 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmers series. My name is Stephanie Mock, and I'll be the show host today. Our show is titled From Fields to Flying, Using Drone Technology for Hawaii's Farms. And usually on our show, we're talking with farmers, we're talking with chefs, restaurateurs, and other ag professionals who are working with farmers in the field and chefs in the restaurants about how to secure Hawaii's food system and agricultural system. So usually we're talking with farmers who are attending their fields or we're talking to technical assistants who can really provide that in the field technical assistance. But today I thought we'd talk about something a little different, different type of technical assistance, maybe not so much in the field but above the field. So our show again is From Fields to Flying, Using Drone Technology for Hawaii's Farms. And I have two drone experts with me, probably the drone experts throughout Hawaii joining me today. So I'm hoping we can marry my agricultural experience working with an agricultural non-profit and their drone experience and how we can find new applications for farmers to use drone technology on their farms, whether that's through mapping or new LiDAR technology or combating ag theft, which is a huge issue, especially for Hawaii farms. So I have two very special guests I'd like to extend a warm welcome to. First we have Ted Rousson, the program director of the unmanned aerial systems program at the University of Hawaii Applied Research Laboratory, right? I got that correct. It's pretty much all true. Pretty much all true. And we have also the program coordinator Josh Levy, who is a program coordinator of the same super long title, the UASUHARL program, correct? Correct. So my understanding is, you know, I've talked to, I've talked to many people about agriculture. I've never talked to anyone about drones and I must admit I am a complete new drone newbie. So anything you tell me is going to be brand new information and I know those watching today, especially land managers, farmers and field assistants are going to be interested in how we can use this great technology that we know exists, but how we can apply it in the field. So thank you for joining us today. I appreciate it. And our story, how I found these guests, is a little bit different. So Jay at Think Tech Hawaii had been wanting me to interview you for a couple of months and he was like, you need to contact Ted. And I was like, when am I going to talk to Ted about these drones? I don't know what to do. And I was at the Waimanalo neighborhood board meeting and I saw you and I was like, man, that guy looks so familiar. Where do I know him from? And I Googled you and Think Tech Hawaii host and I'm glad I got to talk to you because you were talking about an ag theft project that you're working with on drones. So here we are today. The first half of our show is going to feature basically a one-on-one of drones. What you can currently use them for. And then the second half of our show is going to be strictly agricultural applications of drone technology and where you see the future of agriculture and drones working together. So thank you. I know that was a long welcome, but I appreciate you guys being here. So Ted, if you could kind of give us a background of what your role as program director of the UAS, U-H-A-R-L is and what your core mission is. Sure. We probably have enough content in what you just laid out here for about three hours of meetings and we have 20 minutes or probably have about 25 at this point in time to go through. So very quickly at the Applied Research Lab at the University of Hawaii, we have an obligation generated by the legislature and then relayed to us through D-Bed to provide leadership in the going direction forward for applying drones and drone technology to all aspects of infrastructure here in Hawaii. And we also have the obligation to coordinate things in a way that is consistent with our partners, the University of Alaska, who have a contract with the FAA and Josh is one of Josh's jobs is to coordinate that. So work done in Hawaii matches what the contract with the FAA says. And third we have a business function to generate and run it, which is an unmanned air systems test range. All of the lands in Hawaii, private and public are potentially involved in that business and that again comes out of a relationship we have University of Alaska and that they have with the FAA. So in summary, we're supposed to be providing leadership and outreach and advice and guidance and anything we can do to make sure this technology is used in the right way and for the best of Hawaii. Okay. Wow. There you go. That's the mission statement. And AG is a big part of that. And I've been looking for you for some time, ever since I kept looking at all the station responses here and there was these couple of different programs on AG that take place here once a week. And we were working with the State AG conference this year with the and the Farmers Bureau and such and just trying to find where that center point of AG functionality is so we can attach to it. And it turns out it's right here in the same station where I work. I know, like taking it away, right? I'll give that to you. Yeah. Well, thanks to Jay. Yeah, thanks to Jay and a chance meeting at a neighborhood board meeting, right? So I thought, Josh, I'd like, you know, he kind of touched on your role already as program coordinator. So I thought, I, you know, I have no experience with drones. I've never even played with them. So I thought you could just talk a little bit about how you got involved in using drones. Did you study it? Did you just