# Role of UTM, FTS & DAA for Large-scale BVLOS Operations

- Event: NestGen ’25
- Published: March 7, 2025
- Length: 45:45
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/8FX1RiXsHhs/

> 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.

## Transcript

**[0:22]** all right so hey there everyone hopefully you can hear me um if you have any issues please feel free to throw it in the chat uh as we go along here my name is Billy I'm going to be the moderator here for this session for Beyond visual line of sight uh operations large scale operations uh we're going to talk about the rule the role of UTM FTS and daa so I've been a drone pilot now for about eight years I do a lot of construction photography real estate photography uh so I'm really the end user here personally as we'll kind of talk about here I'm looking forward to being able to uh integrate bbls into my own operations being able to service my clients that are constru base that need um consistent visits so that I'm able to put a dock on site basically set and forget so that I don't have to make the trip out there so um bvos is something that I'm looking forward to taking advantage of in the future as becomes a little bit easier to uh to get a hold of um so on on stage here with me I have David from Matrix space I've got Josh from abss I have John from Aloft and

**[1:26]** jaish from FlytBase so um David do you want to go ahead and take a a chance to introduce yourself first sure uh my name is David Cameron I'm a field engineer with Matrix space uh light on the engineer side um I am uh come from law enforcement 33 years of law enforcement where I have run and created both uh uas and dfr programs and currently running a Novo program uh using airspace detection for the for the visual Observer and uh Matrix space radar along with Optical sensors to cover that uh as well as created other other waivers in this field so awesome and Josh how about you hey everyone my name is Josh a I'm the CEO of abss uh we build parachute recovery systems flight termination systems we're a Canadian company that uh sells a product around the world and works has been working with FlytBase I think since

**[2:28]** 2020 and uh is part of the ecosystem and and build basically regulatory compliant parachute systems I think that's one thing that our strong suit is is understanding the regulations meeting the different rules in Europe Canada US different markets and complying awesome and John how about yourself cool thanks Billy I'm John heeres the CN founder of Loft I started the company about 10 years ago and we recently announced our pending acquisition with unusual machines but I think what isn't changing is really our mission how do we enable flight how do we help large Enterprises or you know folks like like you Billy go go fly and and do that uh BB law so excited to share our our learnings and experiences uh so far awesome yeah I've been a long time a loft user so thanks to you guys for making some some awesome software um and to wrap it up Havish how about yourself hey guys thanks Billy so I'm

**[3:28]** one of the product managers here here at FlytBase I've been in the Drone industry for about six years now and uh from the beginning our mission has been to enable BV laws and to enable as much automated drone flights and you know explore the third dimension as much as possible so we are dedicated on our path to ensuring building a platform which BR brings all of these different parts of the Drone industry together and it is providing the scalable and safe uh and regul comp regul regul compliant solution to all our customers awesome cool well we have a great panel here for you I think that there's an awesome mixture of people here uh people that are actually flying people that are building Hardware people that are building software so really a lot of great leaders here in the DV space um David since we started with you with with the introduction why don't we spin it over to you I've got to say that uh ground radar things like that or something that I never really thought were a necessity for B bbls Drone

**[4:29]** flights right so I guess I want to dig in a little bit about how First Responders are currently utilizing these sensors um like how they're supporting emergency response operations with with uh with your products sure I think you know the first thing to unpack there is uh you know as dfr operations go that we're responding to emergency calls every day kind of utilizing resources more uh logically um but with a lot of dfr programs you have a human visual Observer on the roof so you've got making a onep person operation a two-person operation which doesn't necessarily use those resources as best they can so investing in sensors you know radar sensors Optical sensors uh even acoustic though that's not my uh that's not my area of expertise um you're allowing agencies to remove that human visual Observer and turn it into into a true onep person operation to respond to calls and give that critical pre-arrival information

