# Autonomous Drones as First Responders - Event: NestGen ’24 - Published: April 10, 2024 - Length: 34:07 - Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/elzs1LVBf6g/ > 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 the transformative role of autonomous drones in emergency response in this insightful session from NestGen 2024. Join experts Charles Werner and Officer Herbert Oubre as they delve into the implementation and advantages of utilizing drones as frontline responders. Explore practical use cases, regulatory challenges, and the evolving landscape of drone technology in public safety. Gain valuable insights into the benefits of rapid deployment, situational awareness, and enhanced response capabilities. Learn how drones are revolutionizing emergency services and shaping the future of crisis management. To know more, visit: ===== Subscribe to FlytBase YouTube - Follow Us On - LinkedIn - Facebook - Twitter - Instagram - ## Transcript **[0:22]** all right hello and welcome to yet another session at nesen 2024 my name is Neil and I'm from the customer success team your at FlytBase uh before we start please let me know how it's going on with you today how are you finding the session so far and N genen 2024 uh please comment in the chat box and share your experiences with us uh you can also go to the NES gen wall of Love which would be on the left of uh your uh platform screen um this will help us curate you know better sessions for the next uh sessions that we have planned for you so today uh ladies and gentlemen we're diving into an increasingly vital aspect of emergency response which is the utilization of autonomous drones as First Responders these unmaned aerial vehicles are revolutionizing the way we approach emergencies offering unparalleled advantages in situational awareness and Rapid deployment so why exactly **[1:25]** are drones being considered as Frontline responders and what does it take to build and Implement such a program effectively to shed light on these crucial aspects I'm honored to welcome two extinguished uh distinguished individuals who are at the Forefront of the autonomous drone as First Responders initiative so let me first introduce you to Charles Warner Chief Warner has served in uh the public sa safety department for 47 years Charles start started his career as a firefighter with the charot well VA fire department and he's been Ser serving the last 10 years as a fire's Chief Charles also served uh for two years as a reserved Deputy at the alalal County Sheriff's Office and following retire retirement Chief uh the chief has also served for two years as a senior advisor and Deputy State coordinator for the Virginia Department **[2:29]** of Emergency management he's also served in a numerous local state and National leadership gools on various Public Safety topics and is an inter internationally renowned speaker he presently serves as the Director and founder of drone responders as and is an FAA certified remote pilot so welcome Charles to nesg 2024 I'm excited to host you for this session all right next up we have officer Herbert UB who brings 15 years of experience with the pure land Police Department to the Forefront serving as the second pilot of the Pand PD uas team since 2018 he boasts over 200 US flights under his belt ub's expertise extends Beyond piloting he's also an Adept us instructor and serves as the lead pilot for the pln PD with a wealth of hands-on experience and a **[3:30]** dedication to Excellence officer UB is poised to deliver invaluable insights in the realm of unmined aial systems welcome um Herbert great to on the session today thank you yeah so before we move move ahead uh I just want to share a few housekeeping rules so uh we're going to make this session Eng engaging so if you have any questions please feel free to type them in the Q&A uh section of the chat and we'll make sure that we answer those uh this session is also getting recorded and will be available um at later at a later stage and finally remember to capture your favorite moments of the session uh use the hash NES genen on LinkedIn or Twitter Twitter and we also have a small surprise for you so the top three posts will receive special n gen ampers as well and last but not the least I just want to thank our title sponsor which is DJI Enterprise and **[4:33]** our gold sponsor sunflower labs for giving us their unvaluable support for uh the nen 2024 event uh with that uh Charles I hand it over to you the stage is yours very well uh thanks for letting me be here uh so we' talked today about autonomous drones as First Responders and I want to make sure I differentiate between two different things uh one is is uh there's drone as a first responder and there are drones as a first responder there are two different things drone as a first responder uh is when a drone is launched from the top of a building immediately at the time of 911 call drones is First Responders are being used more in a tactical sense where you ravit the scene and you operate them so I just wanted to make that a little bit clear before we start one of the things that we've seen in public safety is that there are over 50 use cases now in public safety of how drones are being being used that's drone as a first responder tactically uh inside uh tethered and so on so uh today we'll talk a little **[5:40]** bit about drone as a first responder uh we'll talk about Wildfire TFR Beav loss