 Aloha, this is Kali Lucas and this is Where the Drone Leads. Usually it is Ted Ralston, but this week he has flown to Alaska, and keeping up that Alaska Hawaii tradition, his guest today is now no stranger to Where the Drone Leads. It is Micah Motas of Kolea Gold, and it is so interesting that Ted is there in Alaska, and we are here in Hawaii, and we are talking of Kolea Gold, and that Kolea is the connection between Alaska and Hawaii. And you know, we love to share that, that's a ho'ailona or a good sign, you know, Ted is out in Alaska with George Purdy, and we're here, and we're going to talk about our company. Reintroducing, thank you for hosting the show, I mean, we're looking forward to so many opportunities to be hosting, and unfortunately, even my business partner, Kainoa Jimenez, he's out working on another project and meetings, since our last showing, we've been busy. We are a good kind of busy, of course. We've been pushing real hard for our project, Namako Onanakuli, and this project, we will tell you more in detail, but right now I wanted to share with you our company, Kolea Gold, and Kolea Gold is basically we started off as a drone company here in Hawaii, about two years old now. A drone company meeting what? You make them, you sell them, what do you do? I'm glad you asked, that's a real good question. See our background, myself and my business partner, we're both entrepreneurs that started off with Hawaiian culture background and technology, engineering, and with our passion for travel and for the future, we wanted to bridge all of that passion into one, and so we got into about a drone, and I was like, I'm not too sure what we're going to do with this, but we're going to go with it because we believe this is the answer. We always admired technology, when it came to navigation, we admired using our tools for navigation using our stars using, so even at the fish pond, when you see a fish pond, you notice we have the makaha, and you'd use that with nature to catch fish food for our whole community. Now you're looking at a drone, and that's where we believe we need to get involved in this industry, so we started off, like you said, repairing. We started helping people repair drones. They said, oh, I bought this drone, not too sure why, but I'm flying it to inspect, do inspections on roofs, on my farm, on my, oh, it's interesting, but they crash. And so we helped them, we helped fix it, Kainoa and I opened it up, and we would see, oh, there's a lot to learn about this machine, and moving forward, we learned we need to become pilots, we need to become certified pilots, so that's where we met Ted, we went out and we did projects out at the fish pond at Kaukuku Point, and there we learned more about the importance of aviation. So Kainoa and I and Ted, we all took the test, it was a federal test that we needed to take, and we passed, and that's where we got a palapala. We got the paperwork to prove that we're certified pilots. Then moving to our next step, Kainoa's passion for engineering. That's when he started to design, right now, right now he's designing a drone. And what's the special about the drone that Kainoa is designing? What makes it different than whatever other kind of drone? We believe because of the amount of experience and time that we've been putting into all these drones that we've been fixing, when you fix something, you notice you find flaws, and that's when we started to notice, you know what, we need to tweak it a little bit, and Kainoa started drawing on his book, and he started designing something, and then for myself, it was like community. We went down to the capital, we started speaking with senators, representatives, and they're saying, okay, what's the bigger picture here? What is this drone that you're going to create or service that you're going to provide? What is it going to do for the community? We're under new leadership now, so this is a time for us to really ask ourselves, why are we doing all of this, right? And we believe we have something that is very innovative, that can benefit our community and also our entrepreneur learning levels. I mean, we're only two years old and we're strong two years old. Not the terrible twos, the terrific twos. The terrific twos, the terrific pile of that. So you're aware in the development process. Are you still design or do you have prototypes? Right now, we're still in designs and our network, it was important for us to start networking, start going out into the community and finding out who's interested in this, who believes in, not us, who believes in themselves to prove that we can work together as on Hui, as on community and survive here on a rock in the middle of the sea. That's how we always were raised. We were always raised that way. And our goal is to take it to the next step. We got the opportunity to meet Battery Bill. I know you're familiar with Battery Bill. I'm not familiar with it. Not knowingly. So, Bill was fortunate enough, we met through a conference and this was a time for us to talk about energy. Everything needs energy. Even in this room, I told you before, there's good energy in here. And when it comes to our machines and our designing, we need to make sure that we find the right energy. If you notice on all drones, oh, no, actually, no, no, because you haven't flown a drone before, but usually there's a drone that only lasts up for two to five minutes and the longest is half an hour. And that's running off of just on battery pack. Now, when you go to Battery Bill, hey, Bill, do you have some type of battery that will last even longer? Then we're getting somewhere. And that's why it's important that we knew what we believed in. We believe that we're creating something that is going to help in all kind of issues. One in particular is our biggest project coming up. We're getting involved with representatives, schools. A few weeks ago, Ted brought up this project of us providing images for non-acooly traffic. OK, before I get into the non-acooly, I want to go back to the design and the battery. So tell us what is special? How are you changing the game? How is this design going to be that drone that really serves our community better? Because you guys know what our community needs. So what is it about this that is going to up the game? This is definitely a good question. This is definitely near the intellectual property side. And no, I'm glad that you asked. And I'm going to put it this way. Our community has a perspective on life that is very important to all of us, from being first born all the way to our kupuna or to our ancestors. Life is so important. And