**[5:31]** great and so these soft uh these uh these sensors that you're that you're developing uh is it looking for M aircraft is looking for other drones like what what exactly are you looking for in the airspace so the main concern for the fa is general aviation aircraft entering the area of your drone operations so it's it's making that Safeguard both whether like in our system with Campbell PD that I uh I so associated with um it is an optical and radar system you know the optical and radar work together during the day day but at night time Optical systems not all Optical systems but Optical systems generally don't like the human eye don't see as well at night there's there's not a good depth perception with Optical systems in general that's where the radar comes in it either poor or hazy weather where you can still fly by FAA regulations but it's still not the clearest out uh Optical systems won't work as well so you have this radar to cover nighttime and looking for these non-cooperative aircrafts during weather conditions or nighttime conditions to allow

**[6:32]** for 247 operations great that's awesome and uh backstage we're talking about how you're integrating with abss is parachute as well so how do you find yourself integrating using the radar and the parachute so they uh it's it's almost two different uh two different parts of a waiver that would be under part 107 where the requirement is to have a parachute for flying over people and flying over vehicles I think it's a great insurance policy whether you're doing part 91 or part 107 to have that extra we you know we've had incidents in the past over you know since we've had our program and nothing has come of them though having the extra insurance of having a parachute on it would be great um the integration part comes where you know integrating our radar into or other radar SS or systems into other software or goys like a loft we're in talks with a loft right now to integrate our radar system into uh their overall uh airspace awareness uh platform and we're really looking forward

**[7:34]** to doing that and providing that to customers great that's awesome yeah it's cool how all of you guys up on stage here are kind of integrating together to to make this happen so Josh why don't we spin over to you you and I have done a lot of work together uh flying drones with parachutes on top of them I think recently with the ability to now fly over people without a waiver which I think is great um but let's talk about and and that's just for specific drones I know you I know like to be specific about that so like with the mavic 3 Enterprise we were able to fly over people without a waiver um so why don't we talk about a couple different markets here Josh right we talk about the United States and Europe what are some differences that you see when it comes to Beyond visual line of sight operations between the two different markets yeah so so what we're seeing in in like the North American versus European context is Nuance on which Tech you're using um segregated flight termination system C6 ratings for example in Europe in the US we're seeing parachutes even being considered as that flight termination system to prevent a fly away if you're in um

**[8:37]** uh congested airspace uh certain locations in Canada it's a little bit different where we don't have adsb on on all the aircraft so it's a little bit of a nuance and we're moving into rules this year that haven't been announced yet but um the proposed rules and and what we're seeing is the parachute is really a ground risk item um whereas when we think of BB loss a lot of the concern to is the the flight termination system requirement however we also see um Regulators considering the human factor you know if you've got a $50,000 piece of equipment and you've got the flight termination system are you really going to activate it if you know your $50,000 is going to smash to the ground and that's where we're seeing people also suggest parachutes again on that human factor side um we're also seeing in the market some regulatory differences on testing and on compliance like our company what we do is we focus on the most strictest rules for Ops over people with like the FAA and then from that it kind of gives us this trickle down effect to other markets and so when I think you're seeing products in Market you know there's there's a lot

**[9:40]** of end users in Europe who are pissed off on the rules um related tooc 2511 But ultimately it's it's that enabling piece that there's Nuance on how it's been designed and there's Nuance on how it works in different markets and yeah there's just I still see in the market people want BB loss but I don't know if all the end users all operators that want it understand all the the full stack the full different pieces that you need to have whether it's radar Fleet Management you know control all these elements pre-flight checks uh cyber security and it's kind of a never ending uh moving game sure speaking of uh means of compliance what is the difference between Moc 2511 and 2512 so your Moc 2511 is is a European construct of enhanced containment um there's alt moc's as well and this is your Aira so you know Europe's dense there's a lot of countries with a lot of airports Ireland's one Switzerland's one where you see a lot

**[10:41]** of flights in congested uh airspace because of you know that's where the population is that's where people live and um you know we all love RH air and EasyJet because you can fly from all these small airports but for the joone operator all these tiny airports creates the need for the Moc 2511 uh I'm sure the flight guys have seen this a lot in the requirements um and then theoc 2512 is a ground risk so this is your medium robustness this is your flight over people populated area more inine with what we're doing in the US and Canada as far as category drones not a strict Moc 2512 in Europe is is definitely in my opinion uh you've got two sides of it you've got the ASM standard go deploy 45 times prove it works but then you have this like in my opinion um a very watered down BS approach of twlight test is and more is up to you and and I think this is one thing with the nuances and the regulations where you've had probably too many soft views and and you've got this these two

