Drone operations for FIFA host cities: Planning for zero-failure security

Hello, everyone.

Alright. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Mira Marquez, and, we're here with Skydio today in Las Vegas Metro PD to talk a little bit about drone operations for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, and what you can do to better prepare not only your communities, your cities, but your agencies, to help have a successful event.

So again, I'm Mira. I'm one of our senior program managers at Skydio, and I lead our social impact program, Skydio for All. I'd love for my cohost to go ahead and introduce themselves. Jason?

Speaker 2 Good afternoon. My name is Jason LaFond here on the East Coast, customer success manager for public safety. I cover accounts in Mid Atlantic and New England. Come to Skydio with thirty years of public safety experience, retired detective, and current active fire captain with a volunteer fire agency in in New York. Happy to be here.

Speaker 3 I'll go next. Jakee Stoltz, Skydio regulatory team. So I primarily work with public safety agencies these days and helping them get the Amish line of sight approvals, from the FAA. So great to be here.

And over to Steve.

Speaker 4 Hello. My name is Steven Oscar. I'm the commission supervisor program manager for our UAS program. Been on our department for for Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for fifteen years.

And in my time, field training officer, traffic, and then also in our technical and surveillance section, and then ultimately taking over for the drone program.

Awesome.

Speaker 1 Thank you, everyone. Let's see.

On. For those of you not familiar with Skydio, we're the largest we are the largest US drone manufacturer based out in San Mateo, California with all of our manufacturing over in Hayward just about ten, fifteen minutes away from our office.

We started the company was founded in 2014. We have over three thousand eight hundred customers. We've shipped over 60,000 drones the past handful of years and serve over 20 industries.

And joining us today, of course, Steve Oscar from Las Vegas Metro PD. Steve, can you tell us a little bit about the department and your drone program?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Here at Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, we, our jurisdiction is Clark County, which is a very large county.

And as you can see here on the on the some of the stats, but for our drone program specifically, we started off small building our drone program, leading into going into DFR, showing that it's it's use case and how it could be functional, and eventually leading into where we have thirty eight docks deployed. We have twelve locations across our city, and we have a full time drone operation center that we have built out for calls for service and using the drones, for the public. Fantastic.

Speaker 1 And so today, like I mentioned earlier, we're gonna be talking a little bit about, well, not a little bit, a lot about, what you and your agency can do to help prepare for the upcoming World Cup games. There's a lot of planning involved, obviously, and a lot of cross coordination with different agencies, local government officials, FIFA security, and everything in between. So today, we're going to kind of lightly touch on a variety of topics from congested environments, pre event planning, staffing, operational support, training and readiness, community education and outreach, regulatory. And then at the end of the session today, we're gonna have a q and a session. So, feel free to post your questions in the chat. We'll be monitoring and make sure to get through all of them as best as possible.

Additionally, at the end of the webinar, we're gonna have a couple resources, couple links for you to take a look at and let us know if you need things and how we can help. So Skydio, you know, we're here to help you. We want you to have a successful World Cup games.

So we're here to answer all of your questions, help you as best as possible, but we can, of course, only do that as much as you let us know. So as we go through today, take notes. If there's things you wanna hear about more on, just let us know, And we're happy to share everything that we can today with you. So getting into everything, the first topic we're going to talk about today is congested environments. So as everyone knows, large scale events bring significantly more congested environments.

We kind of look at this primarily in two buckets. There's the connectivity of your systems, your drone operations, and then there's also the connectivity for your team, a team that might be sitting in a van, uploading media, or talking with other teammates. For your systems on the drone operation side, especially at Skydio, if you're a dock user, we do have a connect external radio, which is this middle picture here of the antenna that can really amplify the connection along with a additional cellular modem, this connect fusion plus attachment here in the center on the top.

This adds a second cellular modem to your drone, enabling a simultaneous connection of the five gs system that is Oh, and my lights went out.

Five Gs system that is also actually in the drone to have a more combined robust network creating kind of a triple link configuration. For your team that might be in a van, for example, if they need to upload data, media sync, sharing QR codes, ready link feeds, how can you ensure that they have a reliable connection? And that can come in the form of having additional Starlinks, Live View kits to really help kind of fortify that connection.