pick up a drone one day and fly it and crash it? Or any story about that? Yeah. What do I begin? No, so it started actually, you know, at least 10 years ago now back when I was still in high school, my brother, who's three years younger than me, also in high school was always an engineer, Tinker, those kinds of things, picked up kind of building quadcopters out of pieces of wood in the basement. So he was flying them, and at that time he would never, ever let me fly them. At least I kind of, that was when I first got exposed to drones, right? At least quadcopters. And then kind of that sat in the back of my mind for a couple of years while I was doing, you know, studies in marine biology and marine science. Came out to Hawaii to pursue a master's degree and in there got involved with this guy, Ted. And from then on, it was history, essentially, you know, using, starting to use drones to map coral reefs. I'm out of the windward side of the island, Kaneohe Bay. And, you know, had a relationship with Ted from then on, kind of thinking about how, you know, the ways to move drones forward in Hawaii. And from there we are essentially. Yeah, so for your master's project then you said you were using drones to map out the coral reefs in Kaneohe Bay. Was the idea just to get kind of that baseline map, was it to provide possible solutions? What was more in-depth on that project? So I actually got, well, I got lucky, but the corals got unlucky during the years that I was going out there, because this was during one of those, one of the years that we had global coral bleaching, where essentially worldwide, you know, severe decline in coral health. So I was able to get out there with these drones and map the extent of coral bleaching on some of these reefs in a way that it would have taken people, either snorkeling or scuba diving, significantly longer time to collect the same amount of information. So trying to start kind of pushing the boundary in terms of what can we start using these drones for? By significant, you mean more like 100, 100 times, right? Not just a small significance, a big significance. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you need a small amount. In one hour you can do the work that 10 guys can't do in 10 days. Exactly, yep. Yeah, significant increase in kind of efficiency and even quality of data collected. And going back to the ag situation, even the processes that we use for mapping coral reefs can be applied directly towards ag and all those benefits I was talking about can be transferred right over as well. All right, so you were, so like you said, you were mapping the coral reefs. I thought we could talk about some other projects that you guys have done in Hawaii or worldwide that you've been using drones, either mapping or LiDAR or any other projects. How about you take, no, you take it, Ted. Okay, well, one of the obligations we have in an offer we make is to anybody who's watching this show in the ag domain, we are more than willing to come out or have you come to the university and any island, really, any of the islands in Hawaii and do demonstrations associated with what information is useful by that particular segment of the ag business to collect in terms of information they need to make better decisions, make them faster and make them more accurately. So we can take this equipment out, we can have them come see us. So that's one thing that's an offer we make to you and your audience right now. That's one of our... You heard it right here on Things Like Hawaii. Right here on the show, right, yeah. Can't go back now, it's on. No, no, it's not, it's on, it's right there. It's on YouTube forever, so, yeah. So as Josh mentioned, work in the natural environment is really attractive, really, because you can put drones out with sensors on them in a way where you would put a person at risk and you don't put anybody at risk in using the drone. So Josh's work on the reef, we've got people working on beach erosion, Chuck Devaney, one of our counterparts did a lot of work on Kailua Beach erosion over a, watching over a period of time. We've done some work with the Navy in terms of discovering marine debris and this sort of thing without putting a boat out there to find it. And law enforcement, fire protection, public safety, determining collections where fire hazard material is collected, vegetation, or just material and goods that are stored somewhere that could turn into a fire hazard, determining access in so that public safety can get in and get fire equipment in or get people out. All of those kinds of tasks have been done and it, I was personally done in the Philippines after the Alanda Typhoon down there and we did a lot of work down there looking at debris collection and such and damage structure. And it somehow putting that observation point up and looking down or at a bleak and looking slant gives you a whole new dimension of information you can't get standing here with five and a half foot eyes looking horizontally. And you see a whole different picture. And so without belaboring it anymore, anywhere from man made to natural issues, he goes power lines and such, anything that can be inspected can be inspected in general better and lower risk with something like these drones, which are also relative to people, they're expendable. If we lose a drone, it's not like the end of the day. But if you lose a person, why, it's a whole different deal. So this information that you're seeing in these new landscapes and stuff, are you able to look at it real time or do you have to collect it and then download it to a computer? Or is it that real time indication of data? Both are really there, depending on the