# Future of Public Safety RPAS Automation and BVLOS Operations

- Event: NestGen ’22
- Published: March 4, 2022
- Length: 28:40
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/eMmx6_lkSVA/

> 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

Autonomous drones have proved vital for large-scale emergency, search & rescue, and law enforcement operations. Learn what lies ahead.

## Transcript

**[0:12]** hello and welcome to session number 25 of nesgen 22 future of public safety rps automation and bb loss ops autonomous drones have proved vital for large-scale emergency search and rescue and law enforcement operations drones for good has grown into a global movement public safety rbas or remote pilot assisted systems have been used to collect meteorological data to fight fires plant trees monitor ocean health and solve several other practical problems during the covet 19 pandemic they've also been used to deliver test kits and vaccines rapidly without human contact as their potential increases so do bv loss waivers for emergency response operations and that's where drone responders come in a non-profit program created to unite aerial first responders emergency managers and search and rescue specialists under a unified organization to help learn train and test with one another with the ultimate objective of maximizing drone operations for public safety

**[1:15]** the drone responders board of advisors is composed of many of the best and brightest minds engaged in uas operations and program management for public safety the job is to help ensure that drone responders serve the greater good as the premier source for public safety us research and knowledge chief charles l werner our speaker for today is the director and founder of drone responders and has worked in public safety for almost half a century 47 years he started his career as a firefighter and emergency vehicle technician with the charlottesville va fire department for 37 years serving the last 10 years as fire chief he also served two years as a reserve deputy with the albemarle county sheriff's office following retirement chief warner served for two years as senior advisor and deputy state coordinator for the virginia department of emergency management he has worked on numerous local state and national leadership roles on various public safety

**[2:15]** topics and is an internationally renowned speaker he is an fa certified certified remote pilot and a contributing editor for high firehouse magazine urgent communications domestic preparedness magazine crisis response journal and other publications with over 200 nationally published articles we are so honored to have you with us today chief warner the session is all yours shops stop sharing my screen now all right listen thanks very much for the opportunity to be here with nest yen and to share this information uh we're talking about the future of automation and beyond visual on the site operations but we thought it was important to talk about how are public safety agencies using drones today first to to let people know because a lot of people don't know how widely public safety is using drones so in firefighting you can see here for example two different examples of firefighting one on the left is the thermal image view which gives the indication of where a fire is in this case you can see that the roof is partially gone by the heat signature on the right you can

**[3:17]** see where an overwatch identifies a fire from flying brands that started on an exposure across the street that would otherwise have gone undetected we also have the camera view the visual optics versus thermal image view and what we've seen is this gives us a great deal more effectiveness of applying water onto the fire directly as opposed to missing the target altogether because of being blocked by smoke the notre dame fire in france was another great example of drones flying they were able to determine the best place to make the attack and then they put in the colossal robot master stream to actually stop the fire spreading to the rest of the cathedral in traffic accidents and hazmat situations we can see a lot more from above than we can see from the ground we're able to determine how many more resources are needed to accomplish the mitigation of the incident at hand and then we're seeing the combining of gis and digital imagery here you can see an example of the campfire where total communities were destroyed and now we're able to take that information create

**[4:20]** panoramic views put it onto a map so that people can click on it and see what the situation of their community and their specific home is and disasters we're seeing everything from tornadoes to floods hurricanes uh tornadoes earthquakes and even in this case volcanic eruptions or emissions like we saw in hawaii these give us the a very quick look at how bad is bad oftentimes being able to get up and fly quicker than piloted aircraft it's also used for locating lost persons this is a great example in the uk and you can see here with the thermal imagery they've identified the location of the the lost person and are able to give coordinates to rescuers you can't see the rescuers they're off slightly to the left of the thermal screen but you can see that before they get to the person who's lost there's also a bodies of water that are between rescuers and they're able to provide that information and this is a total dark environment so it changes the dynamics of safety

**[5:22]** so in pix4d we've seen pix4d react which by the way is free to public safety agencies out there that are that are working in the field but we're also able to see it used for traffic crash reconstruction which reduces it to one-third of the time and reduces secondary accidents because it's getting the roads freed up more quickly and here we're seeing hazmat operations we can see everything from a rural train derailment which shows us right off the bat how many train cars are involved and we can look in this case and see that there are no hazardous material cars involved there's no contamination of the waterway that really helps us move more quickly on the in the bottom you can see where they were using it for radiation detection and able to determine what areas were safe to go into at a later time on the right you can see hazmat operations and the thermal imaging can be used to see the amount of the liquid left in a container it can also tell us some heat temperatures and variations

