 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. It is Thursday afternoon folks, Ted Rawson here in our studio downtown Honolulu, Think Tech Studios with our show, Where the Drone Leads. And often you'll see on this table, you'll see rotorcraft of some kind, you might see a fixed wing aircraft, today you'll see something that is neither and that is both. And with it, we have also with us Josh Levy, Josh, thanks for coming on the show. Josh is the coordinator of unmanned systems in the Applied Research Labs at University of Hawaii. So we'll talk a little bit about this very unique table-spanning drone you've got here, Josh. Tell us a little bit about how it got here and what it's all about. Yes, it's actually a pretty fun story. So I could go back a long ways with this thing, but I guess... Where's the fun part? So the fun part is the family tie and the kind of very family-oriented connection that I have with this aircraft. So my brother works for a drone company over in LA called Flyway Aerospace. And so they actually built this drone and he physically built this drone himself. And he also physically came out and delivered it to us last week. And so you were out there the airfield with us. Personal service. Yeah, exactly, personal service to the door. Dan, thanks a lot, Dan. We got a shout out to Dan. Yeah, thanks, Dan. And yeah, so... Just some of your older brother, Dan, by the way. Older. And then, yes, you saw it when we came and opened it up. And he gave us a great tutorial that was very simple, very easy to use, kind of a quick checklist of how to set this thing up. And so... But the reason why this aircraft is so important, as Ted was saying in the beginning, is, you know, it's not a quad rotor. It's not a fixed wing. It's both. And so in that way, it can do all the things that both of those types of aircraft can do essentially at the same time using one more aircraft. So we're sitting at actually a traditional break in the technology from what we had in the past of just fixed wing or just rotorcraft and something that combines the benefits and values of both and has optimized in such a way that the user gets out of it more of what he asked either one of them for. And so we have a hybrid basically here. This is a combination and hybridization, to my understanding, took place in the mind of a guy named Dr. Trent Akazik at FlightWave. He was affected by trying to do some coral reef sampling in the Pacific Islands. He didn't have enough flight time on his quad rotors and was frustrated by that. He knew that wing-borne lift is five or six times, this one probably eight times more efficient than rotor-borne lift. And so in his mind, hybridization occurred. Probably not GMO hybridization, but plain old mechanical hybridization. So Trent has put together the vertical lift functionality and easy sky access and return of a rotorcraft, but the high performance of a fixed wing. Yeah, and so just to capitalize on that, so when we're out at our friend's house off of Kaava, you know how he has that property right on the beach there that has... That would be Craig. Exactly. Shout out to Craig. Shout out to Craig. So, you know, on that property, he has their telephone poles between him and the ocean and then there's a house on the other side, right? So you can't take off of the fixed wing there at all. You're going to run into some serious problems, but we were able to take off and land in a small area and go fly a large area of reef and come back and land without any chance of hitting anything pretty much. So you're not compromised in terms of operations anymore with this kind of a configuration? Exactly. You have the same footprint as the DJI product as an Inspire, the Matrice is very similar for landing pad footprint. And since this particular aircraft has in its DNA some testing on Lanai and testing on Maui and on Oahu prior to its current configuration, the concept of high winds and high turbulence, which we deal with all the time out here, is built into the design. Exactly. Yep. That's very stable in high winds, can sustain around 40-knot wind conditions and still be able to operate. And so looking at this thing from an aerodynamic perspective, as Trent would have done, he's put in here more aspect ratio than even a sailplane has in some cases, so a very low drag and very long endurance. And certainly a lot of brute power here in the vertical lift function, which we thank Ayam Boreh for helping a little bit with that out in Kailua. And so there's a lot of local knowledge in this, a lot of local experience built into this particular aircraft. And now it's at UH. And we're probably the first university user of this particular configuration or configurations like it. Yeah, I think so. I mean, so as you know, there are other hybrid systems out there but none are quite as effective as this, especially based on my experience and other peoples in UH's experience with other VTOL systems. And this one is a complex aerodynamic system, but it's been made simple to operate, about as simple as you can possibly make it to operate. Exactly. And that was the issue with some of those other hybrids that they were just too hard to fly. So people just kept them in the box, got them dusty, and that was all they wrote. But I mean, me as a, I've had a lot of experience operating multi-rotors, you know, quads and that kind of stuff, but I'd never flown fixed wings before. But when I started flying this, I was really surprised at how