 It is noon on Thursdays folks. Ted Ralston here at downtown Honolulu in the Think Tech Hawaii studios overlooking something in the background. Looks like some structural materials that we left behind from the studio reconstruction. Anyway, we have on our show where the drone leads, where we talk about topics associated with the emerging technology and business of drones. We have with us again a second time flyer on this show, but the first time by Skype we have Gretchen West of Hogan Levels in Silicon Valley with us. Silicon Valley in the world I guess I should say because your company is a global international company. Thank you for having me, good to be back. And we have you by Skype next time we'll have to alternate this in-person Skype, in-person Skype and work it that way. So anyway, Gretchen has a long history in coming up with the policies and the protocols and the methods that we're going to be using collectively to advance this business of drones and unmanned air systems. And Hogan Levels has taken a lead in that as well. Can you tell us an update since last year when you were here about what Hogan's doing and what you're doing in terms of the CDA and activities such as that? Sure. So I'll start with Hogan Levels. We are a global law firm and we have a thriving drone practice where we're working with a variety of companies from small to large on helping them with understanding the drone market and the environment. As we all know part 107 came into effect August of last year and so we've been working with lots of clients to get them waivers for some of the expanded operations. We've been working with clients on the policy side helping them with some lobbying efforts and shaping policy and also working with some smaller companies to help them understand the market potential and find funding for a lot of the startups. From a commercial drone alliance perspective that's an industry-led non-profit association. We formed that really because we felt that commercial end users were underrepresented in the conversation and they really are the most important because they're the customer for all the manufacturers and service providers. And we found that they were skeptical about adopting drone technology primarily due to the regulatory environment but also a lot of these industries these big industries oil and gas, construction, mining, inspection, agriculture and on and on yeah they're fairly risk averse and so because of regulatory environment because of privacy issues because of state and local regulatory issues they're just because of safety and reliability issues they're just concerned a little bit with implementing drones on a widespread basis and so really the mission of the commercial drone alliance is to work to reduce those barriers and help educate them about the benefits of technology so they can adapt drone technology and move this industry forward. That's great. Does that also give the these groups that might be potential end users or intermediate users providing some product for a customer of their own? Does it give them an opportunity to express the fact that they don't understand what's going on and get educated part one and part two come forth with requirements that are really important in their domain and then have the manufacturers hear that and I'm just thinking of the situation out here in Hawaii we have a lot of of course salt air situations so we have a if you look at the drone repair shops out here US repair shops they're basically taking care of salt corrosion on the circuit board so we have that sort of situation we have high winds we have a lot of GPS out areas night areas because of the topography and stuff so would a company out here have a voice to the manufacturers through the cda? Well that's one of the goals that we're trying to accomplish and we've really only been we launched about a year ago and we've been really busy on the the policy side over the last year doing a lot of the things that are happening in the United States on Capitol Hill but the other kind of the other mission we have is this education side and so we've been going out to lots of different events and different industries and just educating about the benefits of drones talking about what part one of seven means talking about what is legal and what is not and what opportunities are there and so from that perspective we're educating the end users but you're absolutely right it also we need to bring the end users into the mix as well and we have several that are part that are members of our organization because they like you said they need to help educate the manufacturers and service providers of what they need it's different from location to location from industry to industry and so you know instead of manufacturer creating a drone that they think could service any industry it's good to know what those end users need and so we are trying to do some of that kind of mash making as well. That's great and I think we're attempting to join your their operation to the cda is the very first academic member in that in that group and of course education and academia kind of go hand in hand that's our role here we at the University of Hawaii we have also all the community colleges and all the islands linked in with the main university so it's like one system so we have a great access to public at the front we have great research functionality in the core and it's a nice setup for both the promotion of the information about drones and also doing experiments and doing scenarios and such with law enforcement and public safety people to pull in what their requirements are and you know you we all deal with what's been provided to us by the manufacturers and we have to be ready for surprises when they when the end users tell us what they really want and I'm sure you've seen some of