# AI-Powered Skies and the Future of Autonomous Drones

- Event: NestGen ’25
- Published: March 7, 2025
- Length: 45:54
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/Eg3qgponHb0/

> 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

**[0:20]** okay perfect uh hello everyone my name is Randall Wares and I am thrilled to be here on the cxo panel for NestGen uh before we get started there's few housekeeping things first I want to say that education is one of the most challenging things that we face as a drone Community uh trying to get people to understand what we're doing how we're doing it why it's beneficial so I want to say thank you to the uh flight based team for hosting this event I know that Pita Yushi and the the uh Team behind the scenes have working on this tirelessly we also have to consider they are right now in the middle of the night still up still kicking and bringing uh bringing us content so uh thank you for that also there's a Q&A section of your panel and for me there's a reason that you're here on this uh viewing this panel and not reading a news article or not reading a white paper you're here to interact you're here to get your questions answered so use that Q&A uh section throughout the entire uh presentation and we will try to answer as many of the questions that we can uh when

**[1:24]** we get to the end of the uh material so today I am uh very very honored to be sitting on a panel with such accomplished people that have been uh pulling different strings in the in the Drone and security space for uh a number of years so I'm just going to do some quick introductions uh feel free panel to say hello but uh we'll just get into the content after the introduction so first uh we have Ryan Smith who's the founder and president of Titan protection uh from my understanding 600 employees viewing thousands of cameras and and also doing on ground physical uh security of around the United States uh so has a very good idea of what the end user is experiencing in this you know next generation of Technology both Ai and Robotics and how that's transformed the security space Ryan thanks for being here appreciate it thank you very much yeah you nailed it people in technology that's uh that's our Jam but honored to be here thank you perfect appreciate that Ryan uh so we also have Jack woo who's the co-founder and CEO of night Andale security they're one of like

**[2:27]** the OG drone in the Box people both Ryan and I were talking about how we've uh we met Jack woo at the same place in 2015 2016 and they've uh been definitely uh keeping them keeping the uh technology on The Cutting Edge as far as security and drones uh so they uh and one thing interesting about Nel is you develop both hardware and the software side of of kind of translating this into the security space is that right yeah that's correct yeah glad to be here perfect look forward to your contributions uh we also have Jeremy Schneiderman who's the founder and CEO or co-founder and CEO don't want to leave the other Founders out of drone nerds uh largest reseller of drone uh Enterprise Solutions uh potentially in the world but I I think we we could likely say that um so when we're talking about you know almost a dozen years of uh sitting you know face to face end users of this technology seeing how this is all kind of uh transformed and and evolved into what it is today Jeremy

**[3:29]** sees a lot of the customers using this technology not only in the security space but in others uh Jeremy thanks for being here thanks Randle looking forward to a great conversation perfect look forward to it as well and then uh the the man of the last 18 hours nitan Gupta and his organization FlytBase he the CEO and founder uh and basically I see FlytBase as being kind of a bridge taking all these Technologies together both on the hardware and software side and kind of making them so they all collate and act together to form a solution uh in the Drone World a lot of us are systems integrators but you're system integrator integrators to an extent uh but n thanks for having us all here and uh allowing everyone to benefit from uh from your team's effort no thanks renal and thanks everyone else for joining and for helping us make it a success and you correctly like mentioned uh the role of FlytBase where we are kind of trying to act as a bridge to bring all these pieces together so that finally we can we can create value for the users we can create create some

**[4:30]** amazing systems for our customers and partners so thanks Rand for doing this of course yeah it's my pleasure so uh and I'm Rand warness I'm the CEO of anzu Robotics today I'm just the guy asking the questions but again you could be that guy or gal as well by putting questions in the Q&A section uh but we're going to just jump right into it today's conversation is largely uh revolving around autonomy Ai and me I'm not an expert of neither and so I get to ask questions that kind of uh give us a a Baseline and then we we uh will grow from there so nitan I wanted to ask you first when we talk about autonomy as one word and AI as a second word how are we distinguishing the difference of the two and how are we talking about them coming together in the context of this conversation right so they both basically mean the same thing however the way uh our understanding of these worlds have evolved uh is is a slightly different so autonomy is something that we have been talking about for many years and that basically deals with not having a pilot in the loop where your

