# Safety Drone Shield: Empowering First Response Teams with Drone-in-a-Box Grid

- Event: NestGen ’23
- Published: March 18, 2023
- Length: 40:04
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/32bHIJ5lIh4/

> The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's
> captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms.

## About this session

Using a combination of drone docking stations, AI, and a private 5G network, learn how emergency first response teams can be more efficient.

## Transcript

**[0:00]** [Music] thank you [Music] well hello everyone and welcome to another exciting session of NestGen 2023 the industry is largest drone autonomy Summit so before we begin and talk about more about talk more about this session I think it would be great if you could let me know a little bit more about yourself so that we can get to know each other better so feel free to share your thoughts in the chat section for starters please let us know where are you joining from what do you do and what are you the most excited about in this session in today's session we will dwell into City mesh's Safety drone Shield and Innovative solution empowering drone first respond teams with drone and box systems we will

**[1:06]** learn how City mesh uses a combination of drones and docking stations artificial intelligence and a private 5G Network and we'll learn how emergency First Response teams can be more efficient to give you some background on City mesh City mesh is a technology company based out of Belgium that provides Cutting Edge connectivity and communication solutions they specialize in building private wireless networks such as 5G networks optimized for autonomous BVLOS drone operations one of City mesh's most Innovative offerings is the safety drone service which is designed to help First Responders gain a detailed overview of emergency situations quickly and efficiently citymesh offers the safety drone solution as a drone as a service which means that emergency services like fire brigades police Etc do not have to invest in drones

**[2:06]** drone infrastructure or the Education and Training of all license Pilots I am thrilled to have hands similar on here the general manager of citymesh safety drone welcome hands to NextGen 2023 thank you so I'll just quickly give a brief introduction about you uh to the audience hence just to set some more context so everyone Hans believes that the lifeblood of a successful business is how internal customers and external customers view a cooperation throughout his outstanding career he has thrived at creating flexible and forward-thinking customer experience programs in startups and multi-billion European companies coupled with a strong passion for strategically advancing digitization initiatives with emerging Technologies

**[3:09]** he has an entrepreneurial spirit with broad expertise in marketing people operations and change management and as a senior executive he enjoys investing in the professional development of all his employees through all levels and emotionally intelligent leadership style that he also lever and he also leverages Behavioral Science for this so again welcome to National hands and before I pass it on to you I have a few housekeeping rules that I'd like to share with the audience so the audience please use the Q a tab for questions we'll be making sure that we take them at the end of the session and respond to you the session is getting recorded and will be published soon on our online portals and on social media and again Hans and steam will be available after the session at the booths at their booth in the Expo sections so that you can go and talk to them and learn more about what they do and how they do it

**[4:13]** uh a couple of other you know uh important messages that I'd like to send across to you so if you like this session please drop a LinkedIn post you can tag FlytBase and use the hashtag nesgen23 and hashtag opendiab movement the top three posts will receive special NestGen ampers and last but not the least I'd like to thank our title sponsor DJI Enterprise and a platinum sponsor while it is Aerospace with that I hand it over to you Hans thanks Neil for the good introduction and also thank from my side to the sponsors and FlytNow to set up this great event uh where we can all collaborate on drones and the future of drones I'll share my presentation I think that's handy does everybody see my presentation if nobody reacts I think that's good so uh my name is Hans simulon I'm a general

**[5:18]** manager of citymatch safety drone hence I I don't think that your presentation is shared right now okay okay no problem that's why I asked Arts game okay yep okay yes yes we can see it now good thing I asked okay yeah so uh I'm uh I'm on simulon I work at City mesh safety drone and City mesh like Neil said before is a Belgium operator integrator specialized in private networks and to deploy these private networks we use all sorts of Technologies going from Wi-Fi over 0g to 4G and 5G what we actually do we have a B2B focus and we look at the application of our customers and we then identify is it the mission critical business critical or non-critical application and based on that we will then deploy the network needed

**[6:24]** for this application or major shareholder is sihika um and we are already 15 years around here in in Telco world and we launched our drone division uh three years ago so I said before that we're specialized in 4G and 5G actually we are the fourth operator in Belgium we just gained our licenses to deploy a national wide 4G 5G Network in Belgium and this is one of the main reasons why we believe in the deployment of safety drones in a box for the First Responders is because the use of 5G 5G enables us thanks to the ultra reliable low latency Communications remote control but also extreme capacity and high data rates up to 100 megabytes a second make it easy to transfer the images to the first responsors