And so, Steve, we'd love to hear from you a little bit about your connectivity over the years.

You and the LVMPD have been doing these types of events and operations for quite a while. So how has it changed over the years?

Have you used Fusion Plus? And, what, you know, considerations would you recommend for agencies listening in today?

Speaker 4 Thanks, Mira. Yes. Over at LVMPT, it's kinda funny when you talk about connectivity. You know, in the beginning years of our drone program, you know, you'd show up to an event and, you know, you're sharing your feed with your real time crime center or however you're sharing those feeds, then it goes out and you're like, oh, what happened?

What what did I do wrong? And that's where connectivity has been an issue, and, you know, we've learned early on having redundancy. So, like, a large scale event like f one or the FIFA or for us, you know, for our New Year's events or EDC, like, have a lot of people, and people don't realize when those people come together, that definitely overloads the cell towers. So for us, you know, network stress testing is pretty big, and we will actually go out to the to the area because you can't really simulate bringing that many people out, But you can definitely tell what your connection's like at that event and seeing how it is and then building that redundancy of Starlink.

Or for us, we had we built out a syllabus mesh network in our city.

Or that you have a point to point radio system.

But just having these established out where you could basically have a redundancy for when you're flying that you can always have that video stream going back because it doesn't serve anybody any justice if the drone feed is only you viewing it. It's how you share that feed.

With that, you have the carrier coordination. You know, for us, when we have events, we're T Mobile, and we get with them because maybe they're gonna put a a cow out there, which is cellular on wheels. So that would obviously help out the connection for cellular. In a lot of the events, you can talk to the carrier, and they usually can support by having those resources go out there.

But like I said, we we stress test it with connectivity.

We've used the Fusion Plus on this last f one. We used it. We were doing some live, connectivity, you know, seeing what it was like, and it actually helped us out significantly with the cellular.

But we we stress test this for the events. We go out there and actually walk these events before because we do the preplanning for this with the connectivity.

Speaker 1 That's fantastic to hear. Jason, do you have anything to add on this?

Speaker 2 Well, I think, you know, it's probably a good segue into the next section. Obviously, Steve, you guys thought about, your connectivity systems, both of the aircraft themselves and of your pilots too as well. And when you think about pre event planning, you know, it's thinking about, you know, the connectivity plus there's a lot of different plans here that are on the screen. So these are things that you've likely thought through for your day to day operations, things that your team does day in and day out.

But, you know, want to think about, you know, how the scope of these plans change now that you're planning for, you know, week long, month long sustained events for the FIFA related stuff? So think about this stuff from a UAS perspective, like the others in your organization are thinking about some of these things from a just a general broad security at FIFA in general. But as a UAS manager, within your agency, think about these things from a UAS perspective. So, you know, first and foremost is the ConOps.

So think of the ConOps document as the vision and operational blueprint for the event. This is a strategic document that outlines basically how this works in the real world and will serve as a guide for the UAS team, leadership, the legal team, risk management, event planners, and private security stakeholders. So, basically, this is the guiding document. Next is the communication plan.

So how will not only will your pilots speak to one another, but how will you speak to other agencies that are at your events from a interoperability standpoint? So this could be phone communication, conference communication, and two way radio, maybe a tap channel that your pilots will have dedicated so they're able to manually communicate and deconflict to as they run those operations during these events. What is your staffing plan?

So you have a staffing plan today, but think about how you're going to operationalize this for a multi week, multi month day event. Everybody loves overtime.

Maybe some folks on the call are trying to figure out, you know, what color marble they want in their kitchen renovation because of all the awesome overtime that you're gonna get out of the FIFA. But it's important to think about, you know, giving your staff some downtime, so we can ensure that they are safe, and reliable operators, within this environment. So what is those staffing plan? Do you have a cohort of pilots?

And then, we're gonna talk in a little bit about training. So do you need to train up and spin up additional pilots to support these events? Stakeholder register, identifying all the key stakeholders within the agency. So things like risk and legal leadership and some more operational, like SWAT or emergency services or plainclothes units.