**[11:41]** extreme so not all things are equal I guess in the nuances cool awesome now uh I know that you mentioned Fleet management software which Havish I'll spin it over to you uh you're obviously from FlytBase who's putting on this great webinar today so appreciate you jumping in here uh probably from a busy schedule and and talking to us um now I was reading on your website about you know being able to use FlytBase being able to take of being being able to take advantage of a waiver that you guys have for Beyond visual line of sight so do you want to elaborate on that a little bit so what we have is that in every region that we're working with uh in every region we're working we basically have a regulatory expert panel where we have the people who are who are experts in that particular Region's regulatory uh rules and compliances they work with FlytBase they understand the FlytBase system and they then introduce the FlytBase system into the waivers which are then submitted by our customers so they figure out what is the setup and what is the operational

**[12:41]** system of the customer and they integrate the FlytBase uh capabilities and it's uh you know how the users conops is going to be with the FlytBase into their waivers and that is how they're able to get wavers with FlytBase so we are running this BBL loss assist Assistance programs currently all over the world and we have these experts in in Europe we have them in the US we have them in other regions as well to really help people quickly get complete their bavers and get starting uh get flying with boss that's awesome now this is maybe more of a personal question maybe you can uh preach to some of the people here that are watching that are interested in your software what differs uh your software between something like DJI's Flight Hub right so like if I buy one of these docks and it just comes with the software you know what what's something different that you guys are offering or how does your product Stand Out amongst maybe something that just comes with the Drone or comes with the dock that I purchase right so I think the biggest thing is that it brings all of you guys together that is the main USB right so the

**[13:45]** Integrations that we provide on FlytBase they they are able to integrate uh what The Radars and the systems that uh Matrix space provides today that D David was talking about it also has Integrations with the parachutes and in the future we are also going to try and build Integrations with UTM and also the regul approval systems like what aoft provides so and if you think about it all of these are systems that are sometimes very specific to each region so it's not like if you create integration with one of these systems you're good for you know all over the world you need them to be there for each and every region and to bring all of these systems together you need a software that is built in such a way the platform is built in such a way that allows for these Integrations so I think that is where the strength is like if you were to start with a flight tuub you may have to go around a lot of bottlenecks where you're not able to show to your regulatory authorities that you have one system where everything is integrated and you're able to operate from that versus if you were to start with FlytBase then you could very easily show that whatever they want is everything is at the same place so it's a completely

**[14:50]** well-rounded uh system so I think that is the biggest uh advantage of using something cool like that's awesome yeah I mean being able to to easily get waivers through your software is is definitely awesome for Beyond visual line of sight John it kind of spins me over to you with the Loft you know I I love using your app being able to just get instant airspace approval it's obviously made flying to your airports way easier I remember the days where you'd call the tower before you'd fly right uh way before lank came around so um with how easy it is to just jump on the app and get airspace approval do you see that potentially happening in the future for other approvals like for flight over people or Beyond visual line of sight flight I hope so I mean that that's what we're we're building to you know I think you probably remember um you know we got controlled airspace authorizations but then you couldn't fly at night right and and now that's bundled in you don't have to get a waiver to fly at night that's included you know we let you know hey what do you need and and you can still get your authorization and fly at night so it makes sense that

**[15:53]** these continue to kind of build on itself um I'd say the one thing that we you know I'd say are working towards the most regarding BB losses how do we move from kind of this Champion operator mentality to more of a service provider mentality right um so a lot of the keyside operations for example it's all about oh we need all these operators to come together but it really should bubble up to the USS or the provider of those services so um I think that's where you get scale that's where you can bring in a lot of different operators right there's no path to onboard 10,000 operators into a key set right but if you do that at the provider level at the USS level then you get uh all of these authorized services so um we're trying to do that where The Regulators are coming in at the federal level but um there's a lot of stuff uh like with SGI where we made it one click to submit that right like even

