 Good morning afternoon folks, Ed Rawston here in downtown Honolulu Studios of Tink-Tek-Kawaii. Actually, we've switched the studio over to the diamond head side of town. This is the Elks Club that you can see, the sun setting in the background as the day is running out here. And we are the last thing, Josh, the last thing between people going off and having a weekend. We are it. Anyway, welcome on board, Josh Levy, a recent master's degree graduate from UH. First time on the show, although your boss is here on the show before you. That's the wrong order, you know, Josh. But anyway, she did well. So we got Josh here and we have Van Lanai standing by. We have George Purdy. George, are you there? Hello. All right, Hawaii. How are you guys doing today? OK, there's George. Happy new year to you, George, and happy new year to all of our watchers and listeners and such. And we're the drone leads. This is about the 100th episode of this show now, which has been going on for a long time. And it's getting bigger. Audience is growing and the number of people we bring on incredible. It's been quite an experience for all of us. I'm just kind of advertising that for the way we start the year. But we selected for this year, year 2017 to be the year of community involvement. And Josh Levy is on the show for that reason. He's probably the right up there at the top of our community involvement chain. George Purdy, Michael Motta may be in later. But if we don't do community involvement and make community involvement center to our UAS activities here in Hawaii, we will be not working as fast and effectively as we could. And the dimensions and the elements within community involvement take on an unknown breadth to them in depth and color. It's fascinating to see it work. And George is a master at that. You're a master at that. And Michael Motta, thank you all for being so good at that. Anyway, Josh, your involvement has been through the Makai side, the marine inshore coral health management. Tell us a little bit about that, how it worked and how you got into drones for that particular piece of your work. So it's actually a funny story. My brother, who's three years younger, he's an engineering student and has always loved building things and mostly breaking them afterwards and refixing them again. And drones obviously was the most perfect thing for that. Because, you know, he'd build them, these wooden platforms out of balsa wood and some hardwood in between and that allowed him to crash them whenever he wanted. And I'd be there watching him crash them and laughing at him a lot. But after I came out here and actually Cindy, my old advisor, first bought a drone for the lab. And actually I think- This was the HINB, the Hawaii Marine Biology Lab? Yes, yes, the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and UH Minoa as well, both campuses together. So she bought one for her specific lab. I think under the direction of you, I think she was trying to use it for a certain project. And because I'd had this experience with drones for a couple of years with my brother, I'd already been thinking about the various applications. You were wired already. Exactly. I was like, okay, we can use this. This is definitely a thing that we can be utilizing for various, you know, remote sensing, whether it's reefs or agriculture or anything like that. And because I've been in the marine biology track for so long, that's immediately what I went to. So I was convinced that we could get this to work. And so over the past couple of years I've been, first of all, learning how to fly them, learning the different sensors and all the different mapping technologies that we have to use in order to actually get necessary data and the useful data that we can then use to see how our reefs are doing and if there's any way that we can help them improve. So the reason why looking at reefs from a drone is so interesting is that you're covering a lot more area than you would either snorkeling or scuba diving, but you're getting almost the same amount of information and detail from the corals themselves. You can actually get an equivalent level of analyzable data. So it obviously depends on the question that you're asking, but for the majority of the stuff, as long as you're not looking at a single animal or a single polyp that's inside of a coral, you can get a really good idea about what's going on at the colony level. So you're getting around less than a centimeter resolution per free space. So you can get the whole colony looked at and then you can decide where to go to get that up close work with a snorkel and mask. Exactly. And then you don't have to waste your time going everywhere for that. That's pretty cool. And while you're saying that, we should point out that you've been working in Coney Bay for some time, we should give a shout out to Jason and Paul over there at the Marine Corps Air Station for their leadership coming forward and working on a formal arrangement between UH and the Marine Corps that allows proper and safe use of drones in that airspace. Yeah, routine, that's the important thing as well, because many people can go out there and do and fly for a couple of minutes here and there, but if it's going to be routine, it's a much higher risk of any interaction with the Marine Corps-based aircraft and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, they've done a