Episode 8: Scaling DFR - Multi-drone BVLOS implementation

Alright. Good afternoon and, or good morning, I suppose, potentially, depending on where you are. But glad to have you here for another, regulatory webinar for public safety.

Today, I'm joined, by Sujoy again on our product team, becoming a bit of a regular himself,

Speaker 2

Speaker 1 and we're gonna be talking multidrone operations.

So, this has been, I think, a a question in almost every webinar for probably the last couple months at least. When's it coming, and what's the status, and are you talking about it and so on? So here we are. We're we're gonna talk multi-drone.

We've got some some great announcements, and I'll do some demos and show you guys all about it. So so rewinding a little bit first, just kind of some some context for this. So about six months ago now, at our Ascend event, we we did have a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department with us as a guest, and they announced at that time they had just received a part one seven multi-drone waiver. So that was kind of a a, you know, first step pathfinder effort for us.

We're super excited for them, but we we hadn't quite figured out yet how to scale this with the FAA.

Product count was still under development at that time. So but, yeah, still still a great milestone and kinda got everybody excited for this.

So what have we been up to since then? This is kind of my my awesome meme for the day. But but, yeah, I think we're here to kinda say that, you know, the area of multi-drone operations for public safety is here.

Just a couple weeks ago, what kinda kicked this all off is we had twelve additional agencies that received approvals.

These are part ninety one approvals this time, so kind of the same type of approval that a lot of you are operating under today with the the two hundred and four hundred foot waivers. Now there's a path forward to multi drone operations under that. So congratulations to to these twelve agencies here to start, and and we've already been working with them to kind of get them enabled and spun up and and kind of ease into this new mode of operations, and and we're really excited to get this capability out to to everybody else here.

So we're actually gonna kinda flip the order here a little bit today. Normally, I, like, launch right into, like, how to get waivers. We are gonna cover that, but it's gonna be at at towards the end of the the webinar.

Want to talk a little bit about, like, why. So why is this multi-drone operations, you know, important? How does it impact your operations? Like, how should you be thinking about it besides just being, like, super cool and, you know, this ability for for one pilot to fly up to four drones?

So we we've been looking at kind of some some staffing modeling, in the last couple months, and we wanna give you guys an example, just kind of a sort of case study and how this could impact your operations.

So as many of you already probably know, if you're starting a program or looking at starting a program, you know, buying drones is is just kind of the start of it. So there's a cost associated with those, but there's also other costs. There's pilot costs, getting sites ready, getting these things deployed, connectivity, etcetera.

And pilots can actually be a a pretty significant part of that, that total cost of a program. So we'll kind of focus in on that here with how multi-drones, can impact that. So if you've worked with us or or are kind of in the process, we've probably done this kind of call for service analysis for you. And and if you haven't, this is a thing we can do with you as part of the process. So so we'll we'll kinda look at, like, what is your total call for service volume, and then this simulation we have can kinda tell you, like, what is the number of docs you might need, how many hives, where should these hives be located throughout your your jurisdictions.

And one part of this analysis is actually kind of looking at the staffing. Like, what what would it take? How many pilots would you need to staff the program at the size that you're looking at? And so the example here, this is just kind of a mid sized city and we chose to look at an eighteen drone deployment across five hives. And this kind of represents just like almost a full deployment kind of citywide coverage in a in a mid sized city.

So looking at, you know, what does it take then to staff, you know, eighteen drones and docks essentially twenty four seven, like, how do you fully staff this?

You'd need kind of on average, like, three pilots per per hour. So the and it kind of ebbs and flows just like calls for service do. So in peak hours, you may need a few more up to four. In kind of the off hours, when things are a little slower, it may drop down to two. But, you kinda get this average of about three three operators per hour.