**[16:53]** painful stuff that isn't uh quite fully digital how do we just keep making that easy iier ultimately so you can fly more yeah I uh I I think that it's it's again great being able to jump on the app get those instant approvals and you made a really good point about the NightLight just being bundled in so um you know how that looks in the future I guess it's it's up to the lawmakers to decide um all right so David how about we spin around back to you uh we talked a little bit about how First Responders are utilizing these different sensors um how do you how do you see the um the infastructure that cities are implementing enhancing First Responders capabilities well I'm actually looking at it in two ways one uh you know other enhancing other or allowing other first responder agencies to use infrastructure that's already there like if if one uh agency puts in an invests in infrastructure allowing other agencies to be able to tap into that infrastructure to allow you know

**[17:55]** their agencies to do work but also that larger how does that factor into a larger UTM uh um infrastructure and in my you know in my mind if if the public is paying for airspace awareness to allow drone operations shouldn't they be able to also allow that to be able to be melded into a larger UTM for package delivery for air taxis you know since the infrastructure is already there why not use it for public good and allow it to to to be you know mixed in with a larger UTM infrastructure um so I'm looking at it both ways um and that for uh yeah I guess I guess really that's my thoughts on on the the usage of the sensors because it's just enabling those Emergency Operations but why not it be able to enable commercial operations for the public good since the you know investment has already been made sure uh now if

**[18:58]** you're going to be using radar for airspace boring what are some of the key differences between radio navigation and radio location uh and also maybe if you want to elaborate on that what are some of the required approvals that are uh you know required from regulatory bodies FCC ised uh maybe some other some other uh agencies as well yeah I think a lot of a lot of people don't or a lot of agencies don't quite do their due diligence to really look into you know what are they going to need for uh waivers or what are they going to need for approvals sure you're going to go to the FAA for your overall approval but if you're looking at using radar there's always well in all approvals there's going to be some FCC component whether it's because of the Drone is involved or whatever but a lot of those are worked in under what's called part 15 uh where you don't need licenses for the drones to fly and such you know the the the command and control links but when it comes to radar there are additional W not additional waivers but additional author

**[19:59]** ations you need to get because a dfr operation by nature is uh under the FCC rules 47 CFR part 87 is a radio navigation use case so you're enabling an aircraft to fly your own drone you're monitoring the sky to enable the safe light of your drone that by nature is a radio navigation application and if you read some of the that have just come out or the certificates of authorization from the FAA they're very specific about the telecommunication sect that um that any of those groundbased sensors are uh certified as a part 87 radio navigation uh piece of equipment right they can't be experimental um you can run under an experimental transmitting license but the equipment itself has to have an equipment authorization

**[20:59]** for radio navigation or some sort of a special waiver that says they can do it outside of their normal certif certification now radio location which is that same CFR 47 uh it's part 90 is Radio location a good example of that is I just want to go out and I want to I want to do counter uas and I want to search for drones or I want to put it on a perimeter for perimeter security for ground targets to notify me um The Radars don't change you know in most part like our radar wouldn't change the frequency wouldn't change the power it's the same thing piece of equipment but it's the use case the use case there is Radio location and currently you can't use a radar that's only certified for radio location to do airspace detection for radio navigation so it's those things that you know I encourage whether it's a commercial operation or first fer operation do your

**[22:00]** due diligence with your company that you're working with or vendor and ask them can you show me your equipment authorizations for the use case that you want you know again if you're enabling be Bloss for drones that's going to be a radio navigation specific use case awesome perfect uh Josh spinning it over to you uh you know what do you think when people are looking to add a parachute to the Drone that they're flying that somebody might forget to check when they're evaluating maybe brand or maybe type of parachute that they need um and then maybe also if you want to spin off from there when uh when using a drone for BB loss what do you find um you know are some use cases for your parachute and drone to be used for BB loss yeah so I I think when people are looking at parachutes or any payloads I think attaching to drones there there's a there's the task of forgetting to do the math um