**[5:33]** systems can operate on their own so whatever we used to do even a couple of years ago where a drone can take off from say a dog uh you can plan have pre-planned missions or you can have emergency response based missions uh so everything is happening without any person in the loop so that is all autonomy now with AI what fundamentally we mean is generative AI so geni uh is is a new thing new technology that has just become available and and that is where now systems have become much more intelligent than what they could have been earlier and that is where we are getting into reinforcement learning or things where systems can figure out what is going on and get better on their own so there is this learning element that has now become part of uh these autonomous systems so that is what we now mean by AI perfect I appreciate that and uh I mean that again that's to set the kind of ground definition of what we're trying to do but uh Jeremy I wanted to to pose this to you since you've spent over a decade in front of customers using for using robotic

**[6:38]** technology for a vast number of things how are you seeing current customers adopting things like that that include Ai and autonomous drones but then also what are the misconceptions or what are our customers coming to you for and it's like no that doesn't even exist uh today what are those uh how was that presented well the the way it's being used today you know it's it's different across all the different verticals right so you know in public safety your a drone is automatically going out to a to a crime scene based on one uh you know location point and the Drone gets there automatically talking about you know when n that's the autonomy you know we're not at a point yet where we can say hey go fly to this spot and just voice it I think that's where we're going to get to we're not there yet um you know where I see AI across some of the you know really the adaption where where we're seeing the most adaption is when some of our software partners are taking kind of um the data that would be let's say a roof

**[7:38]** inspection hail damage where instead of having to go and identify it every single time they run it through the engine now the Drone can go and do an automated flight and automatically tell you whether it's a hail damage or you know some other damage that's on the roof so and I've thought about this as far as reporting as well where there's no standardization across drone industry and as far as like any User Group whether it's a critical infrastructure oil and gas Public Safety there's not everyone is forced to use things in the same way so maybe AI could also generate reports that are consistent across the board as well I know that in writing uh you read a Blog and it's written by uh Chad gbt there's similarities between all of them well now when you have a report of a bunch of drone images and you're asking AI to create that that it will look the same as a report you know written in India written in the United States written in in places in Europe that they will all kind of have those Collective uh results I guess is that something that you see as a as an

**[8:40]** outcome of this and that's an open question you could answer Jeremy yeah I I would say I think that would be great right eventually that we get to that standardization it's easier as a as a solution provider if there is that standardization you kind of take here the result it's it's standard across all of your customers it's easier to manage um you know where today it's a little bitf customer what their output is looking like um I think standardization in any industry is is is beneficial yeah uh and so this question is going to be for Ryan because you are a user of Security Solutions and not only drones but you've you've adopted kind of drone technology into what you do what do you see as the challenges for organizations like yours to invest more in adding this technology into what you're doing as well as where do you see human interaction is always going to be part of that Loop regardless of how good the the AI gets sure

**[9:42]** yeah I mean this has been a force multiplier for us for sure our our fixed camera remote guarding operates very similarly we use AI we want the technology to do the heavy lifting tell us when there's something that needs action um I believe firmly that there's still going to be a need for a human in Loop um and maybe particularly more in the security side because there's still that last mile of okay we've identified something that needs action what is that action going to be um so I think blending the two together and you know having a human in the loop so that there is somebody to respond um to an emergency or something that needs you know additional action but we're as motivated as anybody to have that human interaction limited uh when we talk about the autonomous Patrol or response using drones for security you know we want the Drone to operate autonomously but we're still then on that back end so I so I think it's kind of a blend but this certainly frees up human capital um and allows us to have better trained better quality people kind of on that back end