**[6:24]** if there's an application of fire to that and we can also monitor things from remote locations uh use cases uh coveted 19 is one uh we saw it we used for a lot of different situations not going to go into any detail here because some are good some are not so good here's the here's the examples of identifying dispersed crowds and this came across as being a little kind of sci-fi where they were using it with speakers and it wasn't clear spray disinfectant to disinfect large areas monitor and inform homeless which was done out in california to monitor temperatures of people and coughing types of situations and then to monitor to take cover 19 signs again some people felt this was a little far-reaching uh as far as privacy goes uh and then in the zip line over 30 000 medical deliveries in africa I think it's actually now over a hundred thousand and as you can see there's many ways are being used by public safety and the reason

**[7:25]** is that they enhance responder safety they improve operational effectiveness and they provide increased situational awareness so today there are over 50 public safety humanitarian use cases and here's just a quick look of these the fires as we talked about before in different views protests that have taken place and this was used to monitor to maintain traffic and pedestrian deconfliction because oftentimes the the protests would go out into traffic train derailments with hazmat the hurricanes in the bottom of your screen in the center you can see from puerto rico and the earthquake on the right from new zealand tomorrow's autonomy for public safety is really interesting and for those of you that don't know uh the the picture that you see here is actually a screenshot from the the television cartoon show the jetsons which viewed in september of 1962

**[8:26]** and it projected itself that flying cars would be occurring by the year 2062 I think we're really seeing that this is all starting to happen much quicker than 2062 and probably in the next five years we'll start seeing flying taxis hopefully flying ambulances and some other resources similar so let's look at what the autonomy of tomorrow looks like so one um not only from tomorrow but today chula vista is launching a beyond visual on-site mission in their drone as a first responder program they are able to fly immediately from dispatch and get over the scene in an average response time of 103 seconds the times that they deferred deployment and avoided dispatching control unit was 2414 out of 9680 responses and it assisted in 1132 arrests this means they're flying over the scene much more quickly being able to provide information to

**[9:28]** to public safety and in many cases from law enforcement perspective it's also helped to reduce or to lessen the the tension that's in place so the drones that deliver vaccines zipline has done a phenomenal job in africa and is now doing things in the united states and some other countries where they fly from a point of launch to the launch location of remote locations and are able to provide vaccines to underserved communities and countries so this is really changing the dynamic which saves lives all of these drones that we're seeing out there are helping to save lives and then we're starting to see that we can combine shot spotter in conjunction with the drone location so a drone can be launched automatically to a triangulated location given by shot spotter to get over the scene more quickly to determine what is actually happening and provide that information to law enforcement the goal here

**[10:29]** is to be able to identify the situational awareness what is happening in the situation be able to mitigate that situation as well as to send emergency medical services if needed anti-poaching drones for critical wildfire protection is phenomenal being able to go out and fly in areas remote and from some distance away be able to identify poachers who are killing these wildlife in situations that they could even become extinct so this is a dramatic change in tools to be able to do anti-poaching and then we're seeing the ability of aircraft to fly and drop flotation devices to people in drowning situations so rather you're at the beach or you're in a river you can drop on the left you can see a rest tube that when it hits the water it automatically inflates and on the right you can see flotation devices that can be dropped now what's happening is simultaneously lifeguards are doing what they normally do so the closest lifeguard will respond by

**[11:32]** running and swimming to the rescuer in to the person needed rescue at the same time the next station over is launching the drone with the flotation devices as you can imagine the drone almost always gets there first puts the flotation device in the water which makes it safer for the person so more likely they're not going to drown but it also protects the rescue swimmer who's on the way because a drowning person is a very scary situation because they're they're losing their ability to maintain control of themselves and they can also they can often drown the rescue swimmer if not careful so then the idea is what about more than one drone flying drone swarms flying out into the air in this case drones could be controlled by one person being using artificial intelligence and looking for a lost person either by the color of clothes or by using thermal imagery or by looking through the trees with lidar so these are the

**[12:36]** kinds of things in the future that we're going to start seeing and the ability to cover much larger areas much more quickly and in some places that are totally inaccessible by being able to get to on foot and then we're starting to see things where drones will be flying in succession with each other one after the other and being able to fly 24 hours to to drop either water or of a retardant in place to extinguish wildfires to get them done more quickly and the idea will also be that these drones can fly be in persistent flight to be able to detect early wildfires to put them out in the very early incipient stages to stop them from being becoming large major wildfires so then we might have situations where we have high rise fires and we need to have someone flying to rescue someone on an upper floor sometimes they're in between they can't go down they can't go up so they're stuck in this case we see here the example