reconnaissance waivers delivery of defibulators in Naran and transport of organs and medical needs as part of Dron as a first responder so as I said before the dfr definition or Dron as first responder is a program that strategically positions drones on rooftops and are launched immediately upon receipt of an emergency call for the purpose of reconnaissance prior to arrival of ground units and to maintain OverWatch until the situation is mitigated as you will hear from this that this ability to have the reconnaissance in advance of ground units arriving is a GameChanger it gives situation awareness to let them know what they're facing and in more Cas cases than not it de-escalates the situation uh because of knowing that information and the dfr program started with the cha Vista California police department and I'm I'm pleased to say that was done by Captain Fritz Reber at the time who's now retired and we'll move on so in Vista this is an example from uh 222 of their statistics **[6:44]** so far total calls responded to by drones the first responder has been over 18,000 and dfr assisted arrest equal 2537 times the dfr deployment avoided dispatching a patrol unit over 4,000 times what does that mean it means you're putting units back in service that can serve the community so it does it does help in the service to the Community dfr First on the scene 13,000 times plus and the average response time is 93.7 n seconds and the average response time to all calls is 111 seconds that's pretty impressive so benefits of drones a first responder first of all it enhances safety for all involved the responders the people on the scene and the community it does it it manages to improve operational effectiveness you have more information better decisions and as I mentioned from a law enforcement standpoint very often a **[7:45]** de-escalating situation for the fire service and others that we encouraging to use dfr they get a chance to get reconnaissance on structure fires wildfires Hazmat situations and more and most importantly it provides real time time situational awareness to whoever the responder is uh and it can be transmitted usually by streaming video to anyone that has a need to be able to see this information in real time and that whole idea of putting units back in service is where it becomes a force multiplier it it enables you to see the situation from the standpoint of what resources are needed what resources are not needed but it also gives you that situation awareness as the situation is unfolding so that you can plan and respond to it accordingly uh and it provides rapid reconnaissance prior to the arrival of ground units as you've already heard so now we're going to we're gonna switch over to Herbert ubry uh from perland Texas Police Department to talk about dfr in his department and what they've **[8:46]** done I'm Herbert ubry I've been a pilot since 2018 uh we started the idea of our dfr program following Chula Vista yep and we um so we went we went after a waiver and got our waiver in April of last year um and started started our dfr operation really in April it was we got permission to start muted am I muted I can hear you you can hear me yeah I can okay perfect okay um so we started in April um initially that was just testing so it took us a while to get past the test phase into the live operations phase so Neil you have to tell me when to change the slide because I can't hear him uh probably somewhere around October November is when we first really got into live operations and and going forward you go next slide yeah CH you can change the **[9:49]** slide so we currently operate two DJI drones out the box um it's a huge asset to us to getting that real-time information on emergency calls um so we respond to not just police calls but all of our Fire EMS calls that with within our range um we we aim to eliminate the lag time between the caller and the officers on the ground to fill that Gap uh provide situational awareness like Charles was saying to the to the responding units so that they have a good idea of uh where stuff is occurring um Vehicles as are leaving the scenes um talk to our fire guys and provide them with the with a 360 and better location for them to respond to while it's easy for us to maneuver in our police units it's super hard for them to to make maneuverability um if they have to change areas to um to get back to a scene you go next slide Charles you can change the slide please there we go um so what it looks like for us is what we have um drones situated on the opposite sides of town they're **[10:53]** about 7 and a half miles apart um once the Call Comes in the officer is stationed in our office um he receives a call on the computer just like the rest of our units do um he determines whether or not it's within our range and whether or not it's a call that he believes the Drone will be beneficial to the call type uh once he receives that call and determines those things um we do some quick verification checks uh make sure all of our systems are green and then we tell the Drone to launch um it's an autonomous launch or as the fa has told me I have to say it's the semi-autonomous launch um we we have the ability to take over at any time to pil it remotely um but it is it is autonomously launching uh we tell to launch it launches out of the dock flies up to our flight altitude we then give it its destination and it Transitions and and flies to the