Most of us, dronie, the latest fads, probably will be old news taken by eric, one of the best drone photographs, only just Getting Started on the drone journey. Lets get going n typical churchill fashion, we will start with chris. I am chris anderson, co of robotibs, the editer of wired magazine for over a decade. How i went from the editer of a magazine to a co of anary Space Company is a story we will probably end up talking about. Back in the media days, i didnt have to run my own factory, now i do. That is the hard part. The fun part, we get to put cameras in the air, and open up imageing and dig data. I am eric chang, director of images. I have a Consumer Science degree, that fell off to my parents dismay, ended up doing underuar photographer, and publishing, recently, i have been sucked back into technology. Here i am. I have been in drone space for ten years, being at m. I t. , then at boeing, then, working on helicopter system, was brief ly an airline pilot. Flying the otter, and started to address problems, in developing a drone for a targeted application, we build a platform, the platform is hardware, software, and cloud services, power drones and enable them to be developed by power companies. One thing we dont do is build the drones ourselves. I am christian sands, founder of sky catch. We build drones to for collecting data. Use the roberts to collect data over the job sites, our goal is to help all the companies with logistics, help them optmyself safety, and very thankful to be here with you guys. That is great. Thank you. They did jobs, dirty or dangerous, these two are both robots, intelligent, compared to where things were a few decades. What is going on with the processors, essentially, running the batteries, the radios, because the economies, the apples and the googles of the world, these components just put in different packages, can do thing that is were impossible ten years ago, and a Million Dollars what are the advances that you have seen, enable you to do the footage we have seen tonight. To be stable in space, it is something that photographers have been looking for for a long time. Everybody who has had a go pro in the past, they can get that hero shot of themselves doing something that they think will make them look cool. You know, this is the extension, you let go of the pole, the camera falls away. As we sit here today, every week, there is a new development out, or a new company, so, for the creative pursuits, these things are opening up something that we couldnt, we dreamed about. I was going to say, we couldnt have dreamed about them. I dreamed them about, if only one on that, all of human history, we have been stuck, our perspective is stuck at eye level. For the first time in history, we can see the world the way the birds do. Without having to be in the air. Without having the skill of flying something. Cameras can be positioned in space. Now that i you have the boom of a speilberg for free, what are you going to do with it. You are obviously attacking the space center in a different way. As we look at that arc, why are you going after the space ru going after specifically . Photographer is i am excited about it. We believe that drones will be used from aeg to infrastructure, inspecting power lines, bridges, oil, natural gas, land management, antipoaching operations, some of which we are involved in now. To address such a wide variety of applications, you need a platform. Companies arent leverages a that they cant extend in hardware and software, not having to develop all of that themselves. They can focus on the pieces of hardware and software, meant to be differentiated for the application. That is what we are building. And christian, you are addressing a number of challenges in the space. Specifically, battery technology, is one that you are doing unique things around. Can you talk to us about that . Our strategy, or our vision is not as exciting as some of the stuff, filming kite surfers, all that stuff. We work with construction people. Early days to try to figure out how to make their jobs more efficient. More productive. So, early days, i spent a lot of time on the field. Trying to figure out if this is useful for them it after a lock the weeks and months, i discover that it was you know, you know, ran into a couple of people. One superintendent, once said, he is like, at any given point, there is it at least 100 questions in peoples heads that can be answered by seeing something. If they see it, they can answer that t move forward. Basically, what he was saying, i can shave days off construction. Millions of dollars, that is really what motivated me to start the company, and sky catch. Our biggest challenge today in technology, we are solving with the partners, is basically, completely automating, making it fully autonomous, when it lands, swaps a battery, swaps data to the cloud, so ru not involved in the process. How long can a drone fly for on a battery . We spent a lot of time optmyselfing the chart, how much electricity was sent out to the motors, optmyselfed the drops for the size, the props the motors, we get 35, 40 minutes with high wind time in the air. Our average missions are about five to ten minutes and cover a large amount of area. So, you know, the idea behind doing a swapping of batteries, batteries havent e, volved in ages, wont e, volve any time soon. Some of the companies doing interesting things with batteries have not been tested there. Are batteries that last longer that 45 minutes, they have not gone through the rigorous tests to make sure the battery is safe. Most of us are buying batteries that are thoroughly tested by great companies, mass produced for hobbyists. Battery technology is being addressed. As you look out over the next few years, the pace of development seems to be so rapid. Cant get my mind around what it will be like two years from now. What you are looking at as the next wave of developments that will enable cases with drones, chris . This weekend, three followme projects lost. Two on kick start, one on ours. Followme s the drone follows you, biking, running, skiing, whatever, the drone stays 30 feet back and up, keeps the camera focused on you, gets that perfect hollywood view. That on one level that is you exactly what the youtube generation wants. Incredibly complex gps, image recognition, posts. Smoting you, and trying to figure out what right angle