easy it was to move around, to operate, and then also most importantly, transition from the multi-rotor into the fixed wing and back in to multi-rotor again, into those different modes. I think that has a lot to do with how a trance approaches from a design perspective because the complexity of making that transition from wing-born to propeller-born or vice versa can't be something that the operator has to have to think through. It's got to be something baked into the design, baked into the flight management system so that it's relatively straightforward. At a certain speed, it transitions into vissue. Exactly. And that's what we've seen here and hats off to the designers, Trent and his team, for making that possible. Yep. So what we're also seeing, however, I believe, is a transition away from the popular quadrotor configuration which will remain popular in entertainment and in the hobbyist domain, that sort of thing. Getting something like this, we're talking about a sort of a professional level of operations. So you wouldn't want to, even though the systems have been simplified to the point that it fairly well takes care of itself transition-wise and such, there's still enough to consider here that you don't want to do it on a casual basis. Exactly, yeah. And so, you know, this thing was designed for operations, you know, conducted by Coast Guard, various other Navy boat kind of boat operations where you're needing the insurance for a fixed wing to have only the capacity to land and take off with a quadrotor or vertical takeoff and landing. And so we're in that transition zone, past that transition zone, into the commercial or professional operations area. In fact, you made an interesting point. I think Trent was out here a couple of years ago and we had a ship-side demo down at, with the Polar Star down in Pier 11. And the captain of the Polar Star said, I want this to operate at five years on my boat in 40 knots winds. I want to be able, as a Polar Star, was a Coast Guard icebreaker. I want to be able to fly out ahead and figure out where the ice is thick and thin and what the digital elevation model of the ice is and the structural bearing strength of it so I can figure where to push through it. So something like this would be a great asset. So that then brings up the point of the recording device, the camera, or the other sensors on it and the software that's tied to that. So speak to that for a little bit, Josh. How are we going to go forward in the world of the types of sensors that go on here and the software that does the analysis from those sensors? Right. And so that's still a little bit in the developing phase, especially with this aircraft. But the guys at FlyWave have definitely know what kind of trajectory that they want to take with this. And so what they've been doing is creating these adaptable nose cones where essentially you can swap payloads out essentially by just taking off the nose cone and replacing it with another one with a different sensor or different other payload type. And essentially just plugging it back in and then going off onto your next mission. So we have plug-and-play payloads that are balanced to keep the center of gravity where it has to be. And the electrical connections are made so there's no untouched by human hands other than turning it to get it on and off. Exactly. And based on the configuration, the aircraft that is speaking to the ground control station should understand what the payload is and then what kind of various missions are capable of with those payloads. So whether it's mapping, whether it's search and rescue, whether it's something else in between, you can be able to do that with relatively little changing on the manual side. You know, that brings up another point that to me is most interesting. We had an experience last week and we're going to have it again this week with that grounded vessel off Waikiki. And the means by which you actually fly a mission to collect information either by conventional cameras or infrared or whatever it might be, that has to be properly structured consistent with the objective of the user who's going to get the information back. If that information is a software package that does a certain kind of analysis, then the collection has to be structured in kind with how the software works. So we're making that step into a more complex operational and analysis domain as well, which is interesting because the pictures that are taken to go on the TV news which show general scenes and general perspectives of what's going on aren't necessarily useful or usable in the analytical world where you want to know, is that ship damaged more? Is there a change in configuration? Is the hull twisting? How about the coral reef? Is there damage on a reef? How about the sedimentation from the crush coral? Where's all that going? That type of question and the answers associated that are necessary to answer it aren't going to come from just casual splitting about with the drone. Exactly. Yeah, it's not going to be the pilot that's going to be making those decisions. We have to be working with those end users to see what they need so we can then go collect data that they're going to be using to make decisions. So end user plus the software that's going to be used to generate their answers that is going to have to determine what the flight path is and actually the sensor mechanism itself. Exactly. So we work backwards from the desired end state to