destination um once it takes over once it arrives on scene We Take Over Control um and provide information to our responding units either via the radio or via our **[11:56]** computer system and give them realtime information and then we loer until either more units are there till um we're no longer needed um sometimes it's a couple minutes sometimes it's 10 15 minutes we're we're out um then we send the Drone home on an autonomous flight back to the dock um it lands and docks and recharges itself and we just make sure all those things occur um and then get ready for our next call you go next slide Charles can you change the slide please is this video going to work let's see so we're currently using a combination of Flight Hub and drone sense remote um drone sense remote's still in its testing phase and we're one of those agencies that are getting the chance to test it um so when we determine a call we we tell it to launch you can play the video Charles um Charles can you play the video please uh there's a play button at the bottom left I guess um so it it it does a lot of the features for us it it brings in in our camera **[12:59]** systems and flies it to the location it gives it a a radius to kind of get the the Target location into our view we're not so much worried about being directly over the target but within the view of the target um so it launches for us um flies to the scene we then take over that that drone and pick out the intelligence that we need to provide to our guys and hang out there so this is this is not a dock flight this is not one of our flights we have some uh we have some strict regulations here in Texas that prevent us from recording a lot of our missions so we don't have a lot of recordings of our missions um but we do have thermal capabilities zoom capabilities um our typical response time is about three minutes from the time we tell it to go um for it to do its checks it to launch itself and for us to arrive on scene so usually so took about 3 minutes for us to **[14:00]** get there um we we're positioned in in our highly densest areas that we need to to Target and are usually quick on scene so drone sensor remote is what we use for for piloting um like I said back and forth between Flight Hub and drone sense as they as each of them expand their capabilities ultimately we will be full-time drone sense once all the capabilities are built in you go next slide um next slide Charles yeah there we go um so we're using Iris cassia G for our aircraft detection we have one station with each dock it gives us about a 1.15 mile radius that we can respond within um of detection our current regulations that we're we're working under we have to um notify we have to we have to report any incursion that occurs within our operational area within 2,000 ft above ground level and within our operational zone **[15:01]** of of the 1.15 miles um that's a lot of aircraft we're directly under two or two flight pass for hobby um airport here in Houston so we have a lot of aircraft that come in and on their Glide slope hit par land at 1,700 feet so we constantly have incursions um but live incursions that actually affect our operations are maybe one out of 100 100 flights will'll have an incursion where we actually have a helicopter coming through at an altitude that makes us at least take notice of it um I've only had one out of all the flights I've done so far where I've had a aircraft that I had to actually avoid uh but Iris works really well for us six cameras um in a radius that detect them provide us a a still image of the aircraft um so we can determine if it's something that we need to worry about um gives us the location uh we also correlate this with adsb um and we're currently look we we currently have a a Dr Drone system in place that's getting set up that **[16:03]** we're going to be testing as well you go next slide Charles can you move to the next slide please and so we use uh Stratus by white fox for our drone detection um ultimately we want to avoid crashing into civilian drones within our airspace so we also detect them um it's stationed on top of our building um can pick out between um our drones and other drones it covers about 10 miles so it covers our pretty much our entire city um and it seems to work pretty well for us we've had a lot of detections um and so far we haven't had to avoid any of those aircraft most of those people fly pretty far away from us next slide next slide Charles so like I said we are using the DJI uh m3t docks um two of them they're they're stationed one's on the ground level behind one of our fire stations and one's on top of our a city building um we found the ground the the ground unit is um **[17:07]** definitely less capable um due to restrictions in RF we just don't have a place to to elevate it at that location um our our unit that sit on top of a two-story building has great um parall land's pretty flat we're about 51 feet above sea level from one side of the city to the other we don't have no Hills um so that drone can fly every inch of its 1.1 mile radius and then some where the one sitting on the ground has a little bit more restricted um but even here in the Texas heat the HVAC system within that drone that that dock works well and it keeps our keeps our system running all all summer um we don't have we have huge wind problems most times most times we're low enough it seems to be if that drone receives above 15 knots