**[23:03]** you know the drones if such as like the doc 2 you've got about 200 grams of available payload so people start tacking on stuff whether it's lights whe whether it's well not not so much but we see sometimes remote ID satcom modules parachutes lights speakers they just start kind of piling on and the analogy I use is like when you get on a plane I don't think you're allowed to take off when you're 50% above the maximum takeoff weight and I know this is a a topic in the Drone industry where there's a group of people that will argue well it doesn't matter it's not a certified aircraft but there's languages that you look at the manufacturer like DJI they'll say okay if you exceed the maximum takeoff weight you know um don't do that you'll void warranty then there's the insurance stakeholders there's the lawyers there's the Sops in your in your muncipality um or your state provincial organizations they want to know you're flying safely and and if the Drone says this is the maximum takeoff weight you know that's how we treat it um we've had discussions asking for more weight on different

**[24:03]** drones and and you know a lot of times it's like hey this is why we said it and and you know there's always safety factors built in but we're seeing companies sell products because they chose not to redesign it they chose not to comply and this is I think a flaw in the asdm standard where you're you're validating that it works but you're not being told to go validate that you're not in excess of the M um overall I think this is a topic that some caas are more particular about than others but I think ultimately it's the end user that's going to deal with that conversation because you know you bought a product and you attached it you're the pilot in command you're the the the responsible party um but I think as a company like ours it's like we we have a burden to go and make sure that we sell things that are below that and we don't set our customers up and hopefully the market rewards us um so that's something that I think just understanding what you can put on and how much extra crap you can put on a drone to to fly it in your missions and making sure that you know sometimes just you can't put on a kilog of stuff on a mavic you know that it is what it is um I I think the thing is when we're looking at BB loss use cases

**[25:07]** it you know a lot of times the parachute is for ground risk and that's for your Urban use cases your highly populated areas unless again we go back to that flight termination conversation um you know we'll have some products announced later this year where we're offering just a flight termination system historically we didn't do that um we always thought it was weird that you just you're going to kill your drone mid-flight but you know sometimes people just want that piece so that they can add other products but ultimately that's where the parach recovery system flight termination systems functionalities come into place cool just a just a personal question I'm thinking I know that some of these drones made by DJI have almost a flight termination system built in where you put the sticks in a specific Manner and it kills the motors does that not does that not qualify you need an external FTS yeah and and and external is is a terminology again you're used to this it's it's very picky external FTS is one method Europe airor risk but it needs to be able to shut down the motors without operator intervention so CSC maneuver is an operator seeing a drone saying oh crap

**[26:12]** it's falling out of the sky or something's going wony again human factor wise response time wise like I remember 2017 2018 doing DJI Inspire one flights without an FTS trying to do the CSC maneuver and I have seen too many inpire flights fall out of this inspired sorry DJI inspired drones fall out of the sky because of those CSC maneuver timing issues so like yeah no like and there is parachute companies that will argue no you can just do the CSC maneuver but it's like no no you're just trying to sell a hobby product do all the steps there's a there there's a process here stop cutting Corners so yeah I have a specific opinion I guess on that topic I remember a video that came out when the first mavic pro came out of some guy doing that and it fell from the sky and then he restarted the motor in midair and that was like one of the craziest videos about that drone when it came out so figured I would yeah that who yeah I know that's like that's a cool one right that's like but that's

**[27:14]** ultimately it's like yeah if if any pilot wants to do CSC for FTS I don't think he should be a pilot I'm gonna go with that well luckily I've never had to use uh the the CSC or CCS I don't even know what it's called cuz I've never had to use it um guys we have some some good questions already in the Q&A if you have any questions you're watching here please feel free to drop them in the Q&A section uh towards the end of this webinar we'll kind of take a pause go through those questions and I'll divvy them up to who I think would be best to answer them um so jaish why don't we flip it over to you uh you know something that that you guys tout is your reliability within the flight based software which I think is huge because I've had jobs where unrelated to drones I've set time-lapse cameras from afar and I never know if that time-lapse camera is taking photos when I'm gone right so I could show up and the SD card might be empty uh and when I kind of relate this back to flying drones I would hate to have a dock that's set up a thousand miles away I get on site I set it up I go back home I get back to the office and I'm getting an error I'm