**[7:30]** and another great uh feature of 5G is the slicing mechanism slicing mechanism means that you can determine which application that's connected to the network will get uh clearance and which none so you can prioritize your applications on the network using a slice on 5G in this example you see that the data services for the first sponsors is almost the same as every other application but the moment there is an emergency they get a broader pipeline for their applications and other applications like for instance the sensors in this case are cut down so that the fire First Responders have the uh bandwidth they need for their application I said before that we are deploying a national white Network and that's important

**[8:34]** why because we're focusing on the B2B side and we have another partner DG and we will do the b2c part this means that we will be the first European operator rolling out uh B2B Network National white with their own car so meaning that the car is only used for the B2B applications and in this case also for the first responses so they have their core separated from the consumer curve this means that it's not possible that a lot of consumers at the scene will interface with the bandwidth available for the first sponsors I think this is really crucial if you want to wall out a nationwide network of uh drones in a Box available for the first responsors you see here a big number on the screen and that's there's a reason for that so every year in Belgium more than 2 million 2 million urgent calls are received by the

**[9:40]** Belgium Emergency Services with lives at stake speed and visibility are crucial the emergency service is still too often do not have specific information to estimate calamities images that show the magnitude of the disasters and the number of people involved and therefore invaluable in Saving Lives and that's actually the reason why we rolled out the Drone in the Box solution for the first responses because in Belgium and I don't know how it is in other countries but in Belgium the First Responders are obliged to rule out specific um a persons and and Wagons at the moment there is a kind of distress call coming in in this example you see if there is a fire at a farm their fire department is obliged to go out with two wagons because up front you cannot

**[10:41]** estimate how big the fire is but in some cases the fire at the farm is actually just the farmer in the middle of the farm making a little bonfire it's not a real fire and then the emergency services are there with two fire trucks just for a little bonfire in the in the middle of the farm so that's why the first minutes of an emergency are crucial to have an eye in the sky thank you so we came up with the safety drone concept a safety Dawn concept there's a drone in a box always ready always charged in the neighborhood of a city and you see here in the picture that the typical distance the radius of the safety drone is uh within 5 to 10 kilometers we're using a private 5G Network to connect the Drone and to send the images to our data center so that the unmanned traffic management you can see where the Drone is

**[11:48]** that remote pilot can uh pilot and control uh the Drone and that the Emergency Services dispatch can see uh the images on their screen but also the firefighters on scene or the fire trucks on Route you can see the images on a tablet or a cell phone if needed this is the ID of the safety drone concept so deep diving a little bit the this is actually our safety drone deployed in the city of yank uh it's a DJI m300 kit where we uh mounted on a parachute of avss and we made our own City mesh companion computer that does the flight control and the 5G modem we also equipped it with a HD 4K zoom and terminal camera and

**[12:48]** we modified the landing gear for charging in our Asia box speaking of the hesha box here it is our hesha box so it's an autonomous drone in the Box system we have the highly accurate Landing thanks to the QR log code and it's equipped with HVAC and charging system there is also a weather station which you can see here on the slide with an animator temperature and humidity sensor as well as a lead Spotlight wind direction launch cam and blueview meter integrated so this is the hardware a part of the hardware that it all comes together in a remote Operation Center here you see one on our flight one of our Pilots using FlytNow Auto Pro to control the Drone um it's in is integrated or the system is integrated with the First Response emergency application so meaning that the moment

**[13:49]** the stress calls come in for this region we automatically receive the coordinates and it will will be uploaded into our drone and the Drone can immediately take off the moment the pilot did the first control uh with at the remote operations center we've got redundant internet connectivity with high bandwidth and actual low latency of course we're also foreseen from a backup power supply of 45 minutes and these remote Operation Center typically two desks are man seven on seven by licensed pilots who do the BVLOS flights for the Emergency Services for the First Responders they have a dispatch that is in direct contact with the pilot on the mission so the pilot that's responsible for the mission and within a drone Hub they can show they can see the live stream on any device anywhere

**[14:51]** and because they are in contact with the pilot they can also ask for instance to go around a bonfire or to zoom in zoom out use a terminal camera they can actually give instructions so that the pilot can do what they want and give the uh the view that they want at the moment the missions are also stored for 30 days so they can do a post Mission evaluation that's also something that's uh really important for uh the first sponsors First Responders sorry it's not only on the scene but it's also important afterwards um after remission to have a quick look back and see what could done have been done otherwise or can we do in another way to improve uh actually uh the missions and safe lives in the future so um being set and and showing you uh the the hardware I also have a little movie

