# Automated Industrial Inspections with Hextronics Nests - Event: NestGen ’24 - Published: March 15, 2024 - Length: 28:08 - Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/CbMA0SJkW7c/ > 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 Discover how Hextonics Docks are transforming industrial inspections with autonomous operations. Explore innovative applications across sectors like power plants and telecommunications, featuring insights from industry leaders. Learn about Hextronics Atlas and Universal docks, seamlessly integrated with FlytBase for streamlined mission control. Uncover the regulatory landscape for BVLOS operations and how Hextronics Docks ensure compliance. Join us to witness the future of industrial inspections. To know more, visit: ===== Subscribe to FlytBase YouTube - Follow Us On - LinkedIn - Facebook - Twitter - Instagram - ## Transcript **[0:20]** hello and welcome to another session and NJ 2024 my name is vayak and I'm excited to welcome you to this session so before before we begin May why not let's ask our audience to drop a couple of questions for our our speakers right so maybe uh it would be good to talk during uh the sessions so I believe everyone might have seen the sessions uh topic so we have already hectronic right here with us so hexonic docs have been in the market for quite some time now and have been Reed for multiple application across the world in today's session we'll be deep diving deeper into how these nests are being actively used for industrial inspection the joining with us today we also have extronics Partners who will discuss or kind of do a a kind of a deeper discussion and how they have been deploying autonomous operations beyond the visual line of sight with approvals from **[1:23]** the FAA with further Ado we have our speakers for today our speakers for today are quite the trio of CEOs so please welcome Kur Jesse and Jimmy the CEOs of extronics ready Monitor and overlay areas respectively let's now hear from them how with the help of exonic Nest autonomous operations are deployed to carry out routine inspections of power plant and telecommunication tars and other similar assets but but before we begin we have a couple of housekeeping rules so grab your favorite cup of mocha and get super comfortable because this session is going to be one of its kind please feel free to type in any questions you might have during the sessions in the Q&A chat which will be obviously taken uh after the session this session is getting recorded and will be published soon after the event and uh we will we also have an extronics booths in the next session you guys can go **[2:25]** and visit and maybe C and someone from the team can join by mhm and before we begin last I lastly I also wanted to add please remember to capture your favorite movements during the session and share them on Twitter LinkedIn tagging all us all our speakers and use make do not forget to use an hashtag nesg a few lucky people who shares might have an surprise in the store so there's an ongoing poll during the session will be there and please do participate if there are and lastly I would also like to thank her title sponsor the DJ and her goal sponsor sunflower labs and with that the stage is yours over to you Kurt Jimmy and Jesse all right thank you Vanek uh very good let me uh get my uh my screen on the online here okay here we go we're call so I'm calling in from um from sunny South Florida **[3:30]** right here in Miami at hexonic headquarters uh Jimmy and Jesse you guys want to say where you're calling him from oh I'll start it off I'm calling in from uh Orange County California I'm the Jimmy Dempsey I'm the CEO and the co-founder of overlay Aerials and I'm Jesse steppler I'm the CEO and founder of ready monitor I'm calling in from Montgomery County Maryland just outside of Washington DC the largest noly Zone in the world all right sounds good let's get into it I want to just get started by sharing a little bit about the growth of hexonic uh any long-term fans uh from the FlytBase team would know that uh not too long ago we started hexonic in our garage right in Miami uh and since then uh we've gotten orders from across the world right now hexatronic products can be found in over 25 countries servicing uh use cases for First Response uh agriculture um track uh track inspection uh pipeline **[4:36]** inspection and any other kind of um industrial inspection where where drones are needed and uh we're doing so with a a pretty killer team uh down here about uh 20 25 uh really really hard workers and and some great people I love to call family uh and everything right here is designed and manufactured in about a 5,000 square foot uh facility where we ship it ship out products every every week and our main our main unit that's really had such a powerful impact across the world in its capabilities is the Atlas uh the atlas is uh the nest for the m300 m350 uh aircraft and with this Nest it really opens up the widest variety of uh payloads sensors and additional capabilities uh that really has has has not been an option before or especially with uh the power of modu of um the compact size enabling for battery replacement uh of the m300 batteries and so this unit as you **[5:41]** can see some get deployed on on rooftops and are then launched uh in order to uh maintain um a very strong radio radio link as well as visual line of sight in some cases uh the rooftop just is the best place to to to pop these puppies down uh and they they look just like one of those uh package uh H hbac units that you can see right next to them on the roof and so we're we're at the rate now where we produce one Atlas uh every week uh and this has continued to grow quite significantly uh since last year and then with uh with with hectronic and the team here we were building quite a variety of different nests you all might remember the the global that we had uh back in the day uh and since then we've had kind of request Nest different drones uh and we got tired of building uh a new nest for every drone so we just said you know what let's make one for all and so that's where the **[6:44]** universal comes in and so over the course of uh of 2023 uh we've been actively deploying working with some initial uh initial customers and use cases to really refine the the product to be in in our view the most advanced compact uh drone in a box system um ever ever created uh with its capability for battery replacement uh of say