is. This is the kind of stuff that was science fiction, this is thedroid you were looking for. This was just this weekend. Three projects that launched. One of them raised a half a million in a day. All based on that platform. So, that was just today. Tomorrow, this mapping function, what christian is doing, a notion of construction, arguably the number two industry, agriculture is the number one. What this 300 copter can do, is a one button mapper. He does circles around the construction site. Gets sent to the cloud n this case, and creates the 3d. Model, snapped on to the cad model. It is happening every day in automaticed fashion, now you get, you are the client. You want to know what is going on the construction site or watch on the cloud. Watch your building, snapped on to the very cad model that you approved. Watching it build up. Digitized, perfectly aligned there. Is no b. S. You have ground truth or air truth, if you will. That is a 300 copter, imagine another five years. You are talking about technology underneath or on the drone. Ru not talking about the drone itself. In terms of the mechanics, we will see more development there, or have we reached we talk, the model is from the camera to the cloud. Go pro. Eric, more highly controlled. We are bringing the sensors, the smart phones, the camera, the control the cloud, and big data. And huge render farms. The point, the drone itself is a vektdor to capture data and transmit it to the cloud where sense is made of it. Where do you think the world is heading . The internet enabled it, we are sharing the data through it internet. Everything came at the same time. Going back to what chris said, a lot of it came from the smart phones. Allowing the pieces to be affordable. It is already on instagram. If you find it under eric, you can obviously, retweet it. The piece dividend, the software, and open sourcing the hardware discips n speaking to tuall. In separate companies, you seem to be collaborating around the common designs. That is probably one area i have a different perspective. The open source projects are exciting. It is what got myself into this space to some degree. A lot of people on our team. The number of applications broaden. And deployed above peoples homes, i think safety and reliability will bottom, all they are building is developing the apps themselves t less around getting in to and modifying the android kernel if you will. I know you have been using some of this. I am using three robotics source. Making modifications to make it fully autonomous. We had to make modifications, and vast community of people. It is easy to get access the different source code. We couldnt afford to do our company and work on autopilot. Lenox is the most secure operating system there. Is a reason it runs on lenox and not windows, i brought up this here for a reason. This isnt ours this is a chinese drone made to hobby king. They improved it. It is a dirivative design. They improved upon it. We have 20 years of open sauce importance. If you are using chrome, lin ox, you get it. Open innovation, with all bugs are shallow. I think this is proven, this is the we have the drones out there, if you would rather have something cheaper. Looks like a phantom it works great. We did nothing to make it happen. The world used it. All of us, outside, seeing the drone, and the mapping exercise, i was slightly stunned. You guys are the professionals, i know there are people here in the space. It takes a while to learn to you those pilot these things, how different it is to learn to fly and control them. . Do you know how to push a button . Eric and then. How most people are using them today. They are manually piloted. They do hoover by themselves. The drekds we are guy will them are not throttle up it is go up. High level instructions, we will watch it back move higher and higher, as the neck neckatology improved it is easy to put one in the air and do something simple. If you are arent very careful, metic louse, you have a goal. Know how to get there. If you maybe you race motorcycles on the weekend. You may end up crash one of these. If you are piloting it for creative purposes, ru moving the camera around in space. You need to have right now, you need to have feedback, the controls to respond in a way that lets you feel connected to the device. I have flown it without using the radio. It goes there and comes back. While it goes there, i am controlling the camera, trying to be creative in that way. There is always going to be that component, in the creative space, of someone is directing the sensors around in an interesting way. The autonomy, there is always going to be tied to some amount of manual introduction. That could be programmed n i could imagine a director telling it where to go, having someone else push the button. Do it 20 times, i think it is a complicated question. They are easy to use, to do something with them takes a bit of skill. Autonomous approach. Our focus has always been the data. We are using the tools to get the data fast. Retreat it fast, be able to alocate the robots, they are bad. Hot. Most of our projects, if you go to the client sights are not very interesting, mine is in the middle of the desert it is extreme let valuable to where they usually send people on top of them. In terms of our technology, we used to tell investors, in a world where you have no bikes, we basically have photographers that need to go around a construction site, we created a bil to get on it and go around. Our focus is not the bike t is the data coming back to us. We mixed, you know, creating the wheels and christs products r our chriss products. How safe and reliable the systems are. You look at people and companies who operated these for hundreds of thousands of flight hour, all of that is in the military. A significant portion of their losses are all related to pilot and operator error. As we develop the software to make the aircraft autonomous, and put things in forced work flows in place, there is someone who can check and ched oo make sure it is a mission, and someone different will pralt the vehicle, driving hitting go, and datda processing, and analystics and insights may happen differently. As part of the cloud, i think a lot of that will be part of what makes these systems more safe and reliable to operate. As well as seeing a void. In development, the allegor rhythms, taking into account