that in initial interactions with your users against what the manufacturers have thought. Yeah and I think we've seen that for years even before we formed the commercial drone alliance I've been in this industry about 13 years I think and there there was always kind of this gap between what was being developed and what the end user needed whether that was military law enforcement civil or commercial use and I think that gap is shrinking but there's a lot of technology that's still being developed and there that you know we need to bring together the end user community better with people that are making those different types of technologies to make sure that you know we're streamlined across the board. We're going to be taking a first crack at that here in Hawaii in about three weeks we have our our kind of the top of the public safety domain is really the Department of Homeland Security's funded state fusion centers in the various states and through that group we sort of have fingers to all the areas where there's activity in public safety and law enforcement so we'll be starting some of that scenario-based interaction very soon here and again it'll be kind of little steps at a time I think to get to the point where we finally have some kind of a specification that would be useful but I agree with you it's it's been a quite an interesting transition over if you've been 13 years in this you've seen four generations of of rollover happened in this game and just imagine what the rollover is going to happen in the future battery power density reduction in size of some of the critical sensors like adsb and radars and such on board processing to kind of get the man out of the loop and let the drone take care of its own mission so what in your own mind question what do you see as how this technology future is going to evolve in terms of the functionality available to the user well I think you know the end state for anyone that's in this market is really kind of looking at autonomy it's not going to be flying a drone by remote control standing on the ground watching it making sure it's within your visual line of sight the idea because drones are meant to create efficiencies the idea is to reach towards autonomy and so as technologies are being developed I think we're getting closer to that and then you know the regulatory environment needs to catch up to that but you know an example I like to use is you know a farmer right now can use a drone and even they can program it autonomously to fly now but based on the regulations they they have to you know be part of the operation and have their eyes on the drone while it's surveying their field in the future what we want to see happen in this industry is there's no interaction between the farmer and the drone the drone goes out and pre-programmed routes that at different selected times and it and it completes its mission and all the farmer has to do is open up his computer and get the data and get the answers to whatever the questions are and so really it's it's you know it's about autonomy and it's about creating valuable actionable information for the end user and that's part of the requirements structure that we need to be looking at because you know the requirements around you know what a farmer needs versus what a construction company needs from a data perspective could be very different and I think for these end users it's at the end of the day it's not going to be about the drone it's going to be about the information that they collect that's useful and it's in and it's timely and actionable and so I think that's the future of where we're going and in the meantime you know a lot of technology needs to be developed to make these systems safe you mentioned ADSB you know miniaturized ADSB because there are issues with being able to identify drones that are in the airspace now you know technology that can make them safe and reliable to be able to take over if you know what if a propeller fails or something like that so you know those technologies are being developed now but I think it at all because the end goal is is reaching towards autonomy you know it's interesting and last year when you were talking out here addressing the US district court the main themes were going to be the end state functional software that pulls the information together and generates some kind of an expressed set of information to a decision maker that probably hasn't changed the autonomy that is behind that now is interesting to see you're speaking about that sneaking up I think you were speaking of training and countermeasures or control of drones as being the three major legs under that three-legged stool is that still pretty much how you see it today I think it is and I think it's still you know it's still about the data and it's still about the information that the end user wants and needs it's about the safety of the system which can which includes command and control it includes sense and avoid technology it includes you know all of those kinds of things um you know but some newer topics and newer areas of interest are kind of counter drone technology so while everyone's excited about drones and using drones there are others that that you know want to figure out how do we keep rogue drones out of our operations how do we keep people that are you know using their drone to maybe look at uh our facility how do we keep some of those drones out you know a good example is is a is a sports stadium they want to use drones to to film practices they want to use drones personally for their own business at the same time you know during a sporting event they don't want rogue drones flying over a stadium so how do you you know there's a lot of interest in using drones by these end users that there's also interest in keeping out unauthorized or rogue drones