a manned aircraft and it wasn't you know it it wasn't catastrophic i mean that was the good news was that yeah the air the air carrier would be very unhappy because they would have to be spending money to fix their aircraft but it wasn't going to cause damage that would result in you know anything other than than potentially a unscheduled landing so on that front we learned a lot and uh you know we're moving forward as a result so hopefully this year we'll see a remote identification and a flight over people will come out of the faa let's uh let's pick up that thread of what we learned last year how that's going to go forward and and take a forecast on what is going to happen next year after we get back from our one minute break aloha kakau i am andrea i am from italy and i've been studying and working here in havae for more than three years for my phd havae is home to a truly fantastic community of middle and high school students and did you know some of them are currently out there right now using their free time to invent new quantum computers and did you know some of them are exploring cyber security and the new frontiers of robotics i am just always amazed as i talk to them at science fairs oh but there's more did you know that these students are coming here on think tech hawaii to share their story with us come and join the new young talents making way show and discover how these students are shaping our future starting on february the sixth every tuesday at 11 am only here at think tech hawaii mahalo it is still the noon hour folks in on thursday in honolulu and the evening hour in washington dc where jim williams is standing by on our show where the drone leads where the first show of the year and it's it's so great to have jim williams on who's been involved in the evolution of drone regulation thinking education promotion and and defense for so many years and now can't quite seem to really be retired and is continuing on in retirement in that same light so jim let's let's just talk about your work a little bit how that is going for you and your new self occupied role and then talk about what how this is all leading into the future what we're going to see in drone activity drone major issues coming up in 2018 well i refer to it as my on-core career okay because i'm not retired i'm working pretty much full time every day surprisingly there are there are a lot of people out there who need needed my advice and help and and i tell you it's just you know living the dream i'm working on really really exciting fun stuff uh and and helping move the industry forward at the same time and getting paid to do it so you know that's i couldn't be happier the even even the you know near blizzard going on outside it's still a good day here here in northern virginia so you are fully occupied now but people could still get a hold of you how do they get a hold of you if they want to take you on to help them with some particular issue uh best way is via the email and you guys had my email address up earlier but it's a gym at jhwunmansolutions.com i have a website you can find me at jhwunmansolutions and you know either either way will get me i'm happy to help anybody out and i'm not cheap but i'm reasonable okay and so again thinking in terms of the major events that are going to occur this year we've already had one today again today july january fourth the fourth day of the year and a major event occurred when everybody across the country put in their submissions on this f a a ipp proposal we got two two active activities in terms of airspace integration going on 400 feet and below which is the f a ipp and we have the nasa uh s i o which is 500 feet and above we've got two major activities are and they're marching off on the same schedule they both end the month before the election in 2020 and so we still have utm is still still truck ahead as well right now demonstrating that concept so this again this uh 2018 is going to be even bigger year than 2017 so what i think those you know the two things you mentioned the the ipps which you know the test sites were a great thing and they they achieved their goals but all the test sites wanted to get into commercial operations and so constantly you know this is this is the next logical step the ipp provides the the way to help communities start doing commercial operations you know either states or locals and and it builds a partnership between the governments the state local governments and those commercial entities that want to want to go to work so we can hopefully help overcome some of the the more negative aspects of drone operations through the ipp and i think that's sort of the subtext if you you read between the lines on that both the presidential memo and and the solicitation you see that they're also interested about community involvement how you're going to do with privacy how you're going to deal with responsibilities between the the state local and federal so it's uh it's a good step forward and again be exciting to see who wins i mean it's it's going to be really big news when that when that comes down for those who may not be quite familiar with it let's just unwrap that just a little bit that's a what we're referring to here is the uas integration pilot program is for the state and local or tribal jurisdictions to figure out how to start managing the total enterprise at 400 feet or 200 feet and below your choice and make sure that the local values are included and local risks and considerations are included in terms of privacy protection all the things we're familiar with as well as air safety which is going to be still a mandate of the faa and put this into an operating system operating structure that can be tested in the local environment and and produce value at the end that that's an incredible handover from what would normally be a heavily federally designed system over to a lot of local orientation so the you know the the story we tell is that we've been whining and fussing all along saying faa