it starts struggling with Landing um but other than that it flies really well lands well um got good got good camera systems for us um and we've enjoyed that dock so far um like I said we have two of them one on the ground one one on elevated **[18:09]** position you go the last slide all right Charles you can move ahead so that's my contact information if you want to reach out and ask me any questions you're more than welcome to I'm also going to be around to answer questions in the end Charles yeah Charles Herbert is done with this part if you want to move ahead you can do that yeah okay and you can hear me now right yes I can okay so next we're going to go into the elk Gro Police Department uh they are now in the process of doing drones of first responder as well as you can see here they have a fleet of 18 drones with 30 pilots and they've used it for a number of different cases uh so as far as automation they use this for precision policing and getting an aerial asset to location so that people can see the situation they believe the future of dfr automation is providing real-time Advantage points for frequency that they have never experienced before this allows them to make better informed decisions this was a presentation that they actually gave to their city council uh one of the things I **[19:09]** will point out here is whenever you're doing any kind of drone program whether it's dfr drones of first responder or any drone program it's important that you reach out to your community and have a good community outreach program so that they're all aware of the program what the program will do what it will not do that will help to solve a lot of the issues in your community of concerns over privacy and other things uh what they've decided to use as aerodome they decided that it was most beneficial because for them it offered some things that they didn't see in others like the advancements include Mark 43 integration a simplistic remote pilot interface which includes GIS mapping along with full automation coupled with ads flight monitoring their radar solution includes automated collision avoidance which they felt other companies did not possess automated collision avoidance forces the drones to avoid potential hazards including other aircraft which enhances safety for overall area operations in the National airspace uh in addition aerodome two radar locations provide 100% coverage of the City of Elk Grove and their response area so looking at aerodome just very quickly to share the information automatic response to **[20:12]** 911 calls uh warrants drone response they can IM immediately integrate into CAD fully remote flight operations can be deployed remote location Beyond visual on of site uses groundbased radar radio frequency sensors adsb and remote ID data allowing Pilots to Beyond visual on a site and without the need for visual observers live video for emergency Personnel streaming video can be broadcasted live to emergency Personnel allowing multiple stakeholders to maintain tactical awareness and automated drone swapping so that when one battery is down the other one needs to be replaced that can happen simultaneously so where are we looking at uh as far as Advanced Air mobility and automation uh we're seeing Dron as a first responder of course as it is today but expanding even beyond that as we have the new technologies for detect and avoid which will allow us to expand that into further areas of coverage and a remote pilot will have much more of an efficacy as far as what they're able to do in the future and in this sometime in the first quarter of 2024 in the United States the FAA is **[21:17]** expected to announce the Beyond visual on sight rules in addition to that we're seeing the interest in the air air ambulance area of being able to provide service into rural communities that could not currently afford a helicopter of sorts because they are in the millions of dollars uh we're also seeing uh structure fire extinguishment for high-rise buildings uh and wildare operations for suppression rescue and Logistics here's just a couple looks at this this might be an example of what a new Patrol uh police vehicle looks like in the future of being able to fly over areas and get a really good idea of what's happening or even being able to see what's happening at a specific incident scene and then again we talked about the air ambulance this is why you're able to to fly and have vertical takeoff and reduced infrastructural requirements because you can get in and out much more quickly and easily through averti ports and other types and using helipads as well and then you're seeing some of the ideas of being able to fight high-rise buildings that exceed any of the ground firefighting operations and being able to **[22:18]** fly multiple drones that can re can land and refill and continue that operation at very high levels and then there's the ability to take and drops at wildfires being able to fly into certain areas pick up uh do a dip and get some water or add suppressants and fly over the areas this allows the operation of extinguishment to continue through smoke inversions and allows extinguishment to occur 24 hours a day and what what most of the the Wildland firefighters have said is that if we can have firefighting operations 24 hours a day we have a better chance of getting in in control of the fire because the calmest times of the fires are at night it's it's also