And that's just one to one. Sorry. So kinda without multi-drone, that's sort of what it looks like. So then what do you what what does that mean in terms of, kind of, like, your total staff? If you just need, like, three pilots per hour, if we kinda just do some math of, you know, twenty four seven, so how many hours in a week, and you divide that by how many hours, like, a pilot can can put towards this in any given week, you end up with about fifteen pilots. So you'd have to to to fully staff this program. In other words, staff kind of these five hives, these eighteen docs, you'd need a cadre of, like, fifteen pilots, to be spun up.

And, again, this is kind of just one example, but essentially, drone pilots kind of scale with your program. So the more docs you have, the more pilots you're gonna need. It's just kind of this linear relationship, unfortunately, and that can really drive up the cost of a program. So, again, in this example, those fifteen pilots, that could represent about forty percent of your your total program cost. So it's a a pretty big big chunk.

So then what is what does multi-drone do that? So what what happens if one pilot can actually fly more more drones, more than one drone at a time during these calls? So you're you're gonna kinda see this live here in a minute. But, essentially, this the the product we have now will kind of automate and start to reduce the the workload for the pilot in some of these key phases of flight. So we can start to launch drones very simply based on CAD integrations. You know, it's essentially like a one click button instead of different screens and typing in addresses and so on.

Features like Pathfinder can can get the drone from point a to point b autonomously and with, really, with minimal pilot oversight at this point. Just right clicking on a map or clicking on that marker to to dispatch a drone there, the drone will just automatically go there. It'll avoid obstacles. It'll terrain follow.

It'll do all that just kinda automatically. So the pilot can really then just start to focus on, like, the call itself, you know, where where their attention matters most. And then, likewise, once once the drone is finished, the the pilot can return it. It'll automatically fly it back and land, and and that can be done with a normal pilot oversight as well.

So, yeah, we we believe that really kinda like owning the full stack here really unlocks this for agencies, and makes multidrone operations safe and simple, and you can really kinda bring these these benefits to your agency. So we have the hardware. We have all this software. Pathfinder is one feature, but there's many other things that are that we're we're building or we've already built, and we're really just kind of leveraging into multidrone operations now, again, to make this safe. And then finally, we can we can help you get the weighers now for that.

Okay. So back to the the analysis then to kind of bring this full circle.

This is that that same agency example, same kind of mid city with eighteen eighteen drones and docks.

But now on the right side, can see the the bars have really kind of across the board, they've dropped down.

One thing that's kind of important to note here is actually multidrone can be most impact impactful at your peak hours. So you kinda get the most bang for the buck when it's busier, when those pilots can really, get get responding to calls and just kind of transit to and from things.

So in peak hours, we see, like, a reduction of maybe at least one operator per hour, potentially more. And even in the off hours, you might see a slight reduction, but you're already maybe kind of minimally staffed at that point. So there's just a smaller impact.

So, yeah, we we see that average from basically three pilots down to two pilots an hour.

And then in terms of cost savings, just that alone represents a ten percent cost reduction across the program. So so, again, just an example, we would we would help work this analysis with you, and you may see more or different kinds of savings, and how multi-drone operations can impact you. But but, yeah, just kind of at at a sort of high level overview, kind of analysis level, there's basically, like, instant, you know, savings here with multi-drone.

And we've already had some some agencies kinda starting to operate with this, Las Vegas in particular, since they've had their, their approval for a while and, have kind of partnered with us on some some early, deployments. So, I'm gonna pass over to Sujoy. Just, like, do you have any kind of final comments on on how folks are starting to use this or or benefits?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I think, you know, peep people are in general are pretty early in their in this in the in building out their DFR programs.

And so while cost reductions are very interesting, I think the other thing that we're seeing is that, you know, once you start scaling beyond three, five, seven docs, questions like, how do you use them all? Like, how do you make sure that you're actually getting the most value out of these docs?

And so an organization like Vegas, you know, we have we have a handful of organizations that are now over ten docs. Vegas is over thirty.

And the the problem that they came to us was with was they had two pilots who were doing the night shift, and they had over thirty docs. And so that math just doesn't make any sense. Like, all these docs are just gonna be sitting, unused. And so the only way they could really make that work even slightly more was basically using multi-drone to to start using more of those docs.