really good job of being completely open and allowing us to kind of set up a really clean, easy way to communicate between the two different entities and allowing us to conduct safe operations. There's so much we could take this conversation. There's three things that come to mind right away. That very issue of the formal structure but open and friendly and transparent relationship with the airspace user, that's essential in the future of drone business. And we need to take what you've done in Coney Bay and include that with the schools, local schools in the area and then get into the Department of Education and have within the Department of Education a common and standard understanding and appropriate relationships with the various schools and their school districts. Coney Bay in particular, we've got Castle, we've got King, we've got a few schools in the area that are already interesting or interested in going forth, but they don't know where to turn to get the kind of guidance they need. So Josh, you become the guy that can provide a lot of that. Hopefully, yeah, hopefully we can make it all work. A second vector that seems to be really useful here is you mentioned already the data and the extractions from the information that allow people to make decisions about coral and maybe even about fisheries management at some point in time for all I know and reef, I mean in the beach erosion management. That's the community outreach aspect. That's where the value is. The drone is nothing but a sky hook holding a camera or somewhat of a kind of a sensor. So you are sitting at the intersection of two of the major elements here of moving forward and working with the community. And that's going to be a really essential part of our actions next year. George, on that, George, I got to tell everybody that we had, George was up at a conference with me and up in Alaska and about 500 people there or so and George became the highlight of the show. His work with the schools and his work with community outreach, community involvement and his unique ability to express these things in a way that made sense to the people who were involved was just getting, I think they were even throwing roses on the ice after he was done ice skating. It was such a hit up there, George. So George, I always look to you as a leadership, for your leadership in that domain. How's things going on these days with Pulama and moving forward? Pulama is actually helping him develop a drone program. So they're entering into their emergency management, also land management and data collection for the island. And we're going to actually partner up with some of the kids from school with their GIS program and actually try to do internship. So one of the projects that the kids want to do is actually take a section of land and actually use a drone to map it and start collecting the data over time of types of erosion, maybe some facial recognition of invasive species of plants and things like that. When is that going to start, George? Hopefully we get going sometime next month. That's fantastic. We have a similar activity up in Palo Alto. We have a similar activity that Mike is doing in Manakuli with traffic management. So we're beginning to see these pieces starting to happen. And what we need to do is make sure that what you are doing, George, in terms of standards and standard operating practices and such and procedures for making that outreach to the public that we all learn from what you're doing and translate as much of that over to Oahu as we can and to Kauai and other locations. So we need to work with you on that and stay together. So we also want to try to get this as a pilot program for when they become seniors to actually do a senior project where a group of kids actually take a section of the island and actually map it to research on it and now we archive that into Lanai High School's database and over time as many of these generations and classes graduate, they start mapping different parts of the island and eventually we'll put it into a mosaic of the whole entire island. And then that way we'll have generations and connections to the land itself. And the community is all in it. How do you do that, George? I just think a lot. That's great. So we'll get some publicity out on that. Will there be some ways that we on Oahu can associate with what you're doing on Lanai and follow you? Yeah, I mean, it'll be where it's a platform that it depends on the community itself. It'll be adjustable to fit for the foundation of using it and the concept of a school senior project in high school. That'll just set the community in the right direction where they'll have their kids and as they grow up and they come back to their school reunions, they can actually pull up all these video and actually show what they did in the past. And I think that's really bringing back from what we're learning through what UH has done with all the new Hawaiian history that's coming out. These drones are really going to capture everything and set a new way forward in documenting Hawaii as a state itself. We need to get this story, this copy of this actual tape from today by my name Kalani Kanaana over at the at the Tourist Bureau. Kalani is the guy who's in charge and responsible for making sure that cultural connection and cultural respect and continuity exist within the tourist industry. And I think there's a good