figure out what the steps are to get there. No longer just going out there and flying something and seeing what we got. Yup. So coming a method... methodological... And it's all at least the fact that you're our single guy doing this. You're our single point of failure, Josh. Hopefully that's not going to last forever. Well, what means we need to either clone you or we need to put an educational system and a training system in that has people start to recognize this. I think the training that we've seen today is principally associated with getting a 107 certificate a pilot certificate and that has almost nothing to do with how you want to use it and the very discussion we're having. And this is for all people involved in education. A structured end user oriented framed progressive way to teach this complicated process I think is your obligation as I recall from your job assignment. I think you're right. Okay. I think you're right. But you are getting in your own way. You're... The fact that you haven't done that has made it impossible to replace you at this point in time. Exactly, too busy flying. Too busy flying these things and doing the work to actually put the program together to instruct others to follow on behind you. I know, slowly. I think we're definitely making progress. There's a lot of interest, especially here at the community college level and even at UH as well, to get the stuff up and running. And so we're slowly going to be turning that cog that's pretty heavy as a lot of momentum. So it takes you energy to move it. What's really interesting, again, to me, a lot of things are interesting to me, but we see there's a step in technology that suddenly inspires a new whole new level of capability which requires the perception and the training and that runs along for a while. Then there'll be another step in technology and that'll move along. But this very configuration here, a hybrid configuration, so opens the envelope of utility for this kind of system that it really pushes it. The technology's here. Now we have to work on the other side of it, the applications and the training. And then every time the analytical software goes from the professional package to the free package, suddenly it gets broadcast to a wider audience and now we have a new level of capability on the analysis side. And that'll then turn into back into the equipment and define a new requirement for equipment. We have this cycle that's going to be jumping around as we go forward here. Yep, and it's going to make it really interesting. So, yeah. And again, this is a totally interesting point. Right here on the show, we're having this transition both in the analysis part and in the configuration part. And it's even properly configured and colored for Halloween being orange and black. So what a triple point has acquired here and arrived here thanks to Trent and I.M. and Phil Madoverie and others who were involved in this whole chain. So we'll come back and talk about where this future is going right after we get back from our break. Cool. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. We 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. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. It's a little talent and then sat down and kind of it's really nice. I saw it do it. You can be the greatest. You can be the best. It is still a new hour, folks. Jen Ralston here and Josh Levy at our studio downtown Honolulu Think Tech Studio with our show, Where the Drone Leads. And we're talking about the drone taking us in the direction of hybridization. Josh Levy again, who's the coordinator of unmanned air systems drones at UH. Josh, welcome on board again with your incredible find here, which is completely filling the table. Ray, we're going to need a new table, I think, in the future here on the show. Nice to have it at the beach here in Kailua. Are we Waimanalo today? I'm not quite sure. Looks like Waimanalo to me. Anyway, we're talking about this very incredible transition point in terms of a drone configuration from just a rotor craft or just a fixed wing with their own mindsets and mentalities to something that combines the two of them. And suddenly the world is open in terms of the range of missions and functions that can be performed by something like this. So let's talk a little bit about what might be coming right around the corner here in terms of supporting our customers in Coast Guard Pacific Command and even the Department of Emergency Management here in Hawaii. Yeah, so we have a lot of projects coming up. And so one of which is the fishing vessel grounding that occurred off of Waikiki. So the Coast Guard is very interested in looking into using UAS to understand a little bit more about the condition of the vessel, the condition of the reef, all that kind of stuff we spoke about previously. And then something else that we're looking into is developing a mission for aircraft, surface and underwater vehicles to be operating all autonomously to help solve some kind of a problem. So in terms of the emergency management section and severe weather that the U.S. has been getting recently, that's a pretty hot topic. That's a good point. Certainly the global sea level rise and global warming is generating all kinds of storm energy and such in the Pacific. And a lot of inundation, a lot of islands that are being dragged on and that means populations are going to get displaced. They're going to get pressured anyway and