And then what are your external stakeholders? So the FAA, FIFA UAS coordinators, who are doing an amazing job coordinating all the UAF operations across the FIFA sites. But clearly identify who those stakeholders are and have a key contact for each one of those. We just spoke about connectivity.

What is your connectivity plan? What is your equipment and integrations plan? So are there any integrations that you need to set up ahead of the FIFA games? What equipment will you need?

We just spoke about Fusion Plus. Right? You need that robust connectivity for those aircraft in these network congested environments.

Based on your ConOps and your defined use cases, what are the hours of operation that you will need to sustain at these events?

Do you have enough batteries? How many batteries do you need to sustain those operations, and how are we gonna charge those batteries in the field? Just some very tactical logical things to think about.

Under safety and compliance, identify, you know, your safety and risk mitigation plan. Regulatory and deconfliction plan. We're gonna hear a little bit more from JP around regulatory, but how are we gonna communicate interagency between federal, state, and local stakeholders as we co locate in these areas. How do we communicate and deconflict not only with UAS, but also crude aviation as well? Public relations plan, really important.

Partnering with your PIO to put out a a press release and build a a social media campaign, you know, talking about the good work of drones within your agency. You know, this is a great opportunity for you to highlight the the program within the agency and all the great things that it will do. Now a big component of your public relations plan should be communicating, educating the public around temporary flight restrictions.

You know, we've heard in the past of of other agencies that have worked in large events, you know, where there's been maybe an inclusion or something of a recreational flyer. Most of the time, it's it's an uneducated flyer. Right? So you as agencies through PIO should really, you know, try to educate the public around the importance of UAS drone operations for public safety and how you all will be operating.

But more importantly, that these are no drone zones. Right? These are no fly zones. There are going to be different levels of temporary flight restrictions in place and educate the public on what those truly mean. That way, you don't have a rogue drone just out there or someone trying to take a full shot.

And then define success criteria. So this is a great opportunity to understand, well, what are the goals and objectives for your UAS program specific to the scope of the FIFA related events? Now within Skydio Cloud, we have a great way to track those.

So using the DFR outcomes report and the post flight report, you can create custom questions. And that way, when your pilots are operating either controller clone or through DFR command, there's a form that pops up, and you can have the pilot answer specific questions to track the metrics and outcomes of each one of those flights. And then you roll those up in an after action report to talk about the wins and successes that you had in your program. Now back under technical infrastructure, one last pre event plan is site mapping and modeling the photogrammetry.

So we'll do a little bit more of a deep dive on that too as well. So site mapping and modeling is the tool that you have today as a Skydio customer. And, you know, right now, these are likely empty parking lots. But over time, these will become small cities.

There's gonna be infrastructure that is built. You know, roads are going to change. There's likely construction going on right now. And, you know, this is a great way to create kind of as built as these structures are set up.

So model these now and often before gates open. Right? It helps reduce uncertainty, helps you uncover early risk, and and make sure just all of the stakeholders, right, identifying those stakeholders in the stakeholder plan. Now bring all those stakeholders together and use these as a deliverable to help plan out for your events. So, basically, photogrammetry is a three step process.

The first part is capturing the environment. So using a Skydio system in map capture or surface capture, especially the difference is that with a map capture, you plan a mission on a map. So you have to make sure that the controller has connectivity.

And then surface capture just means that you drop the waypoints by manually flying it. But, essentially, it's a orthomosaic of an environment. Our systems will create an autonomous mission flight path capturing basically photos of an environment with side lap and overlap. So you'll fly a a single or multi battery mission.

You'll capture imagery of an environment. And then step two of that process is post processing. So taking all of those photos with side lap and overlap, putting them into a photogrammetry tool like GNEX Labs, and then post processing those into a model that can be very actionable. So part three of this is then how do you action on these models?

So using this model or this use in pre event planning in live operations. So model out all your environments, and we're gonna show you a sample here in a moment. But model out all your environments, create a hyperlink to those in GMax Lab, put them in a shared folder, put them in your pre event packet. Better yet, make a QR code so a person on the field could scan a QR code and get right into that model in real time.

And we're gonna work you through that that process here in a moment, with an upcoming model.