so that's counter counter uas counter drone technology is that is a new big kind of trend and I think it's become a very important one that's exactly right in fact I was addressing our department of health here a couple of weeks ago as we do periodically on updating them and they came up with an example that I hadn't thought of but we've already had one case out here where a a rogue situation applied it was a licensed and properly certified operator was using a drone to measure damage on the reef after a recent ship grounding you have to understand what damage you've done to the reef and find some way to fix it so the ship was being moved and then observing it another operator who was perhaps not even certified we don't know was in our following with his drone the first guy to maybe undercut him in terms of the business side of providing information to the shipping company so right away we see even in a simple situation like that they need to know hey my drone's up there I know what I'm doing what's this other guy doing if he knows what I'm doing he's likely copying or attempting to take advantage of what I'm up to so absolutely right even on a one-on-one basis not just a terrorist situation or something like that but plain old business we have to understand what's going on and make sure we those who are properly authorized to perform are are allowed to do that without being interfered with yeah and that kind of comes down to accountability I mean that you know everybody knows that there was a drone registration process where people had to register their drones and it was a fairly easy process to go through and and you know cost about five dollars and that was recently revoked by the courts in the United States and so now nobody has no no hobbyist or recreational user has to register their drones and so there's now a lack of accountability and that's not to say that that community is the one that's that you know they're flying unauthorized or in in rogue ways but but there needs to be some accountability so that commercial operations can can continue and businesses can thrive at the same time as recreational users can still enjoy the kind of the freedom of flight and flying what what were considered model aircraft that that's a really cool word accountability it applies in so many aspects here let's pick that up after our break and talk about it in a bit more detail you're watching think tech Hawaii which dreams live on think tech Hawaii comm uploads to youtube and broadcast on cable oc 16 and a lullo 54 great content for Hawaii from think tech i am an energy attorney clean energy advocate community outreach specialist and on power up Hawaii we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean renewable and just energy future to do that we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum from clean energy technology folks to community groups to politicians to regulators to the utility so please join us Tuesdays at one o'clock for power up Hawaii you're watching think tech Hawaii 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state great content for Hawaii we're back here folks Ted Ralston think tech studios downtown Honolulu our show where the drone leads with our guests standing by in Silicon Valley once again Gretchen West welcome back to our show Gretchen thank you for having me good to be back by Skype absolutely it's good to be back and good to have you here and it's really neat that we have these people all over the country who are willing to spend their time get on Skype and hook up with us because we are kind of isolated from a lot of bus traffic and such out here and keeping in touch with people is really important for us and there's a lot of activity taking place certainly in Silicon Valley where you are what a great place to be and on the other end of the country you got DC in fact you must spend all your time back and forth between DC and and Silicon Valley ideal yeah and so when we're talking before about accountability before the break this issue of accountability and proper use and avoiding misuse and malicious use of drones implies there's some framework of education or information that people can collect and can understand what accountability means in that regard we all know that that's not here yet we have information all over the place like so much of it but it it's hard to really put your finger on what truly matters in fact we're having that very discussion online right now with regard to 107 versus public aircraft ops for civil use what's the better approach even in that fairly controlled discussion there is no one place you can turn to for the salient information that allows you to make a decision so just imagine the guy who uses his drone for wedding photography or fish finding or something like that that where does he turn what what do you see in in your operation when when that question comes up how to get people information about what the limits are yeah and that's a tough one and it just it's education education education and it's really hard to reach the masses you know there's some programs out there like know before you fly the FA has got a lot of information on their website but you know it's hard to require somebody to go to a website and look for information a lot of manufacturers are putting flyers in the packaging of the drone but not all of them are and so you know there's not a good answer and I know this those questions are you know there's discussions are happening all the time just in DC last week we had a conversation around this how do we educate some of the new users because you know for a lot of us that have been in this industry a long time you know that worked in unmanned technologies in the military or for law enforcement or as a recreational modeler had some awareness that these were aircraft and