And I'll call it, like, three major use cases that we're seeing right now in the wild. The one that I think everyone in the drone space has talked a lot about is on station relief. Right? So you've got a hive of docs.

And with three doc three doc docs, you can basically keep continuous operations going for a long time if you need to maintain oversight on the house or you're tracking some individual.

You can kinda keep sending new drones and replacing the old drones and they charge, and you can kinda kinda keep doing that. The second thing is, as you're wrapping up a previous incident, you can start responding to the second incident. So a lot of times at the end of an incident, you've got the drone there. It's just sort of keeping an eye on things, but, you know, it's mostly nothing particularly active is happening.

You can start responding to a second call at that point. It'll take a little while for your drone to get up in the air and get over to the second incident. By the time the second drone gets there, the first one call is wrapping up, you can just hit return, and you're able to now have this operational flexibility, for how you do this. And I think this is really cool because this also allows you, I've talked to some agencies who don't wanna respond to, lower priority calls because they're they wanna wait to make sure they can respond as fast as possible to high priority calls.

And that's great. But, really, we want we want drones to be responding to all of these calls. Right?

And so with multi-drone, you actually don't have to choose. The opportunity cost drops a lot. Like, you can start responding to a low priority call. And if a high priority call comes in right then, you can actually start responding to high priority and just hit return on the on the first drone and, like, not really worry about it, which you couldn't do in just a one to one situation.

And the third thing that we we've actually seen, which is super cool to see, is the ability to respond to two calls simultaneously.

You might be like, hey. That sounds crazy. Like, how do you keep? How do you, how do you do that?

And it it really depends on the calls. Right? If if you're I I probably wouldn't respond to, like, two stolen vehicle calls where you're trying to chase two stolen vehicles around the city. That's probably not gonna work super well.

But there are calls where, like, you know, there's a suspect in a house. We gotta get a drone over there to keep an eye on it. And if the suspect leaves, we're gonna do something. And on this other side, you know, something else has happened, and, that's a high priority call.

There's someone with a weapon. So you can imagine balancing sort of one high priority with one where, like, you got oversight or things like that.

And we are seeing examples of that where, basically, like, people are taking off two different drones from two completely different locations, and then they're flying to two more different locations, and they're, doing two operations, basically, simultaneously.

So those are all the ways that you can start using multi-drone. And, you know, I haven't even talked about the fact that you can start using two, three, or four drones on a single operation. Imagine yeah. I think, Send last year, we showed, oh, there's a suspect in the hotel. We don't know which exit he's gonna leave from. Let's position drones all around the the property to to keep an eye out. So, I think it just opens up all sorts of, operational flexibility, for your organization.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I think I think you hit it. It's like this is still new, and we obviously have some some ideas on how agencies are gonna use this, but we're also just kinda interested in in what you all are are gonna do with it.

And I I I was actually I I was talking to, like, a smaller agency, you know, the other day, and it this may be this may appear to be, like, a a a big agency problem. I've got thirty docs. Like, how do I fly them all now? But this was an agency that only had three docs, but they could only find one pilot. Like, they were basically staffed with one person.

And so, like, that that's applicable too. Like, this isn't just for big agencies if you're a smaller agency with a couple docs, but, you know, you're you're having a hard time kind of finding that full staffing, this can also help to to alleviate some of that. So cool. Well, should we get into a demo then or any any final thoughts?

Speaker 2 No. Yeah. Let's do it.

Speaker 1 Okay. Right on.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So, I'm just gonna show off, basically, how multidrone looks, in our remote flight deck. So this is our remote flight deck, and, we basically have we split up the screen typically into three parts right now. It's just two, which is you've got the sidebar, which kind of is your information panel.

This has my list of drones. It also has my list of incidents. So this is where if I, was integrated with CAD, I would have, like, all my CAD calls just flowing through the system, and I could basically look at them right here. I've got another tab for body cameras.