when it comes to building a drone for a particular item that can save people's lives is what we're striving for. We're providing something that we're creating something that, again, we believe in that will raise a statistic that not too many people are aware of. And that is when it comes to survival, if someone has a cardiac arrest or if their heartbeat stops beating, your survival rate is less than 10% in the state of Hawaii. So in order to beat that or improve it, we believe that we can create something that can carry this device that will take it to you and better the chances of you surviving. Wow. This is something that we've been getting involved with the AED Institute with Pam Foster. AED Institute. Tell us what that is. That is a foundation created by Pam Foster. I'm sorry, it's an institute created by Pam Foster. And she is a retired nurse who began teaching the state of Hawaii through schools, through nonprofit organizations like the Hawaii Heart Foundation, teaching people how to do CPR, teaching communities how to do CPR, and how to use an automated external defibrillator. That's what an AED is. OK. There was a man who had a heart attack at my church last two years ago. And because we had one of those, he survived. So I know where of you speak that if we hadn't had that AED, forget it. He would be dead. Right. All right. So how do you drones the defibrillator? OK, now I'm really curious. I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad that you are. How does this go? It's all part of, I mean, when you have a dream, it has to be clear onto what you want to do in your life, right? And whatever comes your way, you can either be bitter or you can get better. And that's where we stand right now, especially in this time. We can only get better as to what is happening in all our lives. So when it comes to using an AED, you see, I'm a part of that project. And I'm proud to be a part of that project. I'm with Pam Foster all the way. I teach classes. We've been going around the community to schools, to a job core, to, like, tomorrow I'm going to be at the UFC gym in Kaka'ako. You guys are more than welcome to come. I can teach you how to do CPR using AED. The main thing is involving technology. This show is all about technology. And how are you going to bridge that with our community, our passion, our beliefs? And it's quite, like I said, it's the energy in this room. OK, I just want to be clear. Mike, is that AED thing? Is that related to the drums? Or that's another part of your overall plan, your overall vision? Yeah, it's just part of the overall vision. OK, OK. All right, so we're not going to be delivering AEDs by drone. Soon. Oh, really? That's why we're talking. Oh, my goodness. That's why we're here. OK, wow. Wow. Thank you for sharing that story with the church. I mean, that's a. You know, and we had only gotten that AED thing. We'd had it less than two months. Wow. Yeah, it was in the middle of the serve. Actually, it was the end of the Sunday service. Healed over. But we had had the training. And so people knew where to go. They knew where it was. They rushed right down and gave Mr. Kimsey the, and he survived. And that's how we found out that most people don't, unless they have that machine. So having access to that and understanding what to do with it, it's kind of trippy. You started it and it tells you what to do. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So yeah, and it's a it's a device that we all need in order to come back. You know, I mean, you can. Yeah, you're going to be able to do compression. Say we're in out in the mountains and somebody has a cardiac arrest. That's where we're striving for. We're getting. We started here at home is getting to locations, setting up stations where we can deliver. And as soon as we know, everybody's trying to deliver packages. And we got Amazon delivering packages. We got others trying to deliver pizza. And we can appreciate that. We can learn from each other. This community, the drone community, it's if one ship rises, we all rise. Well, that's a great place for us to take a little break. Let that sink in and come back and talk some more. OK, Micah? Sounds great. Thank you. I'm Jay Fidel, and I'm here with Pete McGinnis-Mark to talk about HIGP and research in Manoa. What about that show, Pete? I think it's great, Jay. Research at Manoa really provides faculty members at the University of Hawaii with an easy way of explaining some of the research activities we're conducting on the campus. For example, I do a lot of space research, whether it's the moon and Mars. But many of my other colleagues do other interesting kinds of work, whether it's exploring the ocean floor in submarines, studying earthquakes and tsunamis, or other activities. So Research at Manoa really provides us with a way of telling the general public some of the activities which we're involved in, as well as communicating to our colleagues and students. This is a fun science. And we really appreciate the activities which Research at Manoa enable us to talk about. I love Research at Manoa. Come around and join us. It's Monday, one o'clock PM, every single Monday. Be there, we'll be square. Welcome back to where the drone leads here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 4 PM, usually with Ted Ralston. But today it's with me, Kaui Lukas, and I have as his guest, Micah. So we were talking about some of the things that your company, Kolea Gold, is doing innovations that can really benefit the community in some amazing novel ways, like delivering AEDs by drone. But there's another project that we're gonna talk about, Namaka o Nanakuli. Okay, I love it. The eyes for the place that doesn't hear. So this is a project that Ted and I and Kainoa, we all talked about a few weeks ago. And it's a great opportunity because Kainoa and I, we're born and raised from the West Side. Kainoa grew up in Makakilo, I grew up in Wai'anae. And traveling through and from school has been, you know, that everybody can relate out there. And everybody believes there is something that we can do about it. And this is an opportunity for us to provide something better than nothing. And that is Namaka o Nanakuli. We plan to come out to Nanakuli during heavy traffic and using our drones to provide that aerial view of our traffic. And hopefully we, in that process, we can go ahead and use that data for our department of transportation. We've been talking with representatives, senators, the city and county. What we wanna do is get the community to work together on solving an issue. I know we have, they've come up with new solutions