**[13:38]** of a flying drone the net you can fly very close to where the person is they can jump into it it can be then flown into a location of safety and let them off and as I mentioned before the idea of air ambulances and medical responses so the idea of having artificial intelligence to be able to fly to certain locations and meet a rescuer that's on the scene and provide care but then get them to the hospital more quickly than being traveling by ground and in some cases this will be even true in urban communities because an air ambulance may be able to get faster from the scene than trying to get through traffic in that urban environment and fly directly to the rooftop of a hospital or medical center on the bottom right you can see where either it might be a defibrillator and or medications that can be dropped like narcan to opioid patients who need it quickly in the field so this can be done in short locations or even further locations as we go into the future and have that beyond visualized site capabilities

**[14:41]** and again as you can see here being able to fly persistent flights the idea here is to be able to fly and be able to identify those fires very quickly to show where they are they can also identify the fires that are in existence the temperatures those fires and give some indication of the priority of what needs to be attacked first so drones may help you move quickly and safely from a to b from one location to another because as we get to beyond visualize site and other capabilities we're going to have the air taxis but also be able to tell you from the information from drones which way to navigate if you're driving on the ground so it can give both an air transport capability but also being direction of the traffic directions that are occurring in and around the community and this can be especially important during a disaster when

**[15:41]** roads are being changed in the direction of travel to where all the lanes are going away to exit or escape from a hurricane community and many more and then we're starting to see smart cities smart cities are taking use of drones because they can fly and maintain a persistent flight and as I mentioned provide that information that they're looking for it may be traffic flow it may be shots that are fired in a community it may be transportation from one point to another it may be an air ambulance so that the list goes on and as we see this beyond visualized site and automation come into play we're going to see a lot more of this we're going to see many more remotely piloted aircraft than piloted aircraft by far and we're starting to see that already even within visual line of sight operations so now I'm going to just kind of open this up for questions and answers to see if anybody has any questions

**[16:47]** great so we already have a couple questions um underway so yeah to start off with how is px40 sorry pix4d being used in public safety so pix4d is being used um to do one traffic crash reconstruction that's one but they're also being used after disasters earthquakes hurricanes tornadoes to do the actual ground mapping some of this is even being used in situations where they want to go and measure the amount of debris that's come they can determine from that how much debris there is uh how much has how much it's going to take to remove that debris and to monitor the recovery of that right right um another person I mean I think the same person is asking isn't rescuing a person with

**[17:48]** the help of a drone too far-fetched or is it being practiced in some countries well the rescue by drone is not being used currently and we're talking a little bit about the future of thinking what might be happening and so as we're thinking about automation and we're thinking about artificial intelligence and beyond visual on a site and detect and avoid technologies we're going to see this happen we're going to see it where a drone can fly remotely we know the drones can fly and do the missions already we just haven't done any testing but drones would be able to fly for example let's say that you have a wildfire firefighter who's down that you could fly a drone to that location without a pilot pick that person up and pull them out and take them to a place of safety so it's it's far-fetched at the moment but it's not that far away right that's that's a good one answer I I think um [Music] I think along those lines I have another question um how do you think regulations

**[18:49]** look like for public safety but I because I feel like when it comes to saving lives and also preventing wildfires from spreading further looking at disaster management I feel like waivers might be a little easier so it depends on the country the regulations are varying across the countries in europe there's a lot more flexibility for public safety and and flights in general uh for example zipline is successful because they have been able to work in a place that regulations have allowed beyond visualized site very early but for public safety in general it is we are able to fly missions easier uh and and to go a little bit further than what we chula vista is a great example of the drones of first responder program is we're able to do that because we're working with the FAA addressing the safety cases and then using the technology and uh you did mention chula vista before and a lot of other people do uh make sure this is quite reputed for having their own drone program and drones is first

**[19:52]** responders program um how do they do things differently and why aren't other uh police departments following suit uh like went other places so chula vista was far part of the uh integration pilot project which kind of gave some experimental opportunities out there to do beyond visual on a site that others didn't have what we have done however is drone responders has created a drone as a first responder program working group which is open to anyone in the world so anyone who's interested can join and drone responders you can join for free as well and we have a resource center online that has over 700 documents but to your point is our goal is to share that information with other agencies so they can do that so we know of at least five agencies that are already heading in the pro as into that program we've grown as a first responder so it is you are going to see it continue to increase and we're making information available to help make it go more quickly oh that's excellent okay so another uh another question around that we have from our social media uh around something that you said about it's not too far-fetched to