**[15:58]** prepared for you uh it's actually a live movie of a mission that went down this summer in the forest of Hank um so the story is there was uh uh started uh first uh fire and then the call came in and you can see uh the mission here I need to around stop [Music] [Applause] [Music]

**[17:00]** everything so as you can see here is that um I'm gonna just finish the movie yes what you could see here is that uh due to the terminal uh view of the bonfire uh the fire department could decide not to send out the second truck and that way they did an immediately saving of means and people at that moment and also because of the terminal uh view of the bonfire they were able to make sure that the fire truck arrived at the right destination because otherwise it's really hard to determine where actually the fire is taking place and last but not least they were also able because they knew the

**[18:02]** correct location and they had a estimate of the time they were used they were able to link the location and the time to other cameras in the neighborhood and by doing that they were able to catch the one who started the fire so I think it's not only saving lives but it's also preventing of other filamenties to happen in the future so uh we had a very good uh first one in in gank uh connecting with the fire department uh after two months also the police department stepped up and are using now uh the safety drone uh in yank and we were thinking okay if it's if it's that handy for the fire department and the police department what could we do uh more and so we were thinking and we were actually deploying the next project

**[19:07]** every year thousands of people get injured or lose their lives because of fires flooding and other emergency situations in Belgium due to the sheer number of calls commanders are forced to make quick and bold decisions every day unfortunately the information given to Emergency Services is often incomplete leading to valuable time being wasted time that could have saved lives City mesh strives to change that with our safety drones fast responding always-ready drones that arrive on the scene just minutes after a distress call comes in with 4K and thermal imaging enriched with AI insights they provide real-time situational awareness allowing commanders to quickly identify the best plan of action depending on the type of distress call the Drone closest to the location will automatically be activated by the dispatching system at the city mesh drone remote Operation Center a certified drone pilot operates and monitors every flight remotely minimizing the operational impact on Emergency

**[20:11]** Services each safety drone is connected to 5G allowing for 360 Degree video streaming low latency remote control and network prioritization in case of congestion 5G introduces real-time mixed reality scenarios and responsible AI decision support currently unavailable for emergency services the safety drone has successfully been deployed at the city of gig Port of antwer Bruges fluvia and Brussels Airport City mesh plans to scale drones as a service and build a sustainable safety drone Shield all over Belgium together with our partners we will safeguard and facilitate the flights in a UTM platform we propose a high quality end-to-end solution with a unique feature set the long-term positive effect and sustainability impact will be monitored and reported by our research partner our end goal saving lives through innovation okay

**[21:15]** yeah so uh we're deploying uh the safety drone um grid uh in in Belgium with uh 70 drones in a box in the coming two years um these 70 drones in a box will be operated by 40 license uh pilots and these 40 licensed Pilots will be spread out to the country um use five remote operation centers uh in everywhere in Belgium to do the monitoring and the controlling of these slides we will also uh work together with our UTM Partners Sky drones who is actually a daughter of skies and responsible for the Belgium air space so Sky drones will deploy a UTM platform where we will all manage all the flights into

**[22:15]** we will use uh the research of I can't to uh determine the long time time impacts of safety drawn shield in Belgium so focusing on the sdgs and what's the impact what's the actual impact of drones in a box on human life but also on the CO2 reduction all those things will be monitored by the research partner and last but not least we will create some extra insights using AI technology with our partner sigika who's also our model company to give a further insights to the First Responders on on this uh in in this safety drone Shield all of this will be offered to the First Response teams as a drone as a service or flight as a service so they only have to pay a limited amount per flight and they don't have to invest in the drones in the Box in the technology everything

**[23:20]** will be managed by City mesh so that was um actually the the whole presentation of uh our safety drone shield and how we want to enable First Responders uh through uh the safety drone Shield but also the AI insights um with a better views now in the sky in the first 15 to 30 minutes uh an incident appears um we know that a lot of uh fire departments and police departments already have drone teams but when we speak to them they say this is a game changer because it actually will be there an eye in the sky for the first 15 to 20 minutes of an incident and that's a critical uh timing for them they have their teams but it and the average takes 15 to 20 minutes before the first person arrives at the scene and

**[24:25]** with this solution they will have an overview of the incident before uh the first person arrives at the scene thanks for your attention and I'm still here to go to potential questions so again thanks Hans and um you know on behalf of all of us here I'd like to thank you for your time and sharing your insights on City marshes safety dolls um service you know it's I think it's evident that City mesh and you are true Visionaries in the field of energy response and technology and uh we've all learned a great deal from your presentation today so thank you for putting in that effort and uh you know as always I think that video gives me goosebumps so it's good to you know see how City mesh is uh saving lives through Innovation and from what I could gather from your presentation or just