much safer because now you have uh remotely piloted aircraft as opposed to having a pilot on the aircraft in some of the most dangerous situations that you'll ever fly in so that's all as far as questions but before I go into the questions I want to um see if I can pull up another video uh if you want to uh see if there are any **[23:20]** questions or answer any questions I'm going to go ahead and try to pull it up while you take that Neil yeah sure chance we do have a lot of questions actually so I'm just going to run them through you one by one okay um all right so one question is if you're running a dfr program what are the top three functionalities that you would look for let's say in a drone or a soft platform that you're going to be using so uh as a public safety as someone who is in public safety you would have some key Matrix or this is something that I you know need to solve my challenges uh if uh you can you name functionalities please use a different browser the browser you are using is not supported hbert would you want to answer that um so for for us the biggest things we were looking for was something that we could pilot remotely um that was that was a huge functionality something that could recharge and charge uh recharge and and **[24:23]** autonomously launch um ultimately here we can't leave our drones outside um Manpower is a huge issue for law enforcement right now um we seem to be having that issue everywhere in the country um so having the ability to remove anybody out in the field and go to a singular person uh was a huge benefit to us so having that ability to to have a a single solution that that was able to take off the land charge um keep the Drone cool in the summer um was huge to us we're not we're not so worried about the winners here it's nice and it's nice 80 degrees outside today um and then ultimately for me it's a huge thing uh we're right underneath Hobby's airspace so we want to make sure that we're safe um so we've constantly been toying with different ideas on how to do that keep keep um safe from other aircrafts um ultimately we'd love to get into radar it's just really expensive to get into all right thanks thanks Herbert I'm sure that help uh helps uh one more question so since you were talking about um you know the manow that you have for a dfr program so we have one **[25:25]** question from Grand Davis so who is the defa to remote pilot in Comm command if the Drone is deployed semi-autonomously so he's just curious to understand like if it is deployed who is responsible to take over and what does their job look like is it like a full-time staff job or like uh you have a full-time uh drone team that's uh dedicated for it so our our crew of of Pilots is responsible for that we're uh we're ultimately the remote pilot in command so if something does to occur that we need to void then we take remote um control of that aircraft through our our system and are able to manually pilot it out of whatever dangerous situation it is we also have um numerous um emergency landing spots so if we need to put the Drone down on a rooftop somewhere to avoid a collision or having an issue with the aircraft we can do that but ultimately the the pilot in the office is the remote piloting command U we're just doing it all from Beyond visual Lite and just to add to that I think what we're **[26:28]** seeing is that uh each of the dfr programs are a little bit different they have different flavors of what they do and the hours of operation change so in some cases it may be full-time other cases it may be certain days of the week uh some places do it just daytime some people do it at night um but in most cases you have some sort of dedicated remote pilot that is assigned that Duty uh in the dfr program all right char Charles I know what that really helps we have one question that evolves around um you know the Privacy side of things so the question is have the legal grounds been put to test in regards to probable cause requirements when viewing areas or properties that someone would have a reasonable expectation of privacy so kylo versus United States thermal imaging case law so that's an example that they've put out specifically yeah so so we can't tar we can't go out and um actively Patrol with the aircraft **[27:28]** that's a violation of of the statutes here um but what we can do is respond to an emergency call um and our response to and from that call is um with a neutral camera angle so we don't have any ground view um so that we don't have to worry about privacy of the people underneath us we're just flying by them and then once we to the location where we've been called to we now have the um the ability to to to view that area as an officer would on the ground um and so we're able to transition and and use the the features of the aircraft in those situations to view those areas um we typically try to avoid viewing into people's curage that's not involved in our incident um we don't respond to a lot of residential calls uh most residential calls um are occurring within the home not outside the home um so there's not a lot of need for a drone over those calls right I I don't need to I don't need to take a picture of your house while you and your spouse are in an argument inside um so we typically only fly to those calls if we get reports that the person person is leaving and they're going to be driving on a public roadway um then we' send the **[28:31]** Drone to that to go help track that person but if it's indoors um in a residential area we typically are not involved in those all right understood that I'm sure that U helps and gives a lot more clarity on the Privacy side of things we have a lot of questions actually so I I literally have to pick and choose so um what is uh the number of drones that you can run at a given time both uh semi auton autonomously and pilot wise uh also uh like are the pilots restricted to your state or could it be managed remotely from any other state as well so um um so answer both those questions so it can be managed anywhere um it doesn't have to be here um we we we had the option of looking at different PL things um one of the biggest things that we drew towards keeping our Pilots inhouse is the ability to inspect those aircraft and those docks on a daily basis um to make sure they're functional before we send that drone out because there's no one putting hands on that drone at all so we want **[29:33]** to make sure every day there's someone going up there physically touching those drones to make sure everything is operational before we send it out um and to answer the question on how many legally I can operate one at a time so I send it home um once I see it land and I see it touchdown I can launch the second drone except there are some allowances CH Vista is able to operate two one out and one back and simultaneously they're the only one that's been allowed ow that under waivers and it really gets down to the understanding of the technology it's being used and how they're dealing with flying over people those kind of things so the FAA looks each one of these cases separately yeah all right U so again since you mentioned the FAA uh there's a specific question revolving around how are you managing uh the regulation side of it so anything specific that you're doing for the waiver process um so we we submitted our waiver um and the biggest thing with them was unproven technology none of the technology that we're we're using is proven um but **[30:33]** it has to be has to be used somewhere to be proven so we're that test case um so that's why our reporting requirements for aircraft incursions are so wide is because they're they're concerned about all of it um even though we only operate our flight altitude is 200 feet AGL and we're reporting everything within 2,000 fet AGL um so they're 1,800 feet away from me and I got to report it to the FAA um I think in the future those regulations will be a lot easier um and you'll be worried about incursions that occur below 500 ft um we've seen a we've seen a a change before we started dfr we had a lot of helicopter traffic that came through at 200 to 400 feet now that we have a Noam up over our entire city that we have dfr operations at 200 most aircraft come through our city at 500 feet so we've definitely seen a change in the in the man world and how they operate around us um to make it safer all right all right that that really helps a lot and U I think we're almost uh done **[31:34]** with the time uh so just you know I'll take some time to wrap it up thanks for sharing coming on to the session and sharing your insights I learned a lot of things uh with respect to Public Safety and rone as First Responders so U I'm sure the audience also um you know learned a lot of new things how this technology the technology can be used uh to save lives and how can it be used like for your current workflows and the part where Charles mentioned that you are already looking at a lot of other use cases that are very futuristic so all those things like having a forward-looking mindset on this uh you know on Public Safety really helps uh before we close Charles over about any closing thoughts key takeaways from your end that you would like to share with the audience first I'd like to thank NES Jin for the opportunity to present here today to all of you if anybody has questions I know Herbert and I are both open to answer questions and our emails have been in the presentation I just say that Jon as the first responder in itself is the most **[32:37]** trending operation in law enforcement today and we'll probably see it grow much more across the United States and the and the world all right um Herbert anything fromin closing thoughts no again I'm open for questions you got you got something to shoot me U the easiest way to get hold me through my LinkedIn if you don't if you don't want to email me all right understood so again Charles in Herbert I want to thank you thank you once again for uh taking off the time coming here sharing your experiences um and your insights um we had a lot to learn uh I want to thank the audience as well for putting putting in the time and coming on to this session uh so it's uh Time to Say Goodbye uh coming up we have the CSO cxo session on drone autonomy as well so we are going to share the vision for 2030 where uh industry leaders are going to come on stage and speak about where the Drone autonomy industry is headed where is it now and what is the vision for the **[33:41]** industry for 2030 so if you're interested in learning more about that you can head over uh to the Expo panel where you can see that session stage panel where you can see that session and um yeah until then see you uh at the next next gen thanks Charles thanks Herber for your time appreciate it have a great day and have a great weekend uh bye to our audience as well