Looks like Joe's online. And then I can actually have preplanned mission. So I'm not gonna demo this, but I can show you. If I click on this, for example, this is like a patrol of of our Skydio headquarters that we've set up.

So I could have a drone run this. Actually, I could do this with multi-drone. Could have one drone doing a perimeter patrol while a second drone is flying around manually. So I could combine all those types of things.

Again, right, operational flexibility, as I mentioned. So what I'm gonna do is, we're gonna respond to a call. So I'm gonna hit respond here.

Alright. I'm gonna take this one. I'm gonna enter the cockpit.

So I'm gonna get one drone flying.

It's nice view of our rooftop.

Speaker 1 And and in case it's not clear, like, this is essentially the one to one experience today.

Speaker 2 Yes. Correct.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

So there's kinda no different at no difference at this point

Speaker 2

Speaker 1 from what you see.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so and you can see over here that the drone is automatically once I hit launch, it's basically flying to that to that location and looking at where that marker's base is. Right? So it's looking at the at this location.

Now this is obviously very tight. Our property is not that big, so the flights are gonna be less interesting. But you can imagine that, this is happening in a in a larger city as well. I can take over control of the drone.

And and we have Pathfinder, so you can just imagine that the the drone just flew over here, all by itself, avoiding building buildings and things like that. Now, so now I'm on this operation. You know, let's say that we're, like, looking for a missing person or, like, we're waiting to see if someone comes out here or something like that. And let's just pretend that our battery is starting to get low.

I have a a few different ways that I can actually call a second drone. I can go back to my drone list, and I can pick a drone. But what I'm actually gonna do here is I'm gonna hit deploy here. I'm gonna hit deploy new drone.

And I'm gonna pick drop fifty five.

Is it forty four?

And now I've got two video feeds on the right.

And you'll see that this drone is now opening up.

And in general, what we've tried to do is make multi-drone feel pretty seamless, as far as, like, how it feels compared to other experiences, in Skydio already. So yeah.

Fine there.

And so all the all the controls that you might learn for flying a single drone basically apply to flying multi-drone. So what you might have noticed is that there's a white border around this video feed. I can that's basically the drone that I've selected. So if I if I now wanna use use my controls to to move the drone around, I can look around. I can look down.

And then if I if I wanna switch, all I have to do is click on the other drone. I can click on the other drone on the map. I can switch between the different video feeds. I can go back here if I want to.

I can close this if I want. I can also just switch switch between my drones over here as well. So I'm just gonna click on this image, and I'm gonna look around. And I've I've two drones in the air.

I can also see all the information I need. So for example, both my drones are around a hundred feet, so I don't like that. So I'm gonna move one of them up a little bit to make sure that they're in different different bands of airspace.

I can tell this drone to go over here to cover one area. I can tell this drone to go go over here.

Speaker 1 Hey, Sujoy. Would it be okay to grab a a ReadyLink? Share that out, maybe.

Speaker 2 So the ReadyLinks are per per, drone. So, you could take a look at that. If you, if you scan this, you should be able to see this drone on your phone.

Then we've we've also implemented we know that at some point at some times, there's gonna be some some kind of emergency situations. So we've actually implemented some controls where that you can use for all of your drones. So I just actually paused my drones. So if both of them are flying, they would pause. There's a descend button that will take them down to a hundred feet AGL, which is basically you know, that's a way to, avoid air traffic. If you're if you, you know, don't wanna have to manage each one individually, just hit descend all. They'll all go down to a hundred feet, and then you can return all of them as well, in case that's that's helpful for you.

You can kinda drag I think in general, one of the things we're thinking about is as you have more drones in the air, the map becomes, even more important because that that's where a lot of your action is gonna happen now. And so you our our goal over time is to actually make it so that you can do a lot of flexible things like drag a look at point and things like that. Those are those are features that we're thinking about for the future.

Cool. And then let's say I was wrapping up this this call and another urgent call came up. Let's say this one over here. I wanna respond there.

So I'm gonna get a third drone in the air.