sensor package that you put on and the payload that carries that sensor package, it could be for collection for post analysis, things that don't move very fast, ag for one is looking at it that night, it's probably not bad. And it saves having to transmit a lot of data down. If you're looking at law enforcement or fire protection, you want the information right there on a screen or you want in fact relay it to somebody else on a screen because you have to make decisions immediately. So what you're asking is a really interesting question. The most important thing is to understand thoroughly what the user's needs are, how they intend to use the information, what type of information they want to collect, how durable it has to be, what resolution it has to be, what accuracy. And then working backwards from there, you can put together the payload package and the sensors and then you can decide what to carry it on, carry it on a fixed wing, carry it on a hybrid, carry it on a rotor craft. Those decisions can be made once you understand really what the end user's needs are. So sitting down with some ag people over a great agricultural product, Hawaiian coffee, and having that discussion would be superb. We will start that, we can't do it tomorrow, but we can do it Saturday, right? Sorry. You get that and a bunch of people together, we'll sit down with them and talk about requirements. There you go. So I thought we could pull up some of the photos and images you guys provided today just to give people an idea of what kind of images we can capture with drones. If we could pull those up, right? There we go, there we go. So Josh, maybe you could just kind of give us a quick overview, obviously beautiful, beautiful photo. But what was the point of this? Why are you so happy? So this was during those mapping missions to go out to Kanyohebe and map those patch reaps. So this is actually an image that I was collecting during those mapping missions. This wasn't a, I'm gonna go and take a beautiful photo, this was actually part of my job at the time. Way to make it scientific, you know? That's just pretty photos. Exactly, that's the thing is drones can kind of blend those two worlds together, right? There are a lot of people in the re-science realm that are trying to get kind of their word out there on the research they're doing, why it's so important, those kinds of things. And just showing people graphs and numbers isn't gonna do the trick. You have to show people some of this is gonna catch their attention. And so looking at something like this, where you see these two fringing, these two patch reaps coming together, forming this amazing channel with fishing, you know, fishing the channel, there's a turtle in the channel, really catches their attention and I'm just like, you know, what's that picture all about? You know, what are you doing here? And so blending that kind of that line between education and research, I think is what these things can do really well. I think that's fantastic. Yeah, can we show one more, do we have time for one more image? I would love to show just, can you explain what kind of project this was for? So this is actually showing you one of our smaller test sites throughout Hawaii. So we have a very good relationship with the University of Hawaii, obviously. Obviously, yeah. But so we actually have use of the baseball stadium whenever the baseball team isn't there, obviously, that causes problems. But so we've had several demos, several test flights out there at the baseball stadium to essentially, again, without showing people the capabilities of these platforms, showing what kinds of things that we can do, not only just taking photos, but agility tests, all those kinds of situations as well. And because it's right down the street, it's something that we can plan that day of as long as we're getting permission, we can go down and do some testing in the afternoon. Right, well, thank you. We're gonna take a quick break right now. So we've been joined by Ted Ralston and Josh Levy of the, oh my goodness, of the Unmanned Aerial Systems Program at the University of Hawaii Applied Research Laboratory. And they've been talking to us about how they got involved in drones and the different applications that drones can use, that they've been using here in Hawaii. And our second half of the show is gonna feature agriculture and drone technology. Stay tuned. I have this crazy thing going on today. I was just walking by and all these DJs and producers are set up all around the city. And I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. Welcome back, everyone. We're glad you're still with us. We're here at Hawaii Food and Farmers Series show today. We are focusing on from fields to flying, using drone technology for Hawaii's farms. And we have two local drone experts who have been telling us about their expertise and background in using drones and all the different applications that it has here in Hawaii. And our second half of the show is gonna be strictly agricultural applications. So we're gonna marry our agricultural tech that we have here at Hawaii Food and Farmers and their drone expertise, which I must admit, I have none. So we're hoping to blend these today and see all the different opportunities that they have. So Ted mentioned to me before the show that they're working on this really interesting project with Kauai Coffee Company and Agmit. So I'm gonna talk to him now and see if he could give us a little bit more about that AgTep project. Sure, actually, it's bigger than just Kauai Coffee is on all islands and this is an FAA project, FAA program that we the state of Hawaii have put a bid in for. UH did the work, D-Vid