connection there between what you're doing, George, and what this would support what Kalani has to do. So there's not to get a hold of about Kalani and see how that can tie together. Because now that sets up where these students now can see where they can actually go in the future and work for the tourist industry, work for research, or create their own business. It just opens a lot of doors. You know, there's a lot of doors I want to talk about in a minute. I have to get back from the first break here, but one of the things that we, I think, need to always do is put in front of the students as they're getting into these programs, what would they do if they could run the world in terms of how would they want drones to be used? How would they want them to be managed from a handheld control perspective? How would they want the sensors to evolve and this sort of thing? I think there's an entire element of research in that area leading to ultimately new products in product directions that would be great to inspire that bunch as we consider them our future workforce. We'll talk about that. We'll get back to our first break. This is journalism from Hawaii, finding the intersection of our sense of place and our place in the world right here at home. Great content for Hawaii from ThinkTech. Thank you for watching ThinkTech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m. where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and aloha and thanks for watching. I'm Ethan Ellen, host of likeable science here on ThinkTech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. They'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on ThinkTech Hawaii for likeable science with me, your host, Ethan Ellen. I pity the fool who ain't watching this show at 12 o'clock on Friday afternoon. Stan, the energy man, watch it. Hey, back folks. Once again, Ted Rawlson and Josh Levy here in the studio in Honolulu. Actually, Waikiki today. And we have George Purdy on the line. George Levy, some backdrops from the line of this program over there, which we can do it by virtual means, you know. Anyway, we're having the last segment of our show, the first show for 2017 of where the road leads, where the drone leads, actually, and we're talking about community involvement and there are so many aspects to that. We have so many examples, so many aspects, and it's, as for the value really, is in getting into the community. But we're just talking about sensors and how sensor and analytics might want to improve and move in the future. And Josh, it was interesting to hear you talking about the integrated and whole answer coming out without you having to put all the pieces together. That made me think, what if drones in two years now came out with that kind of software in them? So anybody who's out there, properly operating, of course, wouldn't be able to record information on the reef, even if you weren't there, you could download it to a database somewhere, like what George was saying, and it continually updates. You could crowdsource the picture of the reef. Can you steal my business plan? I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly. That is the goal, to have this be such an easy-to-use technology that you can give it to coastal communities throughout the tropics and throughout anywhere, really, that are interested in the local community and the local marine resources and want to know how they're doing. You can have a full UAS system, and all you have to do is press a button. It goes out and flies, collects this data, and then all the processing and everything becomes completely autonomous, and they get almost immediate results, and they can see exactly what's going on. They have the ability to go out and fly and collect this information whenever they want, wherever they want within the local area, and have that become a global database of coral reef health or whatever coastal marine health you want to have. Or Hawaiian archaeology, for that matter. Yeah, archaeology, agriculture, anything. Yeah, precision agriculture, any of those things. So that we're hearing that requirement over and over again. I need something I can just take the box out of the tractor, put it on the ground, and it returns with the information I need, and it's downloaded and it shows up on the screen somewhere. Exactly. And it's close. A really interesting aspect, then, of the community involvement would be to get back from the community what their needs are, and they won't state them in engineering terms, they won't state them in environmental terms, but they'll state them in terms that mean something to them. Exactly. I need to provide for my family, I need, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, and everything will, yeah. So we really have to, there's actually two values, then, for this community involvement. We get not only their agreement and acceptance of what we're doing, but we get the value of what they see as important on the other end. And there's also the disruptive new technology aspect that we have facing us here with something like drones. And George, it'd be interesting to see your feedback on this, but if you had a situation where you woke up in the morning and there's a surveyor out in front of your house with a transit and some equipment and such, no big deal. If you woke up in the morning and there was two or three surveyors out there, you'd maybe ask