**[10:43]** yeah you use the word training and I haven't really thought about that but having 600 employees which I believe is the number that you you cited to get them to all operate in the same way barring putting all 600 in the same room with the same attention span hearing the same speaker or Pres Mentor or trainer give that training AI is a possib a way to get consistency across an organization that's widely spread is that a way that you think about AI in the future for your organization 100 per. yeah no standardization and and keeping the processes as as simple and standard as possible and then you know my team hears me evangelize auditing on the other end how are we auditing it to make sure that it's delivering and and happening the way that we anticipate it so those two things are are Paramount for us perfect well Ryan I have more questions for you in my brain but I'm going to go to Jack and then I'll come back to to those in a second uh so Jack again your Situation's kind of interesting because in the Drone space a lot of developers or manufacturers focus on

**[11:44]** either the hardware or the software but very few are doing everything um so in your situation what do you find as being the the biggest hurdles in providing these Solutions and how do you make uh a product that plays well with others including you know the the generative AI platforms that are probably going to be in some part in this solution that we're creating rather than each organization building their own AI platforms yeah I mean we see our platform as just another Computing platform like an iPhone or a laptop or a server uh it just happens to be a robotic platform with with sensors and it is designed to be Mission specific so we only integrate with applications that are relevant to physical security so any AI functions we have to uh help solve that problem um and being a full stack um I don't I don't think it's quite that unusual um you know there are other companies out there like skyio

**[12:47]** that also have a full stack as well uh we think having a full stack is a tremendous Advantage because I can go in there and I can do integration very easily I can actually go down to the firmware level and make changes so if I want add a new sensor if I want to augment my airframe I can make all those changes I don't need to wait uh and then work with uh you know the airframe provider or the base station provider and if one makes a change without telling me I'm screwed or we make the changes in house uh and the entire of software is ours which makes uh the accessibility of that software also much easier and much more dependable so you mentioned Computing at the very start of that answer and this is a question just in general and and I think everyone could have a take on this so if you do feel free to speak to it but Jack I'll I'll present it to you when we're dealing with AI and we're making decisions real time do you need to have improved processing power on the Drone itself to make that happen or can you take most off-the-shelf drones that

**[13:48]** are in existence today and do some form of AI uh learning real time um you know I think anytime you you you have to uh do any math right that's that's what you know most AI programs are um you're going to need to have processors that can handle those instructions so it does not hurt at all to have uh you know a CPU GPU on board and you want to do it at the edge so all robots are edge-based devices uh just by Nature uh they have to have local sensors they have to process data locally so uh if you want to do it with let's say the Phantom 2 or ever it's impossible right um but if you want to do it with uh uh you know current U drones and also drones that are upcoming I think it's just GNA be the standard I don't think AI is going to be anything we even discuss we're just talk about applications yeah you know so that's really interesting I I I do want to have one more followup

**[14:48]** to this which is kind of Hardware related which is do we think that supply chain is going to be a challenge for getting drones to a point where they can uh ingest AI information information and do we think as a collective 4G 5G LTE connected drones are a positive thing in this current uh landscape of geopolitics and and drone manufacturing or is it something that will be like regul regulatory hurdles because there is this constant amount of data being moved around from the Drone yeah yeah you know all PCS have to have uh I mean all Computing platforms have to have network connections whether it's 5G 4G LT doesn't matter in the future if you're a drone you don't have it you're really not a robot you're just a remote control aircraft so that's you know that's how we see it um yeah it's a really other people yeah yeah if if anyone else wants to answer that but Jack I do want to say that that's a really interesting answer that would only come from interaction in a panel like this like

**[15:50]** honestly that has just a a bite where you just said if it doesn't have LT it doesn't have 5G it's just a a remote well would you hire a worker that only talks to one person like and can't talk to anybody else in the company right would you hire a worker that you have to put in a backpack right carry them on your back drive them to the job site take them out feed them and then tell them what to do and then after they're done with their job drive them home and feed them again would you do that yeah oh it's really uh really you could definitely do that but you know so anything else on componentry anything else you on for the rest of the panel anything else you guys want to say you could also think of it know as a like I I kind of agree with what Jack said but at the same time uh we do you know kind of find customers who are very sensitive about data and they are okay keeping all their data on premise uh and they have large facilities they have private networks they want to retain uh all the data

