# Drone Agnostic Omnidock - Event: Xpress ’23 - Published: June 15, 2023 - Length: 11:13 - Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/Gu6Yqs_PKGI/ > 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 **[0:00]** [Music] [Applause] [Music] Express and we are at both 3909 excited to talk about a groundbreaking new drone docking station that can charge not only one but two drones at once and support multiple drone models and to tell us all about it I am thrilled to welcome Sean the CEO and founder of County drug Sean has an impressive background solving as a former U.S Air Force pilot and FAA certified commercial pilot as well as providing Engineering Services to multiple U.S government agencies under counter unmanned aerial system contracts for the past six years plus he's also been building custom drones for the last nine years so let's give a warm welcome to Sean hello Sean how are you today hi Michelle I thank you very much I'm I'm well I appreciate that at **[1:01]** that introduction so thank you again Sean we're pleased to have you as well as the Omni doc at our booth I know the audience cannot see it but it's there so come by drop by both 3909 if you want to get a glimpse so let's just drive into the questions uh let's start with why did you get into bending drone docking stations what brought you to it so our original intent was to integrate autonomous drones into security and Public Safety missions and uh the first thing we realized is that a a weatherproof rugged docking station is a requirement for those type of missions so we set out to design a dog that could deploy drones very quickly that can also allow drones to stay powered on 24 7 and and maintain a GPS fix so that they can launch at a second's notice it Mission critical whole uh scenarios so we **[2:08]** we went with a clamshell Dome design primarily out of weather considerations as it's highly resistant to wind from from any direction uh moisture doesn't accumulate on top of it um so and then we we knew we needed the material to be transparent to radio frequencies so that the Drone can can stay powered on have its GPS fixed so that was our original design intent we realized that with a circular floor we have a lot of landing area and so we we found that we could make a dock that could accommodate a larger drone like an m30 or two smaller drawings at the same time uh let's do mavic size of drones so we decided to make the omnidoc such that you can easily swap its configuration by changing out the landing floor so you can buy the dock configured for an m30 and then down the road if you want to mavix instead you simply change the floor out it's very very simple very user friendly so but the **[3:11]** intent is to be completely drawn agnostic if if a drone can fit inside the Omni dock we can integrate it to charge so we currently have integrated the djis we've integrated our own custom built pixhawk based craft and this year we're going to be integrating parrots as well as autel and really any any drone that someone would like to integrate we're interested in integrated we're our intent is to be open to all drones that can fit thanks uh for explaining that I my next question was around that only dog being had Hardware agnostic uh you already mentioned about the range of drones that it can support uh so why do you think that is important to have or you know versatility or how does it you know enhance the overall functionality of the system it gives end users options um and um the fact is there's there's certain considerations in certain countries about DJI **[4:12]** drones and so we are starting to see an increase in the use of of U.S built drones and Israeli build drones and you know other other craft so we want people to have the option um so I guess that's yeah that's the reason behind being agnostic so and there is one particular you know USB or what would that be and how does it differentiate from the other docking stations so one of the obvious features is the way it actuates uh it's past it takes uh less than three seconds for the dock to open or close but it also when it actuates it doesn't take up any more space so wherever you put the dock it can open and close if it fits somewhere it's the same size when it opens and closes and so if you put it in the back of the truck it opens and flows is just fine in the back of the truck uh so that's something that we've noticed about you know other docks tend to get larger **[5:13]** when they open or close and so we wanted something that you could put somewhere and and actuate it if it fit there that does sound interesting so could you describe some of or discuss some of the specific use cases where only talk is being diploid and how does the system is being integrated in various Industries so one of our very first deployments was with the University of New Mexico campus police and we've been doing a trial with them now for for over a year um with with mavics and uh it has enhanced their ability to respond to emergency situations and they've been very happy with it it's been maintenance free and it's one of our early prototype units but after that we started to get more interest from public from a public safety sector in the U.S our our U.S customers have been mostly Public Safety but our new our new customers overseas are an array of inspection and surveying mostly drone service providers are it seem to be the most interested in the dog to **[6:19]** be used in a multitude of different missions right that that sounds right and uh I mean given I'm moving forward security is going to become one of the major use cases for deploying of you know John stations in general and omnidoc and sure wouldn't have um also see such deployments and um for for omnidam what is the training and maintenance like like how frequently does the maintenance cycle need to uh you know be conducted and can the teams do it themselves like the team where the station is being deployed in the security Personnel can they do it themselves or is there an earning for to use the docking stations so omnidoc is extremely easy to use it's very user friendly we do have a manual but there's really no training required when it when the dock arrives it's in the open position when you unpack it and you plug it in and once it's plugged in it it's LTE router will get a connection to the cloud servers it's very easy to add it to FlytNow to register it you can be up **[7:23]** and running in a matter of minutes from when it arrives as far as after that there's really not any user maintenance other than a once a year we recommend changing the air filters for the heating and cooling system it can be done by the user it's under the floor there's two filters but that's really the only operator level maintenance that that occurs it the design is such that there's no there's no requirement for any kind of lubrication it's a very very robust and relatively simple design that there's not a lot that breaks so okay um yeah we've had good success with that now in certain environments that we may recommend changing the filters every six months if it's very dusty but that's really the only maintenance that except that level that sounds great I think most people uh do not like systems that have a lot of moving Parts in it and require high maintenance **[8:23]** because what's the point if you're deploying it remotely and if you need to send people to just every two to three months to keep maintaining it uh it defeats the purpose so I think that this is something that is a great thing that you've brought uh with the maintenance very low for these systems um all right moving on to the final question for the day if you looking into the future how do you see the docking station technology evolving in the coming years and where do you envision omnidoc playing a role in it so um we're seeing a an incredible increase in the interest in docking stations this year we've been working on this for almost three years and and it had been kind of slow going up until 2023 we've really seen a an interest in in docs because the fact is you cannot have autonomy without it right it is a requirement and to be truly autonomous so my prediction is in sometime in the next five years or less we're going to see a hundred thousand docking stations being sold per year globally **[9:27]** there's going to come a point where most commercial drones are equipped and ready to use docking stations and uh now we're just you were in the infancy of this new industry right so we're DJI the world leader for drones has has now released their very first docking station um so where we see omnidoc fitting is in multi-roll uh drawing use cases we we aim to be the go-to for an open source open architecture docking station that can accommodate any drone that will sit inside of it and that can be used for a host of different missions I mean we envision a network of omni docs where you could have a drone deployed from one dog and go land in another dock while the other drone is flying some unrelated Mission um and I think that most of us that are in this industry know that that's what's coming right there's there's about to be a lot more drones in the air over the next **[10:29]** few years and so we produce homes for those drones to live and charge in and and that's that's how we see our our place in this emerging market that definitely makes a lot of sense I think hopping is going to be one of the future use cases if you are deploying drones across pipelines that span say thousands of kilometers you need to uh the Drone needs to take off from one dog board land on another charge and then continue the mission so on and so forth I think there are exciting times ahead and thank you again Sean for your time today and um discussing about old new dog I'm sure we're going to see a lot of successful deployments in the future uh so thanks again well thank you Michelle I appreciate you having me all right