**[25:25]** saving lives but considering the safety of drones and safety of flight operations uh you know and also including a couple of other things like making sure that nature is not affected so CO2 emissions are you know uh well when within their limits so I think it's a great initiative and we need more people and leaders like you and City mesh to take that lead forward and you know uh get more traction for drone autonomy so thanks uh Hans and the audience um you can now open the session for some questions and answers I think we already have a few hands so I'll just start taking them one by one okay um so I think one question that we have is so you mentioned that you are working at airports as well right so do you how do you work with them for getting like approvals for flight operations is this something that you are you know doing in close coordination with the respective authorities

**[26:28]** can you shed some more light in that yeah for sure like I said before uh deploying this will be due in partnership with Sky drones it's quite drone this is a daughter company of skies skies is the company guarding the the the the the air space in Belgium so it helps they are also situated at the airport and actually the reason why we did it in the airport is because we deployed a private 5G Network at Brussels Airport it's one of the first uh airports in the world uh deploying it for 5G Network and by doing that we were also allowed to to showcase our drone solution um so but that was indeed in collaboration with authorities uh and and with good understandings of course but uh yeah we were able to fly a drone at Brussels Airport and we will be deploying a safety drone drone solution at Brussels Airport in the near future as well

**[27:29]** all right so I think we are getting a lot of questions with respect to certifications uh so there's one more thing so since you're operating remotely over long distances uh are you working with some appropriate CE confirmations um you know City meshes service is probably C6 and in the view of the changing regulations that will apply from January 2024 so can you shed some more light on that yes so also on on that that's one of the reasons why at the moment so we we're working closely with AV SS to have the parachute in place uh to do the the mediation there but also that's one of the reasons why we at the moment only limit to First Responders because then we are flying on the state flights so we're actually flying in name of them and they're still authorized to do that BV loss at the moment indeed that's the only Villas operation that is granted and that's easy to do but we're

**[28:30]** also hoping by doing this at the large scale that we can prove to the authorities that it can be safe and actually open up the legislation after 2024. all right and since uh Hans you mentioned that you're closely working with uh First Responders so uh can you help us understand like how does the safety drone service integrate with other emergency response Technologies so such as like a dispatch software or you know some GPS tracking systems that give you some geo location where you need of the incident and how do you you know plan your flight operations around that yeah so at the moment we're connected to the First Responders emergency system so the moment the distress call comes in we receive the coordinates of the incident and then we fly to there the moment that we take off we have communication Line open with um with the First Responders

**[29:30]** so they can see what's happening and they can also see the path through the incident that can be helpful because sometimes you see something on the way to there but by doing that it for them it's more like okay we now have clear uh understanding of the situation because we see actually what's happening and it's not just somebody calling in yeah there is a there is a fire or there was a collision of two trucks they can actually see okay what's inside the trucks um how many people are involved um what's the magnitude all these things can be seen by dispatch and based on that they can decide uh to to um upscaling or downscaling of the people they're sending but also maybe do other things necessary to control uh this incident so in the first place what we have is a direct communication line between dispatch and the pilot and this patch and the fire truck can see uh the drone images live on their tablet and on their screen and

**[30:36]** based on that they can R Us our pilot to do another round around the incident or for instance sumen zoom out use another type of camera to have a better view or better view of the situation all right thanks thanks for sharing that information uh we have one more question and this is mostly to do with the challenges uh that you have been facing so what kind of challenges did citymesh face When developing the safety role service and how did you overcome them so like you told in your presentation that you have been closely working with uh First Responders and then you have you know uh you've responded to real life situations so can you just shed some more light on your learnings and you know what are some best practices that you would recommend of course I think like everybody in these sessions you will heard that legislation is of course the regulatory is one of the biggest issues or biggest

**[31:37]** concerns for everybody um but also I think the answer is in what we're doing here too we're sitting here together with different players in the field and looking together for a solution that's actually what we did I mentioned before we're using the FlytNow software using the avss parachute we're using the Haisha docking station we're using the DJI uh skeleton of of the Drone and we're on our own our own 5G companion computer of course it's very complicated to make sure that all these components work together perfectly but I think in the end because of the effort done by everybody on on every team we were able to do that and this is typically an example of one plus one equals three and not two and I think if we do that in the industry more often work together and combine our resources and we can come up with Innovation that can actually save