**[16:54]** on their private networks it's still connected but it's it's within their networks and that is where uh no we did a launch for air so this is a edge device uh which does not go on the Drone but it is connected on the dock uh so that way you not like whatever heavy compute you need for your AI compute loads uh you are not putting all that heavy stuff on the Drone which makes it very know again you're draining the batteries and it's not very efficient to carry it around so you can just put it next to the dock and you have a very high reliable link anywh between the dock and the Drone and you can do all your compute on this Edge device which is connected to the dock instead of taking everything to the cloud so it's it's kind of a no middle ground uh not having everything on the Drone and not having it in the cloud but but close to the dock so nitan because you're you're speaking to this now uh what have you seen as the system integrator of system integrators uh what have you seen as the biggest breakthroughs for AI and autonomy being used on aerial robotic platforms uh

**[17:56]** over the past few years so I think like security is one of the biggest use cases so security you know where you are trying to detect all kinds of threats and know people cars Etc and trying to make uh kind of good judgment on uh what your security status is of the overall site so that has been one of the biggest use cases so far and that is where um before gen AI it it was relatively hard to train your models for specific objects or specific things now with VMS uh that is you know visual language models and things like that it is going to become a lot more exciting over next few months and know that is where a lot of effort lot of our effort is focused on that how can we leverage all this technology uh to really provide uh something that was difficult to imagine uh till even a few months ago yeah definitely uh so Jeremy because we we focused I mean with with Ryan and Jack's kind of purpose in their organizations what other use cases are you seeing being

**[18:59]** adopted for uh autonomous or AI drone use uh in other verticals other than security I you know I would probably agree with the with with the panel security is definitely the largest for us we're starting to see some livestock monitoring uh in agriculture we're seeing uh you know mostly mainly security here in the US uh and and agriculture would be the two two largest for us you know Public Safety dfr is obviously a you know big adaption but that kind of crosses over with security so let's imagine that 10% of the the addressable Market is being addressed today right and let's say security and Agriculture and livestock are part of that is the other 90% being is it being slowed because of regulations or is it being slowed because the technology is not necessarily there to actually achieve what they're trying to achieve I think some of the other verticals don't require the the same Mission over and to be flown repeatedly so if you don't need a repeated flight Mission you don't

**[20:03]** need to have autonomy and a dock and you know you don't have to have that scheduled so I think a good portion of that other of that 90% is not those automated flights you know construction monitoring I think there's going to be a you know a good uptick in construction you know but it's a temporary you put the dock on there for for a year you build a structure and then you move it to the next place so I I'll this kind of openly but when we uh for a long time Beyond visual line of sight has been like this gate to the next chapter of drone industry do you think that we're going to end up being uh uh positively overwhelmed by when BB loss becomes more prevalent and the safety is there or do you think that we're going to get there and be like oh it's really not creating this Mass adoption like we hope for does anyone have like CAL ball when it comes to that yeah I think if we look at some of the other countries that don't have the same regulations that we have the adaption is much higher so I think we're going to be pleasantly surprised when those regulations

**[21:07]** um are in our favor I think I don't think we're going to be like wow where's the uh demand I think that demand is gonna be there open up your inbox send an email to the FAA and tell them to get their stuff together real quick and and other AAS caas and you Transport Canada wherever you live but uh make it known that we want to see this we're ready we're just send it to Doge and then they'll make sure that if it doesn't get done it's cut perfect uh so Ryan back to you uh here's a question that you probably get all the time in when you're talking about well I I think anyone that owns an A company that has employees that they're kind of threatened by robotics what do you say to people that say that robots or AI are going to take away jobs and replace people uh how do you see that playing out in your organization it's a great question and and it comes up quite a bit and I think it's a glass half full glass half empty you know my daughter who's 10 asked me that the other day seeing Ai and everything you know

**[22:09]** she said am I gonna have a job when I grow up and I said you know I think it's a perspective you know how you want to look at it you can either leverage AI or you can be run over by it and I think it's the perspective of how are you using it how are you blending it I think for us like I've said you know we let the technology do the heavy lift that allows us to have a better quality trained personnel and a better product and the secret is blending those things together not replacing them or having one or the other so I think it's complete perspective I think it's how you want to look at it is how it is and and you know I firmly believe or at least my perspective is it's it's augmenting and enhancing um not taking away from and you know to to just to you know pile on that our physical security guarding section continues to grow at the rate it always has and our remote guarding section is growing equally so those those are two forces that are growing at tandem not