the the mavic 3 Enterprise thermal especially the multispectral as well as uh for a variety of other different drones in the market uh say with the uh the parfi series and just uh just as I talked about with the atlas all of these units are designed and manufactured right here in South Florida with our team so I want to share a little bit uh about how to use our nest with flight with flight base uh the atlas and the universal both can be controlled directly from the flight based dashboard uh and from here uh you you launch a mission either on command uh or **[7:47]** on schedule and it will prepare the Drone it'll it'll power it on power on the remote controller uh and then send it the uh the Waypoint missions to actually uh start activating and capturing data and so right here you all might have recognized the uh the backdrop it's from uh from hex Labs we call it or basically the garage where we just started off uh and that's where we fly over 20 missions every day uh with our our our nests uh just located on site so this is how we've done all of the uh initial validation uh a few uh quite about a year ago and so from here you'll see that we've got all the Telemetry and the activation from the FlytNow Night Flight now team and then the Drone returns for precision Landing right back onto the nest um and then inside you'll see can do with the battery and of course after the mission activates uh you have the capability to download the the imagery uh the the data directly to your your FlytNow um or your flight based server or your S3 **[8:53]** bucket um and then while you're while you're playing with your data or while you're prepping for the uh next mission uh inside the universal we've got an extremely Compact and robust uh battery replacement system and so with this system it's uh tested to well over 2,000 Cycles continuously uh and across the board we've got well over a 100,000 cycles of uh of battery replacement across our products uh throughout the world um and so from here the the universal can store five different batteries uh charging them all up ready to go for the next mission so you can have continuous flight as needed and with this we have a variety of sensors to ensure that the process happens successfully every time and so then once your your data is uh is brought back to the the FlytBase uh application you can then do whatever you wish with that you can **[9:55]** generate 3D models this one in particular was made using pix 4D and so this is is basically the entire um the entire city block right around hex laabs that we generate every week or so and so more and more to hand this off to how the the missions really are are enabled through uh some of the pretty powerful regulatory advances that have been made uh over the past couple of months I'd like to hand it over to to uh to Jesse and the uh and the team from ready monitor thanks Kurt um so I'm for uh for those of you not familiar with me I um the uh prior to founding ready monitor I was the uh the first employee at a company called measure and we were uh the early leader in drone Services uh in in North America so why why do I mention that well I I saw firsthand how challenging it was to move people in equipment around the country trying to deliver services and and it **[11:00]** is it continues to be an incredibly effective way to capture aerial data but there were certain applications and customers that we were just not able to cost effectively uh to cost effectively deliver service to right keeping people on certain sites continuously is just not an option and we would also experience uh expensive things like weather delays where we'd have the people and the equipment but we didn't have the W the operating window in terms of weather and for those of you joining from the previous session there are also companies that help predict that like true weather um but you know regardless having having a remote drone on site was always a dream of ours and it we always and I always believe that it was going to be an enabler of the next phase of growth for uh for for this technology so you know companies like like hexonic and entrepreneurs like Kurt have been trying to enable this for the last few years and recently it's become much more possible here **[12:01]** in the US with improvements in the waiver process from the FAA as well as with more reliability with systems like hexonic Atlas and the hexonic universal that really allow us to reliably and predictably deliver service on a regular basis for customers now the slide you're looking at right here uh is the pre-flight inspection system that hexonic built in collaboration with ready Monitor and that's designed specific spefically for compliance here in the US under existing FAA rules for operating Beyond visual line of sight um and in particular operating without a human being present to perform pre-flight inspections under part one 107 uh5 and 49 so I I will say this has been one of the best parts about working with hexatronic is their level of responsiveness to the needs uh that exist in the market and the regulatory environment today and together we were able to achieve uh what was both **[13:02]** an unprecedented and the most expansive set of waivers to date approved by the FAA that these allow us to operate on a nationwide scale in uncontrolled airspace on closed access sites uh using the hexonic universal system uh and to be able to deliver service without having to go through a six to 12 month process of site identification you you know incorporating um you know detect and avoid Solutions and you know I I nothing bad to say about da Solutions in general but you know for our purposes we needed to be able to operate in a flexible manner um with that was not site specific and as a result using infrastructure masking and the pre-flight inspection tools that Kurt and his team at extronics were able to deliver uh we were able to create um a a safety casee and successfully get these waivers approved which really makes **[14:03]** us an easy button for BV loss uh drone operations uh across the United States so you know in terms of what that enables us to do it varies depending on the type of site but you know we get anywhere from 50 to 200 feet of clearance uh from the nearest obstacles and we uh can operate um you know we can operate well out it's you know depending on the waiver anywhere from a half mile to up to two miles away from the dock without any additional regulatory work