**[28:17]** getting some sort of issue and of course integrating software is probably just you know one phase of this because the hardware has to be good as well but what are some of the things that you guys have implemented in your software to make sure that that troubleshooting can be done from afar rather than having to be done right there on site that's a great question uh really because we have a lot of customers whose dogs are more than a, kilometers away from where they actually commanded and this they have to take a flight to actually get to the place to just even look at the dog sometimes and uh you know book a hotel take a flight then stay there maybe even arrange for travel so yeah they absolutely need good systems which are able to uh you know replace all of that so it starts from the moment you actually get the dock to the site so it starts with how you are setting it up most of the issues that happen are when people improperly set up the set up the dog so when I say they improperly set up the dog I mean like they place it in a wrong location they don't configure the soft the safe landing locations properly they don't configure the

**[29:19]** internet sometimes properly or the power Power Systems so what we have is that we have at FlytBase we have the flight Flight Academy so this is built by our solution our solution Engineers who have worked with so many of our customers and partners and they know all the common mistakes that people make when they're at the side setting up the dock so that Flight Academy course is especially to help people set up the dock in such a way that they probably would not have to visit it again so it starts from that step which is how well are you helping people set up their systems in the first goal other than that once everything is set up the next thing is how do you observe your system so for observing the systems the current flight base dashboard provides you visibility about how many battery Cycles are done with your batteries how much flight time your drone has flown so that you can decide upon when you want to go and replace the Drone or go for maintenance that again prevents surprises but which is you know not uh desirable in in any operation it has HMS visibility so any Diagnostics information that the Drone is throwing up or the dog

**[30:20]** is throwing up that would be visible to you wherever you are in the world and other than that if you actually had to debug the system like for example you had to pull logs or you wanted to upgrade your firmware all of that is available through the fragas dashboard so you can do it remotely you don't need to go on site so these are some of the update some of the things which really help people to remotely you know manage the systems without actually going on site other than that we just ensure that the FlytBase system itself is compatible with field uh conditions like some of the field conditions that we see is people using starlink for as the primary Network or sometimes even 4G so it is extremely important that we are 100% sure the flightway system can work very well with staring whether it is video streaming or controls or anything like that so we ensure that our system is well tested with starink other than that we also provide CCTV Integrations actually not right now we are we are going to be releasing with the it with the next AI updates so some customers what they prefer is that around their dock site they have a CCTV camera which is watching over the whole site from like a third third person third person

**[31:24]** point of view it keeps it gives them visibility of their fence around the dog about with the whether it's breached it's not breached and the conditions at the site so providing that integration for that again takes up gives you so much visibility into the situation that you can make a lot of decisions remotely without having to actually go there and check out the system that's awesome that's huge and yeah I can only imagine all the logistics that have to go into place to get there to just unplug it and plug it back in right to do a restart of the system I can only imagine that there there's a lot of time wasted and spent um hey John can we talk about part one of you you have any information about part 108 at all do you care to elaborate on it maybe uh the long awaited part 108 um what it's funny because I think if I first remember it starting as a joke and now it's actually a thing right uh it's a thing um I think uh you know we'll see when it when it comes to be I think the the parts that are are most exciting is being able to fly BB loss by rule

**[32:28]** and get out of the the waiver world that we're in um we had some calls just this morning with the customer getting waivers to fly BB loss they need a lot of the UTM uh Integrations that that we have for aircraft tracking and and other things but you're still having to get a waiver right and I think the objective with part 108 is just like 107 follow these rules go fly commercially 108 follow these rules go fly BB loss and a lot of that is aircraft I think a lot of the sensor and safety mitigations that uh folks on this panel have discussed but then also what are the services that you can use to to operate compliantly from a from a software perspective as well um and you know I'm I'm hopeful that we're we're getting closer right um I was kind of UN surprised the other day when I realized that the BV

**[33:30]** loss Arc came out three years ago um know we're still still a ways from from a rule but I think with how the dot and the fa are starting to move forward it's really recognizing that we need to enable this right like and I think the the fact that the do is getting more involved is is helpful because this is a more holistic view on all transportation and I think the role of drones if purely looked at the airspace has its effects with traditional Aviation but when you look at Total Transportation this affects traffic this affects uh Road congestion and and all those other costs so there there's a lot of I think industry demand and economic demand and and reasons to move this forward so I look forward to the day when Billy Kyle part 108 operator is there and you can have uh you can have electronic