And so now you probably get the idea here, but you can imagine basically having four drones, having to split into four panels.

And and this is this is what gives me the flexibility. Now I can also, I don't have to actually flying all the drones that I'm watching here. If another pilot was flying a drone in this org, I could actually have their drone, like, for example, down here and then my drone video feed up here. I can't control their drone, but I can watch their video feed. So that might be helpful for me if we're, like, working on a joint operation, for example.

Yeah. Yeah.

So this is the example of, basically trying to fly, having to fly to a second incident at the same time.

Alright.

I'm gonna send the first run home.

One of the things I didn't mention is that we have a deconfliction solution. So one of the most important things that, we want to be started doing multi-drone operations was enable deconfliction. We started off with site deconfliction. So the all the drones that are that are being here are in the same site, they deconflict with each other. We are about to roll out globe global Skydio deconfliction in the next few months.

That's that no Skydio drone will ever collide with another Skydio drone. And so, basically, the drones pause for each other, and they alert their pilots that there's drone traffic in the area.

So, basically, this balance of reliability and deconfliction, autonomy, and this pretty intuitive user interface for controlling the drones, makes multi drone very possible and is is, what we've been rolling out to our customers.

Jakee, anything else I should show?

Speaker 1 Awesome. No. I think that was great.

Yeah. And we'll kinda keep out for keep an eye on for, questions from the audience.

Speaker 2 But Yeah. Sure.

Speaker 1 There are maybe two of them. They're not kind of directly related to the demo, though. So Sure. Yeah.

But maybe maybe as that kinda wraps up, let me let me hit the two questions so far, and then, we'll get on to how to get a waiver. So there's one kind of question that came in about, if there's any agencies or cities doing multi-drone in South Florida. I would maybe just call out Sunny Isles Beach Police Department. They're South Florida to me, I guess.

I I'm not a Floridian, but, I think they're kinda down there, as, one of the agencies that that got approval a couple weeks ago.

There'll be more coming. So, you know, this is kind of the initial initial group, that got approval. But, but, yeah, Sunny Isles Beach Police Department is the one that comes to mind there.

And then the the other question was, are multi-drone authorization authorizations granted to an agency, or does each individual pilot, require one? So, so, yeah, that's actually a good just kinda transition into the next part.

These waivers are actually just kind of new let me get to slides here. Yes. We can help you get it. So these are effectively, like, new waivers.

So depending on if you've been through the waiver process to date. Like, if you have a two hundred foot waiver, for example, today, the process is gonna be very similar to that, and it will be a a new kind of second approval that you will get. So these don't really they don't impact, like, your current approval. It doesn't get canceled or anything like that.

So, yeah, you'll get a new approval. And if you haven't done this yet with us, if you if you don't have, like, the two hundred foot approval today, then this would just be kind of a new waiver process for you. But it is for the agency. It's not per pilot.

Yeah. And then another question just came in on a cheat sheet for the waiver. So, yeah, let's let's talk about it here. I'll I'll get through the slides. I think that'll hit some of the questions here.

So, yeah, this this is the, this is the process. It's again, if you've been through the the two hundred foot or the four hundred foot waiver process for part ninety one, this is gonna look very, very, very similar. It's almost identical. There's just one new document.

But if you haven't gone through this yet, you you can. We're gonna be updating some of the website material we have on this, but this is effectively the process for you. So so for part ninety one, I didn't put it on here, but there is just a reminder that you have to be a public aircraft operator and a public safety organization to be eligible for this part ninety one waiver.

If you're not those things, there are some other options for you. You know, reach out. We can help you. But I'll just kinda focus on the the public safety part ninety one version of this for now.

So there there's gonna be four documents, two of them that you're gonna be responsible for signing and initialing and and kind of reading through, to make sure you understand all the requirements. We are gonna provide then two of the other documents for you, a concept of operation that kind of explains how some of our system works, some of the recommended training, and so on. And then there's a new document on multidrone operations. But you you basically take these four documents, you email them to the FAA, and then they do their review process, and they'll issue a waiver back via email. So it's a pretty pretty streamlined, straightforward process.