**[32:37]** lives thanks Hans for those wise words and I'm sure you know working with Partners like you we can overcome these challenges and make sure that uh you know we're able to deploy uh this service at scale uh one more question uh so this is kind of uh a little futuristic so what plans this city mesh have for the future of the safety drone service and how do you see it evolving over time to meet the changing needs and Technologies so you know let's say artificial intelligence or machine learning can you can you shed some more light on that yes of course I I think our our future plans are the deployment of 70 the apps in the coming two years um that's already planned so that we're gonna do that um we will learn a lot about doing that a lot about because also Belgium is not a big country but there are differences in the north and in the South so it's it's

**[33:40]** also important to incorporate that and I think by doing that and and that's one of the the main things of AI I really love AI but but one of the things that that's really needed is you need a lot of input for it and and it's a typical question if you put in you get out so you need quality you need a lot of images you need a lot of exemptions um for that Ai and I think by deploying 70 of these boxes and flying on a constant base for the fire department and uh the police department we will gather these uh images and these videos and based on that we will be able to train the best AI uh possible and by training the AI we will get new insights and discover together with the first responses what could be the next step for innovation in this field all right and uh continuing to that I have a few questions on what kind of AI decisions need to be made for your specific use case so let's say you're using it

**[34:42]** with a fire brigade or let's say with the police department so do you have any specific AI decisions that you would like to work on or are working on currently well first of all we want to train uh the algorithm to to see things that we don't see immediately and we're not paying attention a typical uh example is we have uh a call for the police department uh that an accident happened we fly to the accident and by flying through the accident we overfly for instance uh Starting Fire that's something typically what a normal person wouldn't see automatically because they're focused on on the mission we're focusing on going to the incident and seeing these two trucks or cars that collapsed but an AI can that can see the the smoke uh what wouldn't be visible with the bear eye for us or at least

**[35:42]** not at that moment and that could trigger a an incident for the fire department getting the fire department there before first call is in for the fire all right got it thanks thanks Hans uh you know for sharing some more light on that uh so I think we are done with most of the questions I've saved one last question for myself so if you don't mind so again like you highlighted that you know uh you're working with multiple partners so let's say FlytBase and you're working with some docking station partners with DJI uh for the Drone avss to complement the safety part of it so this is what we are calling um you know the open drone in the Box movement so can you please share your thoughts on the open dib approach where each company contributes to a different layer of drone autonomy stack and what are the benefits and how it will help all of us grow

**[36:43]** together and also grow the industry I I think that's the only way forward to be honest I mean I like I mentioned before one plus one equals three here if you take your expertise from FlytNow and expertise of avss for instance and you combine those and you can connect the right people at the two firms with each other you get new insights you you get new technologies Innovation and and we're a step closer to to to saving lives through Innovation if you have to do it all by yourself you're not going to succeed uh that that's for one thing it's it's that complicated um and and that that's why we also set uh within City mesh okay we're gonna focus on the things that we can do we have the pilots we have the software uh to to to operate uh to drone we have the 5G Network okay that's what we're gonna cover now let's look at the right Partners to cover the rest and set them also together I think that's indeed something like you said Neil and I don't know the audience is

**[37:46]** aware of that but actually in the process we have a lot of meetings with uh flight now and Asia for instance but also FlytNow and DJI or FlytNow in avss because the com these components need to work together they need to communicate to it to each other and and that's if if you work in an open model like this you're able to set your partners together in a meeting room and say okay guys this is the problem we're facing at the moment are we gonna come with a solution together uh and that's really working and I think that's like I said before it's the only way forward for me yes that could totally makes sense you know having an open ecosystem an open uh div model where we can all use our energies kind of use that Synergy and solve real world life problems so yes I think that's the way to go forward um on that note do you have any closing thoughts that you would like to share with the audience yeah it's it's kicking in open doors but I I really love uh working

**[38:52]** together uh and getting one plus one is three and by this uh saving lives through Innovation let's continue to do that together yes definitely answer I think one plus one is equal to three is going to stay with me for a really long time thanks for sharing that uh yes and again thanks ants for joining the session today and uh the audience hope you're having a great time at next gen uh do let us know how you found the session in the comments um and again uh we have a couple of other exciting speaker sessions followed by some networking sessions along with both visits so Hans and his team are going to be at their Booth from 5 30 to 6 and 7 30 to 8 CEST and they'll be waiting for you there if you want some more information on what city mesh is doing and if you want to get in touch with them so you can please go to the boots Tab and pay them a visit they'll be looking forward to see you uh thanks everyone see you in the next session

**[39:54]** and thank you Hans thank you for your time it's it's been a pleasure working with you and it's been a pleasure having you at National thank you all bye