**[20:58]** look at um autonomous drones being able to rescue people but it's a little farfetched how far would you say is swarming like you know communication between drones could you talk a little bit about what we need to get there and why we aren't there yet yeah so um I think we're going to see the ability to use swarm videos within I mean swarm drones within the next five years and I think it'll be sooner than I think it'll actually be more like three what we do know is that if you look at the drones that are used for uh in place of fireworks so the drone displays they're an example of swarms being flown uh by one controller to get that done so the idea is to take that same idea now and put it into the ability to fly but the what's keeping us held back some is the detect and avoid technology necessary to detect other aircraft and stay away from it so it's the detect and avoid technology that's kind of the holy grail of all this when the whole

**[22:02]** when that detect and avoid technology is in place where we can feel comfortable it can that it can avoid both remotely piloted and piloted aircraft that's when we're going to see all this literally take off okay okay understood so do you see docking stations being useful in public safety will they be helpful in terms of quicker dawn adoption or do you think it would just be a luxury question um when you say docking stations what do you mean so um a box in which the drone can land and charge cool itself down before it takes off on another flight or for another emergency yes that's actually already being done uh so there is drone in a box there is percepto that's doing something similar to that and then I know that there's a company called first ice in texas that now has created a port a drone port that can actually it's it's climate controlled it's got a weather station outside it'll actually do some evaluations to determine whether the weather is is acceptable to take off uh and then it can it has a universal charging thing that it can land in

**[23:05]** in the box close up and then start charging its events so yes I could see that you could have multiple of these types of stations let's say for example when you're flying a utility route uh you might have these stationed every couple miles so that it can fly the mission for a couple miles beyond visual on a site land charge and then take off and go to the next one and they can be interconnected through either through 5g or through satellite or through a mesh network okay and when you speak of utility you speak of inspections right but in public safety specifically how do you see it being used yeah I think it's it's going to be the same thing as drone as a first responder that it can take off and go to the mission and then when it comes back it can land and automatically start doing its charging so it's b it's restoring itself for operation without having to have human contact so I think that's where it's going to have the big uh the big difference but it could also be that it's flying missions around correctional facilities and other things like that where you want to maintain perimeter control and again being able to take off and land removes that

**[24:09]** logistics that you don't have to deal with right of course all right so I suppose we'll wait for a few more minutes to see if uh we have any questions coming in oh yes we have one question um yeah what is the future of ai based drones in public safety they're basically artificial intelligence based on you covered a little bit over here maybe yeah so I think the artificial intelligence drones are going to do a couple different things number one uh they're going to be able to take certain anomalies and we know that there's a a university in germany that we talked to that is doing kind of speaker arrays that can actually take information in from sound that it can hear from different types of disasters that they've monitored so say for example you're flying over a collapse situation in an earthquake they've now they've now recorded screams crying yelling

**[25:10]** banging on pipes so that when this scent when any of these sounds are heard it picks it up the ai then says hey this looks like it could be a possibility it narrows the the array the other thing it can be done for is I know that working with nasa they're working with some some artificial intelligence to be able to go to fly into areas drone on their own to determine looking from previous satellite imagery to to know which areas need to be mapped because now I can see the previous areas undamaged now the new images with the artificial intelligence and start doing its video without human interaction so that's going to be kind of interesting and then we're seeing search capabilities in large desert areas where the artificial intelligence can take in colors of a person's clothing and or now they're able to do even certain types of material that they can identify as they're flying looking for a person that may be wearing a certain type of clothing or a certain color code okay interesting all right so we'll just wait for a bit

**[26:12]** to see if we're getting any more questions until then if you have anything more to share if you have a video that you'd like to show us that would be a great time yeah and I would just say that uh the slides that I showed I I could have probably had another hour and and I also have a video uh that's actually compiled video of actual drone public safety missions um if anybody would like a a link to that they can send me an email at charles drummond responders.org and I'll make it available uh as well as the powerpoint but any kind of powerpoint presentations people may be looking to help sell their case because sometimes you got it you got to sell people in your community why drones are important but I'm glad to provide that that video for anybody would like it as well as to you if you want to share it great I am just putting that down on the chat box so people can reach out to you we're just waiting for a couple of minutes to see if we're getting any questions

**[27:16]** otherwise this session will come to an early end because all right do you have any closing thoughts for the people who have it well my thoughts are that um drones are gonna make a huge difference in our communities uh in so many different ways public safety agriculture you know media you name it it's being used in almost every industry now um but I would say that anybody who needs additional information go to drumresponders.org join it's free we have a resource center with over 700 documents in a global public safety drone directory and people are able to take advantage of all those things to learn what's already been happening because our goal is to advance the technology by sharing information with everybody great that was truly an excellent session and your work is a testament to the amazing big picture visionary work that the drone community continues to engage in

**[28:20]** and thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today and share your insights and your experience your vast experience yeah thank you for the opportunity to be here great yes good luck with the rest of the nesting thank you so much