that's necessary um this is the we are still in the early stages of this technology even though we're seeing a lot of successful deployments across the world and many countries I want to give credit to have managed to roll start rolling this out at scale um but in particular I'm very excited about what this means for growth in the Drone industry in over the next decade um I'd also like to say a few a few uh words about why we selected extronics **[15:04]** um you know we did an extensive evaluation and while I certainly like Kurt and his team uh we looked AC at a lot of different uh doc providers out there and there's some other good ones but what really struck me about extronics was both the reliability as well as the optionality and flexibility of the systems so we've got some questions here already about battery swapping and range and both of those are you know and and both of those are um the answers are are actually at varies because hectronic has a wide variety of systems so we offer both the battery replacement or swapping capability that the universal has and that is useful for customers that want to conduct multiple flights in a day even if you don't necessarily need to do that hot swap right and you would like to have you know and you could rely on um on on their simple charging system with a single battery that allows you to distribute the load in terms of the number of flights that you're performing across five **[16:04]** batteries in that system so you can install it and you don't necessarily have to worry about burning through a single battery if you're doing flights every day on the other hand if you don't need that solution then you can go with it with with your other option which does not have battery swapping and it's just a single battery that you could charge and then of course um while the universal works with the mavic 3 Series which you know for us was really important because it's a super flexible aircraft with options for thermal with options for multispectral with options for speaker and Lighting systems um you know the uh the other family of extronics products also enables us to use more advanced systems like uh the like like the DJI matrice series uh where you know if if needed you can get um more extensive payloads and um you know get more flexibility in terms of the data that you're creating um the other thing I'd mention as well is we do have customers who have demand for American um for American manufactured or blue suas and because the **[17:04]** hexonic doc is designed to be agnostic to the type of aircraft uh that is operating within it um that that gives us more flexibility while still being able to use the same hardware and software package and that's something else I'll I'll I'll emphasize as well which is we're doing physical Hardware installations and we're doing digital Integrations right and companies like FlytBase make that really easy um but well I would also say that that kind of flexibility is important because look they're going to be new aircraft that come out in two years and this is not as simple as buying a DJI mavic and flying it until you know the next thing comes out and you swap it out right if you want to if you want to have access to new aircraft right and certainly we want to be able ready monitor wants to be able to take advantage of new aircraft types and have flexibility for our customers in terms of data and in terms of what Hardware they prefer that flexibility is is really a a a a huge value proposition for us so you know while our waivers are built around the hectronic system and you know heavily you know we're we're we love flying with DJI **[18:09]** aircraft um you know the the flexibility that we have to bring other aircraft under these approvals and offer them our customers is incredibly valuable yep all right thanks Jesse uh now let's talk about really the killer application of drone into box systems with Jimmy awesome thank you for the introduction um kind of kind of start off just again like I'm Jimmy Dempsey I'm the co-founder and CEO of overlay Aerials uh we provide a full service autonomous drone and box solution for different Industries and once again kind of just uh supporting Jesse and what he's been saying the hectronic has been super accomodating and super incredible throughout this entire process both with the atlas and the universal and it's helped us be able to build out these full workflows for our clients that allow them to collect the data they need to make those critic critical decisions that matter most um one of the main things has been golf courses **[19:12]** this has been a verticle that we've been focused on since the start of overlay Aerials it's really helped us uh analyze the amount of data that they need we helped these Golf Course superintendent leverage autonomous drone technology to deliver customize aerial data and optimize management to maximize resource and profitability there was a common theme that when we were discussing with these superintendent they don't want to take on the responsibility of having a drone to operate so we took that feedback and designed this company so that the golf courses can harness the power of the Drone technology and utilize their Labor Management to make this a reality these superintendant are already working 12 plus hours a day they don't have time to learn another learn another task to learn another thing and have to take the time to be able to collect that data and that's where overlay Aerials really stepped in to help them achieve these goals um the main thing that we use for utilizing the utilizing these golf courses is hex Tronics Universal uh it's been a game Cher **[20:17]** in the industry and utilizing that with flight FlytBase's software and housing the DJI mavic 3 multispectral allowed us to help these golf courses take their turf management into the next level um this really enabled the golf courses to turn them from being a subpar experience to an eagle rating and uh right now you know we're in a late stage discussions with the number one golf course in the US uh to integrate this next level technology and we couldn't be more excited to help these courses uh keep its status while helping them improve their efficiency and their resources and to kind of give you a sense of how we're partnering with golf courses we set up a schedule for the Drone to do its routine Mission over the courses at least once a week if not a few times a week the mavic 3M then