and all you federal guys you don't understand what takes place here at the local level so finally after hearing that enough they said okay you guys figure it out so be careful what you wish for because it may come your way so now we have to execute that and and we have to do it on public private partnership funds because there's no money coming from the faa at least on this phase so this is a most interesting thing ultimately it's going to have to rest on the value to the commercial entities if they see value in it and there's a return on investment then that will be what will drive them in this to participate in this direction but the thing that goes through my mind on this gym is that these interactions and these these uh these tests will take place but with systems that are basically uh currently available so these systems won't necessarily have benefited from any of the work going on in rtca or or f38 astm at this point in time because the manufacturers haven't caught on with that yet so we're still dealing with public unlicensed network communications we're still dealing with single string reliability we're still dealing with really non-certified systems and and uh so it can only get better as the certification systems click in and as the as the requirements become more standardized so we can expect failure we can expect less than perfect operations because we don't have robustness and and and durability necessarily baked into the the scheme today so it it's uh kind of going in parallel the figure out how to work the jurisdictional control and as the technology is coming up as the regulations are moving forward and uh uh just you have to pay attention to it every minute in order to see what's actually going on but uh by the way i saw the ipt is is the f a trying to you know i think the the teams that will win are the ones that bring together those commercial activities who want to certify an aircraft who want to use uh certified communications set up specifically for unmanned aircraft with a community who is also looking to enable that and and deal with the underlying issues at state and local level so you know i i see it as the f a trying to bring those things together and potentially accelerate that integration and implementation of those technologies that were sort of enabled by the standards that are being enabled by the astm standards but to me the whole point is to kind of bring converge that do not run parallel but converge with these things and you know that's a really interesting point there's another analogy that fits here just as uh i mean f a has a community involvement manual that's used to define how to bring new technology to the to the awareness of the public and make it work in the same sense f a has used that manual to generate this ipp program because it is the community being involved here now as the state and local and tribal jurisdictional governments and so it's uh it is kind of like a parallel universe and a lot of going on and you have to make sure that you're looking left and looking right as well as looking straight ahead because there's a lot of development that's going to happen in parallel now we switch gears to 500 feet and above different equipment different mentalities and everything else and uh so the the nasa sio program is going to seek to integrate all the way up to class a airspace at 18 000 feet uh operations uh to kind of normalize air ops uh in the in the normally translated airplane areas uh how do you see that coming along to them well their objective is to do everything they can to enable certification of aircraft to fly in that space uh i went to their their one-day meeting as as did you i know you listened intently and they you know i think they're really the subtext is we we want to enable certified aircraft operations however we can we're going to share all our research we're going to help make airspace available for testing you know we're going to matchmake between companies and and uh operators and you know so everything they can do with the power of nasa behind them they're trying to do to help accelerate that certified aircraft because it's really the the last barrier remaining from routine beyond visual line of sight operation is a certified aircraft so nasa is trying to do what they can with their limited funds to to help enable that and and i thought it was just a you know a great program with a great plan and i hope a lot of folks in the industry will participate you know i was struck by the by the quality of the people and the speakers who were present at that meeting that you and i both attended two days worth it was uh uh the people were were not just giving a pitch they given before this this material was was fresh and new there's like 150 pages worth of the best collection of material that covers all aspects of uh of uas uh regulatory oriented development and i thought that's a good library of reference material but uh also the idea of uh nasa kind of saying hey we're nasa but we need your help and just like in the ipp f a saying we're f a but we need your help so we got two really cool vectors going on this year they're going to look at at how this all works and um so uh once again jim we'll we'll we'll uh plan to get you on at mid-year when you can you can don't have to wear a jacket in your coat you can wear a an aloha shirt or a Hawaiian shirt yeah and uh we'll take take a tab halfway through the year on how things are moving but at this point i want to thank you very much for taking the afternoon hour for us uh out of your time in dc and hope people get a hold of you from your website when they have needs for hiring a a top gun uh guy who can come in and work on uh uas programs for them and we'll all i'm sure see each other uh as the as the f a program and the nasa program unfold in the future yep that's going to be a great year all right you'll be sure will it's starting out then a bag already okay thanks very much jim for being on the show and folks we'll see you next thursday