**[34:32]** observers right not visual observers but yeah let's let's log on and and see what aircraft are nearby get alerts based on radar that uh something is encroaching right and I I think what's really interesting is um you know kind of where our Loft sits we start to see a lot of early signals uh and this you know has happened over the years in terms of different Trends what people want um you know I'd say what's really been interesting recently is that we'll have government users to commercial uh purely commercial type operators that are saying Hey I want to monitor this space and be alerted if a drone enters it right and as we remove humans and and visual eyeballs you start to need those kind of uh electronic signals and whether that's for monitor in counter uas or operationally for safety starting

**[35:32]** to to uh have those sort of electronic observers is going to be really critical yeah I just recently did the Eagles parade was flying the Drone um and it was it was pretty difficult because there were so many aircraft in the air uh police helicopters news helicopters the police helicopter was flying at 150 ft I was tracking him on flight radar as he was flying around and it was crazy so even in that scenario where I'm only flying the Drone a couple hundred feet away from myself still would have been great to have something to detect these or these other Mann aircraft because it was it was fairly congested um so what's great about every panel here Sor goe oh I was say that's where I think having that common operating picture starts to be so useful right and it's really not drone to drone it's Aviation as a whole right that's what we need to solve for yeah exactly um so I think you know kind of wrapping up with the questions here everybody on the panel here is working together to try to enable a bbls future do any of you guys have

**[36:37]** anything else that you want to add you guys want to ask each other questions is there anything else before we move on to some of the questions we have here uh from people watching let's hear some questions silence means no okay so we have so far uh four questions again if you guys have any questions you've been listening along please feel free to drop them over there in the Q&A section we've got about 7 minutes to wrap this up um so the first question is regarding sensors specifically light time of flight sensors like lar or Rangefinder is it possible to avoid them in a drone due to the environment boss flights where the Drone is in direct sun or direct contact with the sun this kind of sensors fail so yeah I can attest that I've flown my drone just you know going from point A to point B and it'll throw the brakes on because of the sensors usually the way that I get around that is turning the sensors off um so I mean how you maybe throwing this over to you right like would it would it be possible with a low Sun angle if I want to fly something later in the day through the software could I turn off the sensors for a flight if I needed

**[37:40]** to yeah absolutely these uh controls are already provided in the apis that we integrate with for especially the DJ drones that we tend to work with so yeah if let us say if you're getting those breaking behaviors then there's just a toggle you can just go switch it off and you should be able to continue the flight at the same time even though the swi toggle is off you would still be able to get the r the information about where the obstacles are so you can still make a decision like but visually that's all the system would not break automatically sure yeah and John I guess asking asking you if we're looking at part 108 and if one of the things to fly under part 108 is having obstacle avoidance enabled what would you do in that scenario would you be able to turn off obstacle avoidance if you're in a scenario where the Drone couldn't move or would that be against rules and rs I I know we'll have to see what those those RS look like I think you anything that's practical and for safety makes sense right and so how do we blend um performance

**[38:43]** rules that aren't prescriptive and and solve for True risk mitigations that that matter and and operationally what's need for safety and compliance sure um now let's see the next question we have here uh seems a little bit General it says what sources for drone design would you recommend in order to make the safest drone for Beyond a visual line of sight flights I think we already have pretty safe drones right now I think that most of the drones that are being made are pretty good of course you know you look at some of the people on the panel here you'll have to add some thirdparty accessories in order to make it um you know a legal Beyond visual line of site drone but I think that what we have now with you know generally smaller drones that are made of plastic with sensors around them I think that we're pretty much on the right track with some of the different um you know manufacturers that are making drones um Dave I think that this is probably a good question for you which tethered drone system do you recommend for Public Safety to monitor during an event like a festival