where the other vehicles are located, cooperative or noncooperative, all areas that we are working on development. That is something that is in everybodys mind. How to solve that official without using power. Your colleagues are doing something there. Ru going to introduce them . I am not going to pitch it tonight. If you poke around. You will see cameras. There is some interesting demos, examples of what we are working with a variety of different topics. Turning back to the topic. I look at control like that i dont know how it works. Are we going to have to get certified . Is this getting a license to drive a car . I used to fly fix a wing. I was certified. You have to pay. All of you today, it is kind of gone away. You can just fly them yourself. You dont have to have a certification, you used to have to be in a certain spot to fly. In terms of the faa, i think they should establish a certification, where you say in a year from now, if you want to run a business, fly drones, it will keep people away from doing crazy things. We should expect that they will be looking for which is one, certification at the level of a director of operation says, at a company that is operating droens. This is a person experience before the drone takes off. Maintenance of the vehicles, putting the right processies in place. Ensures it is a save and re safe, and the operators of the vehicles, they will need to be even if it is the same of the aircraft is fully autonomous. Somebody will be the responsible party for operating aircraft in a certain area. The other Interested Party is insurance companies, 1 in 50, 1100 companies, seeking insurance to fly drone aircraft is able to get it underwritten. The underwriters are going to play a very key role as well, in establishing what some of the processes and procedures, how the aircraft are designed, the software powering them s that will enable and determine how and where the aircraft can be used and for what purpose. At risk of being i mean, really . This . This costs 299 on amazon. It shows up under the christmas tree. Do you think the faa will require this plastic, which by the way, is going to be coming out in november. It will weigh about a pound. Maybe, it is all foam. It will be the hot toy. Fully autonomous. Everything that you described will be a toy, the hot toy this christmas. Faa certification . The panel is consumer drones, somehow, i got invited. Our focus is a little bit, i am happy to expand the fous, our fo susis different. Enterprise grade commercial applications, some can be addressed with a small camera from your cell phone. A lot of other applications with larger camera systems, carrying of systems, taking air into the aircraft itself, for doing analysis for air quality, looking for particulates in the air, there is applications, a wide variety of applications in many of the early customers are where the aircraft is two pounds or more, they are regulated. One of our early customers is delta drone, that operates in france. All of it is regulated. There is a process in which delta drone submit paperwork, it is faxed. It should be on line the prior to flying the drone for commercial regulation. What is the drones of the United States at the moment . Our number one priority is safety. Chris can reason that. That is the same thing, with the faa, they are focused on safety as well. I believe in my opinion, they are not equipped to deal with this sort of challenge. We have all sorts of id, certification, get Law Enforcement involved. Technology that detects guys flying around, to see how high they are flying tshlgs be a channelling thing to tackle. The faaville to step back, collaborate. Wree here in Silicon Valley, we have seen this picture before. There were telecons, and the telecomputers werent. Then the computers were connected over land. The lans were expected. That was the internet, wait we dont know how to regution this anyway. Bottoms up revolution. What we see is time and time again, you see white spaces, the world says, oh, l, 2. 4 gigaherts, you cant destroy the phone networks, Amazing Things with wifi, the Silicon Valley take the underthe radarar, and add more functionality to it. Under two pounds, you can do Amazing Things. They can have radar, if two pounds is the limit. Fine. You see this product and this product, on both sides, you can run forever and see productos both sides, i kick start ed an app to control a plane with my phone. You will be hundreds of products under that arbitrary line. The weights and the capability of the aircraft, and commercial use versus hobby. I am not certained. I came to the game later. I am not surprised. It has to do with what is leg, the rules the users are looking to adhere to. A set of guidelines, voluntarily adhered to by this community. And then, the rest of it is the message that these tlings here, they are not going to go away, we need to be responsible how we use them. I used to fly fixed wing in 1994. Not 1984, i am not that old. Used to put gas on them. It was a small community. It wasnt like, where everybody is a hob yift. Everybody can buy a drone and be a hobbyist. Back in the day, it was a small community, everyone knew each other, you got the same news and the same updates, things werent shareod facebook or twitter. It was you looking at this thing. Things have changed dramatically. The it doesnt fit the landscape today. It is interesting, i thumbed it the power airplane on kick start. I dont imagine it will be regulated. Camera technology, that is the world you are focused on. How is that e, volving. When we will see four k sensoros these devices. What will be possible . A year ago, in you would have bought one of these, to put it in the air, you were buying something, the go pro, the smallest pay load you can stiblg on this. This is notice, it has what looks like a lens on a stabilizer. We decided to split the camera into stabilized and unstabilized portions, there is no reason to use it to stop it on land. A robust capable, and a lens. I have flown these and those who handle it luckily, a camera is a camera. If you take away the use, it is still a camera of the same, you control it from another device. These cameras are going hop on the insane curve normal cameras are on. We you can expect this to happen. Flying cameras. Two different parts, one with a separate camera, one with an integrated camera. How does that e, volve . I dont feel t