A bit more about the documents here. So, three of the the four documents are identical to the existing kind of two hundred foot single drone waiver. So there's a form seventy seven eleven. That's one of the documents that the responsible person's gonna have to sign. There's an FAA checklist. That's another document that the responsible person's gonna have to sign. And then the concept of operation document, that's something we provide as an example for agencies.

So really no change to these compared to the existing processes today.

And, again, if you haven't been through this, this will be new to you, but you can find these documents.

Some of them are on the FAA's website, and then we can provide that con op.

This is the fourth document. So, this is the new one for multi-drone operations. Operations.

And so, effectively, what happened here is there there's actually been a set of multi-drone questions that the FAA generated, for for a number of years now. This is part of their part one zero seven waiver process.

But they have this set of questions that asks things like, how does the system control multiple UAS, and how do you prevent them from hitting each other? How does the system keep the drones in the intended area? How does the pilot avoid aircraft and so on? So there's kind of these questions set of questions.

And this document that we'll we'll provide you upon request, it basically answers all these questions. So it kinda goes through each FAA question and provides an answer. And, really, like, Skydio autonomy is is, like, a huge part of this, waiver and and kinda what makes this safe, and easy for a pilot to use. So, you know, things like the the Pathfinder, our our geofences, our site feature, the drone deconfliction that Sujoy talked about. Like, we just automatically keep Skydio drones from hitting Skydio drones. So pilots don't really have to, like, dedicate a lot of, you know, bandwidth to thinking about that. We just take care of it.

So the the the document will kinda go through each question and and just provide answers just kind of in line. So so we'll provide this document as well. And this is kinda the the document in particular that, you know, tells the FAA I want multi-drone operations, and and then it's up to them to review it as a a multi-drone request.

Okay. So, one one note on the the RP, so this responsible person.

I'll just I kinda hit this. This is talked about in the FAA's checklist, but I'll just kinda give a few thoughts as well. So, who is this person?

So this person is is it's just like it sounds, but it's the person that accepts direct responsibility for safety of the operations. So they're kind of the one accountable to the FAA for this this drone program and operations under it.

The FAA will say in the checklist, you know, this is kinda typically the chief, assistant chief, chief pilot, etcetera. But I I tend to focus on the text kind of in gold and yellow there, so senior level person who will be accountable to the FAA.

Really, it it is up to you, to your agency, to decide who is is putting their name on this. But my recommendation on kind of the right side here is it's a person that has a working knowledge. So, you know, if your if your chief knows kinda day to day about the drone program, that's great, but a lot of chiefs don't. They got other things to do. So maybe the chief isn't, like, the best person to be signing this.

But you also don't want it at at just, like, the lowest level so that the person doesn't kinda have any authority to to actually execute and kinda direct this program. So you wanna you wanna kinda find somebody in the middle who knows the program, who who could sort of answer questions about it, has the authority to, you know, make staffing decisions and training and so on. They don't need a remote pod certificate. It's kind of OneNote.

That wouldn't hurt, but it's it's not a requirement to be this person. So couple thoughts on that.

And that person, again, would be signing two of these documents.

Okay. And then what is, like, different in the waiver? So assuming you you get one of these waivers, it's actually, again, gonna look very, very similar to your existing two hundred foot waiver if you have one of those.

So a lot of the you know, it's still two hundred foot operations. It still requires ADS B.

Just a lot of those provisions are gonna stay the same. But here's kind of the three that that are new then. So you're gonna get this provision that talks about multiple UAS operations up to four, and there's kind of some requirements within that. These requirements all kind of relate back to different features and capabilities that our product has. So the they're a bit kind of up leveled and up leveled and abstracted in here, but, yeah, our product is designed to meet these requirements.