**[23:10]** opposing yeah and I think that one interesting thing about the use of drone technology in general is that the adoption by organizations that deal with security like safety of of a person or of uh physical assets and the value of those assets make it so that you lean into Cutting Edge techn but Jeremy had mentioned livestock and agriculture uh I mean Farmers have been farming in a traditional way forever and I think that you said something interesting which is you could either jump on board or you could be left behind and so those that feel like they're able to accomplish you know let's say solar panel inspection using traditional methods you are behind and we've the Drone space has proven that you are five plus years behind because it's so much more efficient so much safer so much faster uh the results are much better so uh yeah and and I think too whichever perspective you choose will come to fruition right I mean if it's you know you're going to leverage it and use

**[24:11]** it for for positive benefit that'll happen and if you feel like it's going to replace you it will yeah right some people still like to read read physical newspapers and they uh there there's a place for that but it is still a small place with less Revenue generation than it used to right um so Jack uh because you work directly with organizations uh that are needing a solution like yours which is you know area robotics with data processing both aous and use the future looking at AI do you find it difficult to interact with the vast numbers of stakeholders within organizations meaning you probably have it folks you have SE Suite decision makers you have the engineers to like organize where the data goes and how it functions and then the day-to-day ingestor of that information do you find that these processes are are challenging to get everyone within an organization on the same page as as to what you can accomplish with your technology yeah I think I'd be naive if I don't

**[25:11]** think it's a challenge right so it's you know definitely hurting cats and these are Big Cats you know they they you know they have authority um but but we as a company our philosophy is always the operators come first and you know the folks up on top great you know they write the checks and all this other stuff but uh but you know but we're not lobbying we're not trying to get all these uh Folks up on top to try to make decisions and then push it downwards uh the way I see it is you know the people who are going to use the tools are going to be the one that give us the most immediate feedback and that's going to help us improve the product and that's ultimately going to get the job done so when we approach an organization it is always uh very important for us to get to know the people that are operating the system and we don't talk over them we're not oh we're so company we do AI BS we don't do any of that okay the only thing that we do is we explain hey look this is just a tool it's like your drill it's like your car it's like your forklift right these are the buttons that you push and this does a b and c right and if you wanted

**[26:14]** to D and we can't do it tell us we'll get it to do D for you period that's it and we train them to the best of our abilities but of course you know humans we all make mistakes but through that mistakes we actually learn edge cases and learned better fail safes so we're able to develop software to uh to compensate for those human errors so you know whatever the end user does is is is always beneficial so that's that's how we approach uh you know these organizations yeah and I think that um I mean night Andel I believe you were 2014 founded right yep right so I think that we have a situation in the the Drone or aerial robotic space in which maturity of an organization learns these things and those that are quick to overpromise what AI what autonomy can do end up giving our industry a black eye end up getting people at the top to not believe in the technology so nitan this is questions for you because you are a company that is global you are a company that is uh Hardware agnostic uh

**[27:21]** I won't even say for the most part I wanted to say for the most part but you are Hardware agnostic so what challenges do you face as a company picking win ERS meaning that you have partners that you can rely on that will deliver you know that that give you and your customers exactly what they're looking for and don't do that over promising especially when it's it's so easy to go raise money on a promise for instance right so I think what works best is know working very closely with customers and seeing what is creating really real value for them and again know being a global company uh it it it gives us a vantage point where we are working with so many of our partners and when we see something working say in Australia uh we know exactly what the problem was and what kind of solution worked for One customer we are able to work with now Partners in other regions and help them configure and build solutions that we have found working in Australia right so that way we are able to kind of crossbreed ideas and quickly figure out okay uh what is the best way to solve a problem uh because somewhere with some partner we were able