them, this is something bigger than I imagined. If you woke up some morning and there's 500 surveyors in front of your house and they're not going away, oh, this is something I better look into. I don't have no idea what's going on. Same thing with drones. One drone in the park, no big deal. Two or three drones in the park, okay, I'm getting interested now. 500 drones overhead. One of the things we really need to think of is how the public would react to that sort of thing. Or even if we had a delivery system on a little oil and oil for that matter, what's it going to be like? We're going to use the freeway as the airway that the drones fly over. Are we going to go over to my house on the way to deliver something to you? This is a complicated situation. So socializing this technology is part of what the community outreach is all about. George, we talked about, last time I think you saw on the show, the example from Africa where blood samples or blood packages are being delivered from a central location to a remote site. What would you think about something that connects, say, Maui and Lanai by drone transit? Oh, I think it would work. But another example, if you saw in the news this past week, Hannah Highway is actually collapsing. So you are now getting a community that's isolated, and that zipline or drone technology going over that landslide area, we can actually start flying out medical supplies. Whatever supplies they need. So right in its own community within 26 square miles on the North Shore of Maui, drones would fit that bill 100% with all those cliffs there. We have something right there in our backyard. We don't even have to cross the ocean to actually show that it will work. That would be interesting to put together an example and Lanai is a perfect place to do that. It's got all the right marks for a compliant environment, a willing population. George has been the stimulus for a lot of that. All of that, I should say. So maybe we could think about that, George. Think of a humanitarian assistance, disaster response type functionality that we could run as part of the National Guards Makani Pahili every year, like where you and I met four years ago. Oh, yes. Let's think about that. George, part of the community involvement for this year could be that. I mean, just running, flying out in AED to a beach gore on the North Shore from the top of Keomoko Road. I mean, that'll do wonders just that alone. Okay, that's the defilibrator? Yes. Ah, what do they weigh? They're, what, that's two pounds. A couple pounds? Two pounds. Okay, so we could get them on a lot of fixed wind and carry that. And we're probably talking about fixed wind here, I guess. Oh, we could go, we could do multiple fixed wind, depending on distance. You know, you choose the right platform for the right job. Let's take that on, George. Let's make that something we can dial up our friends in the garden and see if that's something interesting to them from Makani Pahili. Yeah, I mean, just simple messages. I mean, why not? I think a lot of organizations are more willing this year to actually, let's go do something. And everything in the name of training, we can get a lot of things done. And then take that training experience and actually turn it into real-life use within organizations throughout the state. That's a pretty incredible start for the year. And, you know, we should have a limit on this show of how many bright ideas can be put forth on the table or from our... We have to cut everything otherwise it would be out of the job. Right. And when we have Daryl Wong on the show, we actually have a limit of three bright ideas on the show just to make sure we don't get overwhelmed. But... But that goes into the realm of community involvement. Now we've got the Lahui, we've got the manpower to share these ideas and we can get a lot of these things done on a massive scale. Yeah. It's not just us. That is cool, cool. George, I can't thank you enough and I'll shout out to you and you and Mike for what you guys have been doing with drone services Hawaii and Josh, marine environment and such and the interest you brought to the table and the others. Mike is not here today, I don't think, but where he's going up in Palo Alto and Nanakuli so we're beginning to see these pieces happen all over the place. And it's probably best not to try to organize them. Just let them grow and go on their own, share with each other what works, what doesn't work and begin turning this into sort of a standard operating procedure that we can all benefit from. And as long as there's someone there or a community there at least that knows what's going on everywhere that can at least kind of keep tabs or understand what's going on. This show is that connection. There you go, perfect. There we go. J. Fidel, we have a reason to exist. And so we're there. Anyway, we're going to wrap this up, our first show of the year and looking forward to seeing all of our viewers send all their comments and anybody who wants to come on this show, by the way, it's time 2017. You've got a complaint. You've got an issue. You've got an idea. Show up. Give us a call and you're here. And George Purdy, on one eye, thanks for being here on the first day of the year. And Dr.... Aloha. Thanks for your first time on the show. First-timers, come back. Second-timers, okay? Yeah. No, I'm happy. Thank you. Thank you for having me on.