there are rules of the sky now you can go to best buy or order a drone online at amazon.com and and you know you could be a real estate agent or wedding photographer and just don't have the awareness that these are aircraft or that they're flying in the sky and we all know nobody reads every single word that's in an instruction manual so you toss the flyers aside and you don't pay attention so how do we reach those people and it's not necessarily necessarily their fault they're just you know there is not an awareness that there are these are aircraft and there are rules of the sky that they that people need to follow and you know we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people and some of the predictions are getting up into the millions and so you know it's just a matter of constant education and working together across this industry everyone needs to be spreading this message not just a group like the commercial drone alliance or the other nonprofits there really needs to be everybody exactly right that's kind of how we see it out here and again in education which is what we do at the university it's that's something we should be paying attention to and I think we've heard so many times that need and we have it really in in spades at the time of the legislative sessions because our legislators they need information that they can make good decisions based on and our experience last year wasn't good in that regard and so we're taking action now in July to get ready for December and trying to come up with events interactions printed material whatever form makes sense that tries to consolidate things down to a reasonable range of things you have to know about in order to make a educated decision I think at the end of our legislative session last year the last bills that went through the legislative groups that were looking at them simply said we don't have the right background of information in order to judge what's being presented so therefore we'll you know put them in uh Never Never Land so it's interesting that you are sensitive to that as well um and we certainly are here in fact that almost reaches down to the the community organizations and the elementary schools and things like that that where you have first contact with people so one of the thoughts we've got here is projects and programs with the schools that bring in the school kids bring in the emergency response people in town bring in the parents and and take some important but not emergency situation like invasive albiza trees around here and understand how drones could help understand that situation and and prepare for disasters and such in this regard to kind of get the word out in some way but we've even had requests for from not even from our police department here for how do we think of organizing a citizen's core that really wants to use their drones you know they want to do it in the right way they want to support a fire situation or a rescue situation or whatever they realize there's a yellow caution line they can't get across so how do we organize them at some level of training some level of accountability the way you worded it some level of responsibility let them produce information useful to the situation but keep them out of where the area where the area where danger might occur has that sort of thing crossed your bow in terms of a citizen's core of some kind when i think it's i think it's a good idea and it's just a matter of having enough communities that are willing to do something like that and then educating those citizen cores about what the the rules are i mean when you talk about law enforcement you know when the fAA basically said you know they are not going to be able to enforce operations across the country so they wanted to educate law enforcement of what to do what to do if you see someone flying a drone in the park and you know it's just it's pages of documentation on a website and and not every law enforcement officer is going to go and and really absorb that information and so you know there's got to be a better way of doing it and i think demonstrations hands-on you know flying drones understanding what these aircraft can and can't do are really important but how do you do that across this entire country to reach those millions of people that are buying these products and flying them all the time i mean it's really a it's it's a tough challenge and you know it's it shows like these that i think can help educate but we need to have a lot more of this when we joke around because we're a fairly new industry and and not very rich in money but if we had the money it would be great to do a superbowl ad you know in conjunction with lady gaga flying with drones to kind of instead of showing it as entertainment and toys that you know we need a superbowl ad we need something comparable to that that reaches a tremendous amount of people and it's just we're just not there yet agree on that you know there's there's another side to this accountability issue that we that we're just talking about here the education component leading to accountability there's also on the manufacturing side something very interesting to me personally and that's what you might call the safety and response and reliability and uh reliable life cycle cost aspects of a drone if you're in the fire department and you will buy a new set of motorola radios you pretty much know what their reliability is going to be and how long they're going to last and what the warranty service is on them if you go buy a drone i bet none of that is evident to you you don't know how long it's going to last you don't know how many you have to buy because you may lose one if you start depending on it and then you have to have backup so there's this whole concept of the life cycle utility of this technology that we i think