One nice thing too, this is actually kind of irrelevant to multidrone operations, but we were also able to get the weather requirements reduced in these weather multidrone waivers. So instead of three statute miles, that is reducing that down to one. And then instead of five hundred below clouds, five hundred feet, you just have to remain clear clouds. So one other is kind of nice enhancement to allow you to fly in a bit more inclement weather conditions.

Alright.

So that's all we got for slides at least today and and kind of prepared content. We'll take a look at the questions here, but then we'll kinda do a wrap up. So so there's a question here of, what if we have our own concept of operation?

Yeah. You're you're definitely welcome to create that concept of operation yourself.

You know, our ours is just one example. There's kinda different ways to do it. So if if that is you, if you if you had your own Conop, I would still recommend reaching out to get that that multi-drone document because that's really, like, the key document that helps answer those FAA questions. And the FAA, as they're doing their safety review, they're gonna be looking for, you know, those things. How does how does the Skydio system keep drones from hitting each other and so on? And so unless you have that document, it might be hard for you as, just like a customer to know kinda what the FAA is looking for and what our capabilities are. So I would just recommend reaching out, and we can get you that document.

Alright.

We're gonna be we've got lots of time for questions and no questions this time, which is okay too.

So if you got any final questions, feel free to throw them in.

Yeah. Maybe maybe one question here. So, like, kind of a question of, is this a future thing, or are agencies actually starting to do this? Like, is this live?

In other words, can I can I start doing this today, or is are you talking, like, months away? So, so, yeah, this is live. And, you know, Sujoy too kind of, get your thoughts on this one. But but, yeah, we do have Las Vegas in particular who's actually been using it a couple months.

It's kind of an early, access customer of ours. But we are starting to get some of those other twelve enabled. So, yeah, anything Yeah. To add on that, Sujoy?

Yeah.

Speaker 2 No. I would say it's very live. I think if you if you get a waiver, we're willing to turn this on. We basically have offered all the all the customers who have gotten a waiver recently, have at least been offered, and I think almost all of them have turned it on already.

What in general, I've seen what I've seen is that even at Vegas, I think, it was very clear to the the the leader of the drone program that we needed this.

I think to the pilots, it was not that clear. They were like, what? Like, that's crazy. Like, I I'm not gonna be using multi-drone very often.

But I think then reality hits, right, where, you know, you've got you you have two pilots up on the night shift, like I mentioned. Maybe one of them is actually out sick or something like that or is on vacation. So it's really just one pilot, and they're trying to do their best to support their the officers on the ground.

And, you know, crime doesn't come in, like, smooth waves. Like, it'll bunch up, and you'll have, you know, three high priority incidents at one time. And what are gonna do? So I think that's the kind of stuff that I think made it become pretty obvious to Vegas that they needed this.

And, and over time, their their pilots have have gotten used to it. And I think, like, now it's just part of their default, SOPs.

And I think the other thing I would say is that, when we talk about multi-drone, I feel like we're often it you know, we show these pictures of, like, four drones in the air at once, and you're, like, doing some.

Most multi-drone is just, like, there's a minute overlap or two minutes of overlap because one drone is returning and the other one is taking off to go to another location. Or, you know, your one drone is just hovering and the other drone is, you know, going to replace it because its battery is starting to run low. Right? Like, it's not the sexy stuff. It's the stuff that is just a couple minutes here and there that gives you that flexibility to respond a little bit faster and to respond to a few more calls a day, and get get more use of these docs that that you've purchased.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. One one other thing I'd add too is, we can actually, turn this on in the simulator for you. So if you're if you're just interested, but, you know, you don't wanna quite go live yet, you can we can basically turn on the sim and you can practice. You can fly. You can get comfortable with it. You can test it out with one drone, four drones, whatever it is.

So that that's a great tool to to just kinda get some reps in without the risk and see if this is right. And I would say too, like, kind of the process we're work we're starting to work here today is, like so I'll I'll kinda help get the waiver, but then there's this handoff to Sujoy and our mission success team as well. So, you know, this isn't just, turn on the feature and, you know, have at it. We're we're gonna work with you. We have some enablement materials, some training material.