**[28:25]** to do it in one place so can we replicate and do it again uh in other other parts of the world so bringing those best practices kind of trying to formulate some sort of standardizations uh know figure out okay uh this is the best practice to solve this problem based on whatever learnings we are gathering from different places so so yeah you you said something that that struck me as a as an individual my personal Journey which is I'm the CEO of anzu Robotics we started in the US and Canada we didn't have C certification for instance on our drones so you could find this Solution that's perfect for an American or Canadian adopter of drone technology but if you Tred to translate that me as a manufacturer I have my shortcomings I have inabilities to replicate that same system in Europe today maybe in Tom tomorrow or if I decide to make those Investments so do you find yourself as brokering those kind of negotiations where you're taking Technologies into new regions or new customer or or verticals that were uh previously unexplored because of those reasons

**[29:28]** that you're trying to replicate that that solution in in different parts of the world uh kind of so we we are kind of becoming also a channel for distribution for many of our partners because they are Regional companies like know we work with several Partners who provide daa or detect and avoid kind of solutions but they are very focused on say only the European market now when they start working with us and we are able to see that okay same technology can be used in know by a customer in say southeast Asia or in Australia or in the US now we are able to introduce them to those Partners those customers and help them kind of reach a wider Market because they have the right product with them perfect answer so the last question I have that's for everyone is when we think about Ai and we think about trust uh I can go on chat gbt tell it to make an image and you know there'll be an arm sticking out of a head or whatever right like we know that it is not perfect in response so at what point do we believe that we will be able to trust AI for decisionmaking to where we

**[30:31]** can have humans back away from that and if it could be a timeline or a capability when it gets to this then we'll have that trust how do you guys see trust in in AI when it comes to drone technology consistent results that are accurate we got to get there yeah we can think of that as an opportunity right so because the base llms uh they can do so much and now uh it is an opportunity for other innovators other industry experts that can we put guard rails around it can we do know whatever other wrapper layers need to be built on top of those base llms so that it starts working well for the use cases that we have uh for for for our applications and so on sure I I imagine like uh for wind turbine inspection you have to turn the wind turbine off to do the inspection and I know that energy companies are very Rel UCT an to do this because that it no longer is generating power it takes a lot of energy to spin back

**[31:35]** up Etc so imagining you send AI to do this Mission capture the data just to find out it didn't do it correctly and now you don't have the human being standing there to do the vetting of that data real time you can't go do it again and you've missed an opportunity so I think that in the in the progress that we're all making one of the things that is uh that I started this whole convers with is education is so important repeated reliable results like Jeremy said are only known if people are sharing their repeated reliable results and truthfully sharing their repeated and reliable results and I think there's a tendency to share only good news and to not really collaborate and so nit in your organization being that bridge and seeing all the solutions and bringing them together and and informing and Consulting customers what works and what doesn't work is uh it can't be understated how important that is so you're providing not only customers with a product that you're building but also

**[32:36]** an opportunity to educate like we have today uh which I'll also mention is recorded and sharable so hopefully anyone that either uh didn't stay for the whole 18 hours of NestGen will revisit some of those sessions or uh definitely revisit your favorite session which was the past uh 30 minutes of your day um but I want to go click over to see if there's questions and if there are we'll get to them uh there's not a lot so I'm going to ask one more uh in the next 10 years when it comes to drones or autonomy or Ai and this question used to be three years because we we could like see it in front of us but then now I think we've realized that things get in the way so 10 years uh what kind of things do you see making the biggest impact when it comes to this technology and let's just get an answer from everyone while we have the time so Jeremy do you want to start since on my screen at least here I think going back to kind of one of my earlier statements you know full autonomy and full AI processing that's the the ultimate you know there we should not be flying

**[33:37]** drones they should just be a robot that's going in the sky and getting that actionable data you dictate what you want and it just it gets done that's I think the end goal for for Automation in AI let me ask you a question before we go to Ryan next but let's imagine you have a drone in a box it's self-charging the data gets flown into uh gets gets per pushed to the end user within a report so you're doing solar inspection it tells you all the anomalies that they're seeing what the the importance of resolving those anomalies what the the overall bottom line impact of that uh data uh what what does the world look like in that as far as is it is it a safer world is it a is it a more efficient World um what what do we do with our our time when AI is solving all of our problems in that world I would say we're definitely a much more efficient uh it's going to create me