and we're just going base off a word or mouth of how effective it is. But if we can utilize technology and maybe come up with even a better solution and open it up to the community because we know, we know what will work. Okay, so right now there's cameras on the intersections kind of a thing. Right. And I don't know how Waze works, but I have Waze so I can look on my phone and see if there's traffic. But it doesn't have an actual picture. Right. So is this gonna be crowdsourced or how does the community play a part? I guess you couldn't do that though. So you're gonna be, there is gonna be drones with cameras and what are they gonna do? Basically go up, not too far up, maybe less than 100 feet up and it's gonna give you a perspective, give us a perspective as to what we're seeing in this traffic. Imagine trying to see from above how the traffic flow is. Everybody sees it from the steering wheel. Everybody can tell that. But no one can really define where exactly is this happening? How can we use this information? And I'm not saying that we have the solution. I'm saying we're providing a tool that you can utilize to possibly come up with one because I believe using these drones will have one. We'll have a solution through the data. What we're trying to do also is get the community involved and the operators for our drones. We not only, it's not us who's gonna perform it. There's this school, everybody knows. Our goal for Kolea Gold is get those operators ready to perform out in Nanakuli. They're the ones who's gonna provide the footage. And what we're gonna do- That provide the footage. So the operators in Palolo are going to Nanakuli. We're going to Nanakuli. And we're gonna have these students go ahead and operate our drones in a safe area. We're still in the process of mapping it out. Where exactly? And this is a good time for us to open up to the community and let them give us some feedback. Maybe through this show, all you viewers, please let us know where you think in Nanakuli would be a great place for us to provide the footage. This is not only, yeah, this is an opportunity for us to get a motion going. Well, we're already in motion. There's no doubt about it. It's just getting more proficient in what we're doing. Are you worried about seeing things that maybe people don't want to be seen? At 100 feet, you'll be seeing things. Seeing things on the- On the ground. On the ground. Oh, that's a good question. Right now, that's why it's important how crucial our planning is for this project. We need to make sure that everyone can agree. We're not going to just show up. That's why our culture is always, when you come to a place, you have to ask permission for a lot of things. Nanakuli is home to me. However, it's still right to ask the community. Is it okay if we come here? The reason why this project is in motion is because a resident from Nanakuli suggested that we come out with drones. So that gave us, that was the seed. And now it's- Critical, yeah, to have that invitation. Right, so now we're at the position where okay, let's go out to the community and find out. Where in detail, how can we use this? We understand why we're going to use it. Now we're working on the how. How we're going to perform this. And as soon as we finish, we'll have the what? Product, the, I believe it's going to be something. It's new, so of course it's uncomfortable. It's something that not too many people are sure about. So that's why Kolea Gold, our reason for being in business was to reassure everyone that it is possible that we took the necessary steps to be pono in performing everything that we did. We weren't the companies who was going out there for money. We were going out there to solve problems that our community is dealing with. So some of those problems are obviously the traffic, just the stuff happens. But the stuff that happens then needs some sort of work around. Once there's, I mean, there are so many pedestrian incidents. There are so many infrastructure problems that happen there too, or like the flooding or the tree falls down or something. All these things, can you see that a drone would be helpful in solving these? Or where are you specifically looking to have the impact? As far as, I think it's going to be used more for data, like using it to perform. And I could be wrong. I could be, we could just end up going there and something else will happen where we'll discover more about, just like he said, you just never know what's going to happen. During the time of traffic, we want to make sure that we can simply not provide image for traffic in the Nanakuli area and just a different perspective. I think it would really open a lot of people's eyes, just like it opened my eyes when flying from a bird's eye view and seeing from above. I mean, I know pretty sure everybody can see through the media and TV about the bird's eye view, but now using it for something that can maybe better our community. I believe it'll be a good source for us to use. So we have about a minute left, Micah. I would like for you to say anything that's important for you to communicate, but also talk about the role of the student, how that's gonna, have you worked that out yet or maybe not yet? We're still in the process. In fact, for this last minute, I do want to say that we got in touch with Kikulu Kaipunio Ano Inui and these students, not only are they Hawaiian speaking, however, they're gonna be students that are gonna be certified drone pilots who's gonna utilize technology for situations, problems that the kids are gonna be able to use for our community. If any of your school, any of the schools out there I've been teaching for AED Institute for knowledge about using technology and it fits right in with even the drone industry. So I just gotta say, I look forward to going to all these schools and inspiring kids and inspiring our community. It's a beautiful, beautiful vision. Thank you, Tony. And Kolea Gold, you guys have a website? Yes, at www.koleagold.com. And any other good way to contact, what's the best way to contact you guys if somebody wants to talk to you about the Makao Nanakuli or other projects? Yes, the best way, go ahead and go on our website. We have email, my email address is MichaelMotas at Koleagold.com and we can go ahead and we look forward to hearing from you folks from the community, especially on the West Coast, where the Makao Nanakuli working together for this project and in the long run, looking forward to, if you see me out there in the community, please don't be ashamed to come up to me. I'll be more than happy to speak with you for anything at all.