is the nominal bidder on this project for FAA. The whole idea is to find the most useful use of drones in your various aspects of infrastructure and business in your area and find ways that the various governmental agencies and organizations and the legislature and the police and fire, everybody can work together and come up with a way that is locally very effective in terms of managing the system, managing the collection of information, protecting privacy, all the things that go along with taking pictures of things and find a way to make that work. Ultimately, to return the control of airspace in your jurisdictional area over to us, the locals. Rather than have the federal government manage and control that airspace if it's down low where crops grow, sorry, have the local agencies and jurisdictions share work and come together and become empowered to do that most effectively. Rather than turn to Washington D.C. and say we have this idea of a farm on a Kauai, what do you think Washington D.C.? Washington D.C. is where? No, they have no idea. So return that to local. So there are Kauai Coffee Company is participating in that and so is Monsanto on the island of Maui in terms of ag theft and on ag efficiency. And anybody who is listening to this who has an idea of things that are important in theft or security or things that are important in ag efficiency is absolutely willing to help contribute to what the user's needs are so we can help, we can configure this program to be most effective and most broad. So for this project then it seems like you're bringing together a bunch of different agencies, a bunch of different frameworks of people's perspectives, how privacy, that kind of thing. I wanted to know, did the farms come to you? Were they seeking out, hey, how can we use drones? Or were you guys thinking about, hey, let's reach out to these farms and see what applications these drones have. I think it was kind of like what you just ran into at the Orlando Neighborhood Board. You found a connection that would work. We found a connection with Fred Kaua at Kauai Coffee Company through Stu Burley at the Kauai Economic Development Council on Kauai. And Fred is already working drones on the Kauai Coffee Company operation and so we decided to build that up stronger. And the other connection through Monsanto came through actually through the FAA. Monsanto had contacted the FAA and said, who do we contact to figure out how to work this in Hawaii? And they said, okay, here's your contact, just like the Neighborhood Board. And so it's those kind of connections that work and then once you have that connection, now you can involve others and bring the whole network in and have everybody contribute to it and vote on it for that matter. Okay. So these entities that you're talking about, these agricultural operations are, you know, they're well off and they're large operations. Are there ways that you're thinking about how small farmers can use drones on their farm or strictly are we trying to think big first and then seeing how that model can work for the smaller farms in the state? The scale was anywhere from 10 acres to 3,000 acres. I remember we'd gotten, Josh might talk a little bit about the work we did in Waimanalo. Sure, yeah, so I'm sure you're aware of the farms in the backside of Waimanalo. So we went up there and helped, I forget the name of the guy, but then we went up there with, I forget, anyway, he, yeah. So quite a few, but yeah. There was several and it was a little bit of a time ago, but he essentially went up there to, essentially do a demo, right? Show them what the capabilities of using drones are, went up there and that those farms are kind of a patchwork of, you know, a different property. Similar to the picture we have in the background here. Yeah, exactly. And so being able to do, you know, kind of work as a team, you know, in terms of these farmers kind of pooling together, whether it's funds, resources to have one of these guys cover all of their farms in one flight and then divvy up the data in certain ways that would be useful to everyone. It's kind of a thing that we were working on back there, but it is, it's a pretty interesting topic because, you know, there are certain people that may not want to share all this kind of stuff and others that are completely fine with people knowing kind of what's going on in their farms and how productive they're being. But the great thing about these aircraft, especially the quadcopters, is they, you know, they can do very small areas very, very quickly whereas with these fixed wings, you know, doing an acre or so isn't going to quite, going to be using the capability of these aircraft. So if you have a small little farm, investing a little bit of money into one of these will help you, I don't, depending on what you need, but, you know, help you a lot in terms of getting a new perspective on what's happening with the health across. So I'm glad that you pointed out these actual drones that we have here in the studio today. And I thought you could talk about prices because I know you said a nominal fee and you can buy your own drone, but that is a really relative term. So I thought you could just, can you kind of quote me hard prices on each model and why this one versus this one? Right, so this big orange guy down here, this is a flight wave edge, this is a hybrid V-toll system, so it can take off and land vertically and then transition to fly like an airplane, which allows you to take off and land in smaller areas that have a two hour flight time, so you can cover a lot of air really fast with one of these guys. So if you have that 3,000 acre farm, then, you know, this would kind of be up your average, right? Whereas, and so that's going to cost you $10,000. 