We're developing more training material based on some of the feedback from from agencies doing it now. So so, yeah, we're we're gonna support you and and kind of work with you at whatever comfort level you have with this to to do your good.

So

Speaker 2 Yeah.

One other thing I wanted to add, I I showed you x ten multi-drone today.

We can also fly R10s through through remote flight deck. So for those of you who not familiar, x ten is our is our kind of all multipurpose DFR drone. R10 is our indoor tactical drone, the one that's shown there on the right.

And you can then start imagining really flexible operations where a pilot has a, you know, has a drone. We're trying to find the person. We find a person. They go inside of a house. An officer on the ground shows up and puts an R10 down. And the pilot, you know, who's back at the real time crime center is now flying the R10 to try to help clear the the house and find the the suspect while keeping the X10 hovering above for oversight in case the perp runs from the house or something like that.

And then you can imagine a future with, like, F10 in the future where, like, you know, you start the operation with an x ten. You find someone. They hop into a vehicle. They jump onto a highway, and now you've gotta get the F10 over there.

And you've got kinda, like, multi you know, you're sending the X10 back, and you're taking the F10 out. And the point is basically with multi-drone and the family of robots coming, like, basically anything is possible. Right? You you can now basically respond to to pretty much any type of incident.

Speaker 1 Yep. That was perfect. I think that that question actually just came in. Can you use the interior drone? So Yes. Nailed it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Actually, our, our friend, over at Brookhaven, captain, Abrem Ayana, just posted about using R10 with multi-drone. He he tried it out while he was here for the DFR Summit, earlier this week or last week. And then, and then he's he's been he's trying it at home now. So, yeah, that's definitely by design. Our our whole whole goal here is to have one interface that basically helps you control the entire family of robots.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Spot on.

Alright.

So one question here. This is maybe not specific to multi-drone. We we had a time we'll we'll kinda just chat about it. So the question is, are are docs able to be set up for mobile command stations sort of, like, impromptu, you know, limited power supply, connectivity, etcetera. So, yeah, I don't know if you wanna speak to that one, Sujoy. We don't quite have the right, you know, product manager on for kind of mobile doc, but do you have any just kinda initial thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So, we we hear this use case, and we know for certain customers, this is an important use case. We are not supporting it ourselves, currently, but we are working with some partners who do support this use case. So they basically have ways of mounting the dock on a trailer and getting it set up pretty quickly. So it is possible. It's just not something that, like, Skydio is doing as, like, a first party solution, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Yeah. And even if it's not mobile, like, a doc can be installed relatively quickly. So maybe not just in time as like, a mobile command truck rolls and, like, a doc on it. But, you know, a doc can be installed in in a day or two, honestly. So if it maybe not mobile, but our our ability to kinda deploy and get a doc operational is is getting pretty good these days.

Speaker 2 I think I think if you need it for, like, a week in a location, like, that's Right. That's pretty doable. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. Yep. That's more of a kind of semi, permanent install. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yep. K. I think Yeah.

Speaker 2 Happy to take non multi-drone, just broader Skydio, DFR questions. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think we've actually got them all covered here. So, Yeah. I'm just kinda giving in a second case any last more trickle in. But, yeah, I think we'll just we can give folks some time back.

So, yeah, let's just wrap it up, and feel free, of course, to to send questions after webinar as well. It doesn't have to be live here. So I think the way to reach me is gonna be put in the chat, aviation underscore regulatory at Skydio dot com.

That will come to me. That's, like, where you could request the the the multi-drone document and other things.

So I'm monitoring that inbox. Reach out with questions if you have them.

And yeah. So, again, yeah, thanks for everybody everybody's time today. Thanks for joining. We'll just kinda wrap up a few minutes early. So so, yeah, we're super excited for MultiDrone, though. And if you're interested, just reach out. We'll we'll talk about getting set up.

So with that, enjoy the rest of your days, everybody. We'll see you the next week.

Speaker 2 Everyone.