**[34:38]** many efficiencies if we just take the solar panel thing right you know I think there's a back end to that is is the corrective actions can also be automated with other robots right so not only are we doing the inspection we're generating the report we know the trouble spots you know there's a future where those those things could get repaired repaired or prevented automatically uh what do we do with all the time we keep innovating um you know it's like you know the the internet we're still you know 25 years since the internet came and we're still using it and using it as a tool every day um you know we have to keep evolving it's not a full replace you know back to Ryan what Ryan said it's it's never going to be a full replace perfect thanks Jeremy Ryan do you have any thoughts on next 10 years yeah I mean I would agree I think full autonomy and the closer we get you know the better we are to scale higher increase in autonomy higher increase in scalability so you know what we're seeing is right now it's one drone pilot to one drone hopefully soon that increases one to many and and then soon none to many um

**[35:42]** and that for us just allows us to scale more rapidly have less human involvement and focus more on that response piece of okay either something's gone wrong or the AI has identified an anomaly that now a human needs to step into and and take care of so and we've seen that increase say autonomy and you know video analytics on video cameras has evolved significantly you know in the 2010 era we were getting you know hundreds of alerts out of a site where now we get few and and so we really want the the technology to do the heavy lift but um and reduce human involvement on the back end so I just see that increasing as as autonomy does perfect thanks Ryan uh Jack do you want to answer this next just yeah yeah I think you should no I think we should all look at the uh the you know the defense organizations and you know they they're developing Technologies and we're developing Technologies along with them that's going to trickle down uh you know especially in the areas of tactical ISR um for physical security or for dfr mainly joone drone collaboration is going to be one of

**[36:48]** the bigger things uh moving forward again we're not developing remote control aircraft so people got to kind of get that out of their head that these are not aircrafts you're going to hand fly if you are taking on uh security missions unless it's highly tactical if it's a very specialized Mission yes or you know something like uh you know CQB scenario but even then you're going to have uh drones that are be uh that'll have enough sensors and be able to collaborate and be very very effective in uh alerting responding and verifying to that threat so we think collaboration and drone drone communic what we call R2-D2 D relay to drone to drone that's part of our patent uh is to get the drones to talk to one another uh we actually had an instance where a drone got stuck during testing out there it lost all Network it was a network testing here's the irony uh it lost all Network and then we sent another drone and that second drone was able to uh do a local

**[37:48]** connection connect to the first drone send the instruction to the first drone to come home and that's how we were able to inject that instruction the first drone that happened six years ago wow wow that's impressive so so these are going to happen in in a faster rate we just haven't productized it because there's not a demand for something like this yet but I think eventually as operation becomes more sophisticated we are going to get drones that get stuck out there and humans don't want to deal with it so like robots should fix other robots and take care of themselves as much as possible very interesting concept thanks Jack and nitt do you want to wrap us up on the next 10 years what you see in your crystal ball uh sure so 10 years is going to be a really long time considering the pace at which know technology is moving right now so so it's it's like it's accelerating and as we see like every day now there are so many new updates on how new models are being released and how new capabilities are being developed we see so much happening on the front of humanoids recently so so lot is happening in robotics and physical AI

**[38:51]** um so 10 years if you think from first principles so today uh as a human civilization we are are restrained on the 2D surface of the Earth so all our cars all our movements are pretty much restricted on this 2D surface while we invented Aviation more than 100 years ago but even if you today look in the sky how many vehicles do you see at a time uh like any point in time at anywhere in the earth anywhere on Earth so uh there are like we have hardly leveraged the sky so far no despite inventing Aviation 100 plus years ago and that is because we have never been able to come up with a efficient way to uh leverage the skies to to exploit the sky so we have the resource available uh but technology has not been uh we we have not been able to come up with a technology where using the skies is fundamentally cheaper and more efficient than using the roads uh right so by default we use roads and only for certain applications are we using Skies today uh right so think about uh how cell phones completely changed the way we used to communicate so there was no