scans each hole and we process that data to deliver to the superintendant these superintendent take these reports and build out a schedule for their crew based off the data and **[21:18]** their reporting this allows the superintendent to be able to monitor their nutrition and the health of their Turf to the highest level they're able to monitor the green health of the turf instead of using old traditional methods they're able to detect Pest and disease before it's even become noticeable with the human eye and optimize on nutrition and irrigation for their courses and create an overall efficiency across their turf management team and without the hex Tronics Universal and with flight bases uh incredible support team this wouldn't be possible and with the all these things partner together along with the DGI mavic 3 multispectral uh it's been a launch into the future and uh the amazing thing is the future is now with BBL and uh we couldn't be more excited to be a part of this sounds like a Hoin one Jimmy absolutely all right I think that's uh that's what we've got time for today we'll look at some uh some questions right now and we'll leave on the screen uh contact **[22:20]** info so you all can get in touch with any one of us I'll start I'll start shipping away at some of these questions if that's all right with you Vanette yes sh please go ahead all right um so the first question I see is why no other docking station manufacturers uh make a nest to swap a drone's battery um there's a couple uh other battery swap guys uh out there uh hexonic just prioritizes really doing it in the most compact form factor possible and then really putting our systems in the toughest environments so that we can get that reliability in a wide variety of use cases uh it also helps that the core uh founding team at hexonic are all mechanical uh engine engineering nerds uh and so uh there's one thing that keeps us awake at night it's how to make the best uh best and most compact uh drone in the Box system with all the all the good uh the good capabilities um and another one that applies **[23:20]** to us is how long does it take to swap a battery in the atlas in the global and I'll say in the Universal uh so the atlas is about 3 minutes uh the global is about 100 seconds and the universal is under just uh just one second under 70 seconds uh and that's really uh where we've put a lot of our energy in not just making extremely reliable systems but ones that are also powerful and get you back up in the air as as quick as possible uh some of the pretty much the the two other questions can be combined into one uh and I think that's applicable uh to you you Jesse uh is pretty much uh what what uh how do we do how do people do get their bbls waiver and maybe how can they work with ready monitor to do so yeah that's a great question so it's I mean the answer is it's not easy um and you know we would C I would certainly like to see a much more streamlined process but unfortunately it's **[24:21]** going to take um a lot more than just administrative action within the FAA in order to do that in terms of putting in place um rules uh for uh for BV loss operations so in the meantime it's a waiver process to the part 107 rules that requires a lot of documentation so you're talking about what's your concept of operations making the safety case your standard operating procedures uh your pre-flight and post-flight checklists um it's it also includes um putting in place a safety management system or an SMS for those that are you of you that are familiar with it uh and then making the applications through the FAA's uh uh through the FAA's portal and then that is typically once you've done that it's about a 90-day process uh it can it goes on pause when you get an RFI back from the FAA um so you know it can take anywhere from six to 12 months now you know what our solution for that is you know using ready monitors waivers you actually we actually can um deliver service for customers on **[25:23]** demand in a in a short amount of time um and we do have um an offering in place that allows you to get up and running if you want to operate yourself in a very uh in in a very uh short time frame um it is you know to be to be clear this is this solution is an interim one right while the FAA Works to get more extensive um BV loss rules governing this uh type of operation in place but I expect that that's going to in or that this is going to be the for I my I expect that this will be the lay of the land for at least the next three to four years um it's just going to take longer than any of us would like so in the meantime you have to if you if you want to operate BV loss in the United States um you have to um go through this process and you know there are Consultants that can help you do it if you want to do it independently all right van I think we got time for one more um uh we'll go after **[26:24]** the one there's one talking about ndaa compliance and that's exactly why we've done uh with the universal being able to support a wider variety of different drones uh currently available so it works with the mavic 3 uh as well as with the anaa USA uh and then the uh the atlas Nest uh supports the m350 as well as you might see around there's a there's another m350 looking drone coming coming up uh the inspired flight if 800 Tomcat you all should take a look at at that one sometime soon uh and then one more uh Norway uh Dr Drone Solutions provider uh yes we do have hbac uh internal heating and cooling systems uh to enable The Nest to survive a wide variety of um of weather conditions uh just uh we've got some units uh deployed out in5 degree Fahrenheit uh conditions as well as some in below negative -25 Fahrenheit conditions um those are a little bit outside of our our our technical specifications allowance **[27:27]** um but they are still sustaining themselves uh even in environments like that so I think that's all the time we have today thank you Vanek thank you nesg team thank you uh Jesse and Jimmy I really appreciate you all uh coming out and supporting hexatronic and and and FlytBase uh today at NJ thank you guys uh thanks Kurt thanks thanks Jesse and Jimmy so it was a hell of a event right and uh thanks a lot for giving us time and I believe obviously audience might have loved this session personally I got a lot of information from you guys thanks a lot foring thank you guys have a good day bye-bye thank you have a great thank you guys having us