displaced. Agriculture gets displaced. Cultural issues get threatened. Structural issues like ship moorings and such like that are going to become a challenge. So we need to collect information about that. But you can't necessarily put a person at risk to go collect it. And you may not even have the right perspective from a person in a boat or at low altitude or a person in an airplane at 10,000 feet. So something like a drone fits right in the middle here and can provide superb collection. Yep. So if we want to sort of the pictures that we put up. So I'm just showing you some of the imagery that we collected just a couple of days ago. Looking out from Craig's house is actually doing some test flights out there. If we keep going a little bit, we'll see. Aha. That's exactly what we're talking about. Okay, here we have the effects of sea coast erosion on Kamehameha Highway in Kauawa. And this perspective gives you a way to look at the land form or the ability of that land slope to hold on to itself or vice versa to the city and county to come in and do something to reinforce that road. So this perspective gives you incredible information. You can't otherwise get. Yep. So yeah, looking from above. So that's actually the initial image. The one that we saw previously was just zoomed in. I managed to find it in the bottom right-hand corner. So here we could look after a tidal wave or something or a tsunami. You could look at any bottom surface adjustment that made as a result of the way of washing ashore in terms of access, in terms of stuff in the water, obstructions, or any pollutants that might be entering in from some uncovered landside source. Exactly. And so that requires more than just having an aircraft collecting all this data, right? So we're going to have to have essentially a swarm of vehicles, of autonomous vehicles, air, surface, and underwater to be able to collect a full picture of what's going on environmentally during these situations. Then you've got to pull that information together and have it deconflicted and correlated and time-snapped and all these things that turn into something that somebody can use. And that brings up an amazing observation here. Once we start depending on systems like this and the analysis they produce, now we have a reliability requirement for the vehicles and the software systems to operate that way and operate that way consistently in the weather, as the age, and this sort of thing. So there's a design requirement that comes in from a function and reliability perspective driven by the dependence that we, as the public, put on these systems. Exactly. And especially as we're going to be using these systems more and more, right? I mean, not just us doing the single mission, but us as a society, right? Just depending on all these autonomous cars or that kind of stuff, we get this level of reliability that they just don't have yet. And that's the sort of thing that engineering gets into pretty well. But it doesn't require a large footprint like a Boeing factory or something like that next door. That kind of engineering can be done in the lab. So in terms of occupation for people in Hawaii where we don't have large aerospace facilities, that's an aerospace function that could occur here. That is the determination of analysis methods, the software, the analysis itself, software as a service. All those things are potential future careers for folks here in Hawaii after we graduate them through your course, once you build your course. Which will happen at some point. Okay, all right, and on we go. So once again, I keep repeating it here, but we're at actually quite a transition point here. This kind of technology available to us is going to so change the landscape of the future and push on issues such as collections, such as the software analytics and such. And then actually that will also turn to the incident command system where information is ingested and decisions are made. And we'll have to figure out how to pull this new form of complex information into that system so people can make decisions at the right time and with the assurance that the information being used is correct. Yep, exactly. So nothing like exercises to find that out. And I think every time we've done an exercise, which is probably 10 of them in the last year or so, we always find out something very elementary or simple that we could have thought of, but it didn't really show up until you tried the exercise. Yep, that's what testing's all about, right? There you go, and so we're going to try that next week. We will. Want to tell us a little bit about that? Sure, so essentially what we're going to be trying to do here is taking a page out of University of Porto's book. That's Porto in Portugal. Okay. Where they're already doing a pretty amazing job connecting aircraft, service and underwater vehicles to conduct operations. So what we're trying to do out here is have our own, create our own rapid environmental picture. Rapid environmental picture. R-E-P. Which means we're going to collect information about the environment consistently, commonly and rapidly and form a new picture that we haven't otherwise seen. Yeah, correct, to make some kind of decisions for whether it's emergency management after a big storm or some other environmental location that we don't really have that much information about to rapidly go and collect that so we can then go do whatever we need to do in that area. And the environment doesn't necessarily