**[39:55]** one cell phones became so affordable and so reliable and so kind of omnipresent uh we completely gave up on landlines so you don't need copper wires you don't need fiber optic cables for communication anymore and you're just doing it over cell phones uh so something similar is likely to happen in next 10 years at least that is what we would like to see happening that can uh not leveraging the skies fundamentally become more efficient uh than using the 2D surface of the Earth and that is like can uh can you imagine a future where people will will be surprised that there was a time there was something like roads there was something like automobile and you had to travel from one place to the other on the surface of the Earth and not the skies which could become the default way to travel or default way to get things done um so whether it will happen in 10 years or not but that is that is uh the direction that we would like uh technology to progress to fundamentally break know come up with breakthrough Innovations which makes uh leveraging Skies fundamentally more efficient uh than no traveling or doing things on the 2D surface

**[41:00]** perfect thank you nitton um looking at the Q&A I in panels like this especially because this is a a global opportunity uh I try to steer away from things that are very single country Centric and in this case us Centric but there's a question out that's talking about drone manufacturing and since we talked about the next 10 years now we could talk about what happens in the next 12 months which is uh you know the the role of geopolitics in our space and this is not necessarily autonomy or AI but I think that it's it's something that was asked it's something that we should at least give the uh the audience the responses that they requested so uh the question was specifically about us manufacturing and and development of software but nit your organization is obviously an indian-based company so taking it as us is probably not the question it is really how do we feel about the Chinese sentiment in the Drone space over the next year and what that looks like how does that modify the way that

**[42:02]** people are using drones the price and the average sales price of drones the rapidity of the innovation of drones and I I mean all four of you have a vested interest in this in a different in different ways but I think Jack you with the American flag behind you and you manufacturing drones yourself I want to start with you how are you seeing the role of of geopolitics uh play in how you're pivoting or what you're doing differently to to address those needs if there is a vacuum well we think it's unamerican to stifle competition that's number one you know my family immigrated to this country based on certain principles that we believe in because is better than Taiwan so we came here um we think that American manufacturers like ourselves we need to have a blue supply chain and that is something that we're putting together right now as soon as we have it for ourselves we're going to kind of offer that to other man facturers because this way we can get your economy of scale faster it's helping them to help ourselves uh in the unfortunate instance of disruption in the

**[43:08]** Taiwan Straits uh where we have some issues over there in the Far East we need to be prepared to have one a stockpile of components that's going to last us for X number of months depending on each company's you know rate of shipment but we also need to invest in a in American Manufacturing on key components like batteries for instance that's one of the weakest spots and I'm sure everybody here that's in the Drone space we all know about this so that's all I have to say Jack really awesome response not what I thought and I salute you for for feeling the same as many do where why should we be afraid right why should we be afraid right it's not like this country have never been challenged before in manufacturing right in the 80s the American car industry thought that you know thought the Japanese car industry was going to completely overwhelm us I drive a Jeep it's a great car I mean you know it they're still around I mean they're owned by Italians now but anyway that's another story all right Ryan I'm gonna give you the the last shot at this just because you

**[44:08]** are a consumer of this and and you are not in the in the space that we're in where we really really care where the drones come from because that's where the money how we're we're making money or not making money you as a user what do you view as being kind of the made in blank when it comes to selecting your technology and we got like 40 seconds to get an answer out yeah no and this is nothing new in the security industry I mean we went through this with cameras and hick vision and ndaa type of things and I will say it very it comes down to the customer what their sensitivity is if it's critical infrastructure it's a very high topic if it's not it really comes down more to capability price point I think Roi of the solution versus you know the typical security officer is Paramount in the you know the calculation um and and so you know we find equal parts the customer that has sensitivity to it it's very high up there and to the ones that aren't it's it's really a nonissue and

**[45:08]** more comes down to price and capability but but you know from our standpoint we want to be putting things out there that we comfortable are safe and and operate efficiently so um yeah it's a challenge we just got the overrunning notice so I'm going to say thank you for everyone being here thank you for everyone on the panel one big thing is that it is one of the best compliments for you as viewers to go and follow these people on LinkedIn to message them and say you like what they said let people know when they are putting out their time that you're hearing them you're seeing them that you believe in in what they're saying um so I encourage that for for anyone here re