need to have the users stand up and and demand and push that over to the manufacturing side i mean i was just reading something on google last night about some guy who from one of the really highly placed educated business journals that was going to examine and evaluate and report back on his new two thousand dollar drone he brought out here to Hawaii and he said but i can't because it's stuck up in the mountains i can't get it so anyway uh the these are single string dependence systems we have in general and if the gps goes down or many other kinds of malfunctions that can occur we lose them so if you're a public safety guy you're depending on this thing to return useful information in a dynamic situation it's got to be there has the industry and you've seen industry more than we do i would love to figure out how to talk to the industry i don't know how to but if you have they addressed that kind of an issue of a life cycle reliability as part of the accountability equation yeah i mean i think the closest thing there's a program that was kind of founded i guess by nasa it was invented by nasa and it's called new star which stands i don't even remember what it stands for but it's basically an underwriters lab for drones there's there's a facility being stood up right now in new york upstate new york where basically the drones are going to be tested based on their manufacturing specifications so they'll go through wind tunnels their their technology of return to home and sense and avoid and and all of these different technologies and the the vehicle platform itself will be will be tested the endurance will be tested so if a if a manufacturer's specs say that it can fly 15 minutes in whatever knots of wind it'll be tested and so then on the back end there should be more reliability to the consumers that or the end users that are buying these drones have some sort of comfort that these drones have been tested and they've gone through some sort of standards and and so this is it's new um cylinder development but i think it it will hopefully address a lot of that that's great i'd like to know more about that so you get like an energy star compliant stamp on your drone when you go buy it you get some confidence it's going to be there but you mentioned the word standards a lot of important we're right alongside accountability standards are something that an sci is starting to push on astm is uh the uh not the cda is one thing but the other group is the uh the one out of the department of commerce under rtca that's looking at standards and radio communication and software and such from your perspective how do you see all those standards activities moving along coming together sharing information resulting in one pile of standards not four different piles of standards yeah and i think that's another tough tough thing that we're seeing right now i think antsy public published a list of maybe 20 or 30 different groups that are looking at standards for our community and so you know they there needs to be kind of an ombudsman that pulls all of this together because i i know that industry is starting to form its own collective groups to look at standards for different types of use cases and so you've got the formal standards groups then you've got industry that's trying to work together to create kind of kind of some community-based standards and so how does this all mix together how does it feed through the drone advisory committee if it does it all and i just i think there's so much there everything's kind of scattered right now and so how do we bring that together and that's something that commercial drone alliance is considered is to be kind of a glue that maybe can bring together all these discussions but it's it's a it's a big task to do so we got a lot of big tasks here it's a it's a a big business lots of little fragmentation going on and you've been in it for 13 years and seeing incredible change over those 13 and what do you think the next 13 is going to hold i think we're going to see you know even more advanced since we're going to get to autonomy we're going to get to be able to fly beyond visual line of sight we're going to see package delivery we're also going to see a lot of counter drone technology we're going to see you know more requirements on the drone for remote identification you know we're going to see security concerns being addressed in a more meaningful way i think we're going to see flying taxis so we're not just going to see these small drones we're going to see larger drones that are carrying people now we're going to see an air traffic management system that can manage all of this i think you know we're just still really at the beginning of this technology which has been around for 40 or 50 years and you know it's just we're just going to see some rapid advances and it's an exciting time i mean we're just we're still really at the front end of a lot of the development of the technology i agree it's an exciting time i've only been in this for maybe five years not anywhere in the length you've been in it but every day bring something new and some new elevation some new idea that somebody's gotten and david plays publishes it and robin alexander publishes it we all get to know about it and then we get to have you on tv and get them on tv and and talk about their ideas in a ways that can be passed around so once again gretchen thanks very much for coming on the show today and last year as you did next year you have to be in person here and best of luck to the cda of course we're attempting to be part of that at u-h and uh we love your projections for the next 13 years and we'll have to hold you accountable once a year for those next 13 to make sure they all come true i hope that will stay here having me and aloha okay aloha thanks for being on the show