refer to the science of invasive species necessarily, which you often think of as environment, but this means what's the topographical environment? What's the axis look like? What are the water sources look like? What about health issues in terms of a polluted well or something like that? So anything that is in the environment, whatever it may be, is subject to be understood or needs to be understood in order to put the right picture together so that reaction can occur. So I want you to describe that experiment that we're looking at next week. Sure, so we're hoping to conduct some test runs off of working with Billow's Air Force Base over in Waimanalo. They've been extremely kind of receptive for this idea and actually pretty excited about seeing all this stuff come together, right? Because they want this data almost as much as we do. They're looking forward to seeing what we're going to be collecting with this aircraft. A surface vehicle called a WAMV, which we decided today is a wave adaptive modular vehicle. That's off to Zach and his gang. Zach from the UH. And then a small ROV with just an RGB camera. And so using all three of these aircraft simultaneously to collect different types of information about a certain area, we start piecing together a pretty interesting picture about the terrestrial topography, the underwater bathymetry, and then also collecting water samples and other kinds of information that are going to help us understand a little bit more about our environment. And that's, again, is going to be a good test and a challenge of the system of bringing information from multiple sources that didn't ever necessarily work together before together into a common picture. So the whole issue of expression and visualization and extraction, they are the next phase of discovery and development that has to occur promoted and pushed by the functionality and capability of something like this. And it's underwater equivalent and it's surface equivalent. So now we're going to get flooded with information. And so artificial intelligence, virtual reality, a lot of modeling and simulation, those are the areas of development that this technology is going to push on. Exactly. Yeah, so this is kind of that first step in this whole situation. I mean, the big data problem and the AI, all that kind of stuff is still a really interesting task that people are working on. Now that we have the platforms to be able to collect that amount of data and that quality of data, so everything's going to start to move pretty quickly, I think. And so we're talking about, at the end of the day, we're talking about big data. These things are makers of the pieces that become big data. So I hope that Noah Haffner is watching this and is feeling guilty about what he's going to have to perform in the future here. It's funny you should say that. So I got a text from our boss, Mark Redwood, this morning with Noah CC saying, on average, how much data does a UAV collect during an hour? So this is the exact situation that we're thinking about right now. And converting that data into something useful is at the end of the day what we have to think about. The data by itself doesn't mean much. Now I'll just go through a quick analysis, years and years ago, like way, way back when the Ice Sage had just left it, I was a young engineer. We had a new airplane called the MD-11 coming around, which was the first of Douglas's electronic airplanes. And I had to stage a dinner between the chief pilot and a bunch of engineers to see if I can get conversation going because pilots think one way, engineers think another. And finally at the right time in the dinner, it showed up and one of these young engineers said, oh, now we got all this electronic stuff coming to the cockpit, we can paint the sky with data. How much data do you want? What kind of data can I get for you? And his chief pilot looked down at this young engineer and said, you know, I want to know just two things. The house is getting bigger, which means I'm heading for a house or the house is getting smaller. That's all I care about. I don't care about your data. I want to know, am I at risk of hitting a house? That was, he was using that a bit from an expressive point of view, but that was the point he was making. Hey, data doesn't matter. What matters is, is there a risk here that I have to attend to? So that's what we have to think and we need to get Noah going in that direction. Exactly, and that's that ties right back into the end user needs, right? Exactly. I don't care how well this flies. I don't care how well the camera collects data. I don't care how much. And they shouldn't care about that. That shouldn't be their job to worry about that. That's my job, unfortunately. Exactly, right? That's about the fourth job you've defined for yourself, your job. Exactly, yep. Okay, well, anyway, this brings us to the conclusion of this exciting phase here. I guess we've concluded the transition phase. We're now in this new domain of unmanned air systems operations, and it's really exciting to see here. Thanks to your special pursuit the last year or two, working with Trent and I am in such and pushing it forward. I am out there, Trent, and others who've been helping push this particular technology forward. This is going to be a game changer, absolutely. And so, Josh Levy, thanks for coming on, and we'll get some air under this guy and go do some good work next week. For sure. Thanks a lot. Thanks.