**[39:45]** or a parade near a stadium I think personally I've heard of photo kite do you have any other recommendations no not really I mean uh I know hoverfly uh but they're more of a DOD contractor so it's not not the most um financially like affordable uh photo prob yeah they are photo kite probably is the best one for that monitoring I mean I was out at a Kenny chesne concert in uh Boseman Montana at a at a uh College Stadium and they had the the local agency had two vehicles out there with photo kites uh as a OverWatch for the for the stadium I thought it was a great use case Forum they weren't flying fing over people they were stationary but they were able to use them as as this extremely tall Mast with cameras on it I mean that's really what it was used for it's just a tall MK so photo kite would probably be my my go-to for that yeah I've seen them built into trucks and cars before it's a really cool system to use I think the one

**[40:48]** thing I'd ask of photo kite is for a better payload I think that that would make it a really great option uh pay could definitely use a little bit of an improvement um it looks like the final question we have unless anybody has some last minute questions uh is it needed to take all permissions related of fa if I want to demo my customized drone made outside of the US for BBL anybody have any any thoughts on this I think a lot of that comes to like I guess airframe regulatory stuff which I don't know if anybody here is a big expert on that yeah um it's there just so much to BV loss like it's not just the aircraft right it's the operation it's the conops it's where you're flying um so you can't just take a singular approach I think if you're building a part of the solution like you need to

**[41:51]** you know find good customers and use cases to prove out it safety but it's hard to just take it yeah it is a whole ecosystem yeah and I think that's the thing that like anyone who's trying to build a drone today it's a lot different than 2017 right and you know part 107 assumes aircrafts fall out of the sky and you know Billy your comment about a safe drone and like you know DJI is still 80% of the market share so I think our data is skewed in my opinion on on performance because DJI is that much Advanced I think I think there's a reality coming especially for the Americans when DJI isn't the dominant Factor because of policies and regulations or whatnot that maybe someone's views are going to change um I don't think we're going to go back to the day of GoPros falling out of the sky but you know I think we're going to take a step back and I think this is where like if you're building a drone and you want to enter the US market like you got to understand what you got to build for Tech but you got to understand regulations if you don't start with regulations you're going to go down a bad path and I guess my final note is but Billy made a comment like

**[42:52]** safe drones today I would argue we're actually moving towards less consumer offthe shelf commercial and we're actually trending towards uh more strict regulatory regimes for these drones and if we look at like means of compliance that's the Faba saying you know Pilots don't need to apply for waivers put it on the manufacturer and put it on the parachute company do all the paperwork so that you don't have to apply for waivers and I think when we see part 108 you're going to see maybe not d c d d kind of Aviation standards but we're going to go to that kind of hybrid approach and I would argue the the industry is moving uh a race to the top of safety and that requires Aviation standards like you talked to commercial drone delivery companies today they hate the idea of meeting uh do 178 for software Assurance because they're like that's crazy because that's not how people build but that's traditional Aviation and controls and and being an understanding of how the aircraft was built so I think this is where the trends are going to go towards more

**[43:52]** safety more Regulatory and you know people ask me what what does a drone look like without a par well you better have a lot of test data and I think that's where there's big opportunities for companies to improve safety by um following more Aviation standard practices and starting to look at do 178 do uh I think it's 256 for the hardware um and looking at those kind of design Assurance levels awesome last minute question guys coming in here would you foresee the FAA accepting remote ID detection in lie of radar optic Etc to satisfy BB loss safety requirements any thoughts on that no I don't think that remote ID is Bluetooth it's unless it was a network based or adsb like an adsb would get bogged down yeah is uh yeah if you look into some of the calculations that have to go in with just using regular sensors minus live adsb and if you have authorities for those there's a lot that goes into them to give a pilot enough perception and reaction time to do a daa maneuver and uh remote

**[44:56]** ID wouldn't be able to to do that and as David point out too drone a drone is the least of the concerns right no one's getting a waiver based on drone to drone de deconfliction it's avoiding traditional aircraft first and foremost yes well hey everybody thanks so much for watching uh everybody in the panel thanks so much for jumping in here and giving your insights really appreciate it and uh good luck today with the rest of the with the rest of the webinar and and hope you guys are learning some great stuff from all the speakers thanks Billy great job pleasure thanks Billy good job see everyone take care