10,000, okay. So, you know, for a big production, maybe that's worth it or you're going to be, you know, can you save that money on buying trucks and fuel and all those kinds of things that cover that area? Whereas if you're a smaller operation, you can use one of these guys, the stuff even smaller than this, that costs between, you know, $1,000 and $1,500, that can cover, you know, an acre or smaller, very, very fast, and even larger than that, you know, you can use multiple batteries for different to make your area grow, your mapping area grow larger. So, yeah, for around $1,500, you can get one of these and essentially collect the same imagery as one of these depending on what your sensor payload is again, but obviously for a different cost. Yeah. So, yeah, obviously this cheaper model would be better suited probably for the smaller farms that don't have the capital to invest in this, but I think one important thing is that just because you buy a drone doesn't mean you know how to operate it, and I don't think people want to send up a $1,500 drone and then crash it and then just constantly be paying $1,500. So, I know you made that offer, we have it on camera, that anyone can contact you and you come out and I think you're going to be inundated with requests, so I was wondering, is there any sort of framework for kind of like utilizing that sharing economy for drones? Is there like an Uber or a Lyft for drone usage? Can I just say, hey, I need to map five acres and you guys come out? I think you're right on, if you're a five acre, one acre, 10 acre, 20 acre farmer, you're not going to want to buy any equipment unless you are also a tech guy who really gets into that stuff. Yeah, kind of multi-millionaire on the side. Probably that, right. And so, is some kind of a cooperative or some kind of a service where the farmer doesn't actually, doesn't have to own anything, simply hires the service to come in and take a periodic examination once a month or something like that of a certain area and would be a perfectly good business model. So, there's that breakpoint between owning it and buying it and buying a service that has to be discovered. And I think this program we're thinking of with the FAA that we get applied on, probably give us a lot of information that would help. In fact, the FAA is even after that. They said, we need to know where the breakpoint is between buying and buying equipment and buying a service. And we need to know where things don't work. If things crash a lot, we need to know that too. So, there's a lot of discovery yet to be made, but it starts with a demonstration and it starts with user's needs. So, all those viewers of yours will get them down to the university stadium or all collect out in Waipahu or Waianae or Waimanala or somewhere and do a demonstration and start that discussion. That dialogue is the essential piece that will pull this together and make it useful. Yeah, so I know a lot of farmers. So, I work with farmers as my full-time job and they're interested in it, but the capital and just like the tech know-how isn't there. So, I think, you know, kind of offering that in the field demo and those workshops and outreach that you guys are talking about is huge. And I'm, you know, in a couple of months, maybe I can bring you back on and see if anything's been moving forward with this ag theft proposal. Well, we'd love to have you act as the filter, bring all this at the funnel and bring all these questions and comments and connections in and feed them to us. We'll be glad to go off and construct work and construct workshops. Yeah. Get this going. I think that's awesome. And then, so you've been talking a lot about the FAA. Have you been working with USDA as well or the State Department of Agriculture? We have not, we've actually been looking for the point of connection. We went to the capital, to the agricultural day at the capital last year. Oh, yeah, that's coming up next month. Yeah, I was thinking it's coming up pretty soon. And it was, frankly, it was tough figuring out who's in charge. Right. And exactly who do we talk to. Right. And so, we wandered around. That's where we met Fred Cowell. Oh, okay. And he was, you know, he comes from spec ops in the Air Force so he understands stuff pretty well. He knows. He got some background. He helps a lot. And that's the sort of connection we need. So if we can figure out, if we can, if you can put some meetings together for us at the State Ag Conference and we can bring equipment and do it right there in the capital. Am I an honorary member of the UAS, U-H-A-R-L now? Anybody in J. Feidele's office who is an automatic commander. Yeah. Unfortunately, we're out of time. I feel like we didn't even broach like a lot of the topics we wanted to talk about today. So obviously, I'll have to have you on in a couple months just to see how that project's going. So thank you guys so much for joining me today. And I'm glad we could talk about drone technology for Hawaii's farm. So we were joining the studio today at Head Rausden and Josh Levy of the unmanned aerial systems program at the University of Hawaii Applied Research Laboratory. Not our usual guests here in Hawaii, food and farmers, but obviously very expertise guests and we're so happy that they were talking about drone technology and how Hawaii farms can use it, whether creating a drone Uber, if you will, and bringing those farmer knowledge in the field knowledge to the drone guide. So how can we work together to prevent ag theft, increase yields and maximize profits for Hawaii's farms? Until next time, stay tuned. Thank you.