So some keys considerations is just to scale these sites are huge. So, you know, instead of pulling a satellite imagery that's likely outdated from Google Earth, capture these, using the drone system in real time. It helps you plan out crowd flow and access routes. So what are your ingress and egress points?

What are your emergency lanes? Where are the barricades gonna be placed? What are your choke points? What are your hazard?

What are your constraints and how to how to plan for those? The infrastructure that's gonna be set up. So the stages, the fencing, the barricades, utilities, signage, where are those all going to be placed within these environments? And in regards to a safety and compliance standpoint, like line of sight planning, right, airspace awareness, which we'll talk more about in the regulatory section and some operational constraints.

Then again, you'll see a comment thread here, cross team coordination, is using these deliverables, taking these plans, and making sure all the stakeholders are informed in how UAS operations fit into the broader operations at these events.

So here's just one of two examples that we'll share. This was an awesome map capture that was captured by captain Tyler Grocer from Kansas City, Missouri Fire Department along with Alex Joyce from Live View. This was post processed in GNEX Labs. This was a one battery flight, about five hundred and fifty photos. Now this links to a real model within GNEX Labs, but here is just some different screenshots and different perspectives. But you can start to conceptualize what it would look like to do these type of deliverables, right, to create a model or map of these environments. Just think of all the things that you could do with this from a pre event standpoint.

You know, what do these environments look like? Where will personnel be staged? But in real life, during the events, use these for real time operations. So have your emergency services or your SWAT team have access to these models in real time along with your fire department and emergency management stakeholders. That way, if there is an incident, they can pull up these links in real time to understand what that environment looks like and build a tactic plan, a very strategic plan around addressing that situation with a better understanding of what that environment looks like.

So here's gonna be kind of a sample of that workflow. So if you'd like, pull out your phone and scan this QR code. This will link to a live model that was captured also in Kansas City of a Teams hotel and a practice stadium. Now we can see in this model, right, we did this last week.

There's a ton of construction going on here. We see the the orientation of the hotel, the practice stadium. This upper left hand corner is a two d orthomosaic map, so the map overlaid on a base layer. This happens to be just a map layer, but you could use the satellite layer.

And then you'll see the bottom and right are different perspectives of that three d model. And in in GeneX, if you scan on that code, you can then use your fingers to manipulate that model. Right? You can spin it around.

You can zoom in. You can zoom out. You can get different perspectives. You start to think about how valuable, you know, modeling like this of the environment should be.

And you should go out and model all of your environments, you know, your hotels if you have them in your jurisdiction, the practice stadiums, the real stadiums, like we just saw with Arrowhead, in addition to any any other infrastructure. So your command post setup, hotels that teams would be staying at. And then you can also also monitor the the motorcade routes too as well, so you can understand kind of what those environments look like, trying to mitigate any potential issues of those.

So what are the use cases of this? It's very simple. So this is one of the hotels that was in that model I just shared in Kansas City, Missouri. One of the teams will be staying at this hotel.

And part of your pre event planning is say, alright. I need to create a security perimeter around this hotel. I'm gonna put up barricades. Like, how many barricades do I need for this?

Right? So instead of going out in the field and using a roller or a tape measure and rolling out this distance using this model, right, one of many use cases for that model is basically I dropped these four wave points. I created a poly, and I got the distance of each side, which is one thousand three hundred and sixty six feet. And then if each barrier is eight and a half feet, we divide that.

We get we will need about a hundred and sixty one barricades, right, to line that hotel to create a perimeter point around that hotel. And, you know, it could be used for hotels. It could be used to line motorcade routes. It could be used for additional barricades to create hot zones and cold zones around fan fest areas.

But, you know, from a planning perspective, using this just to plan our resources. I don't even know how many barriers I need. This is a great tool to do that, and one of the many deliverables we can use coming out of it.

So for next steps, if you're not modeling these environments, you should be out modeling these environments now.

What you can do in GNEXT is very cool, is you can model it today, and then you can add additional data sets on top of that original scan. And then you can see how these environments change over time as well. So if there's a construction or other deliverables that you're tracking, you can see that environment change.

But before you go out and fly these missions, there's a few resources that you should review beforehand. So you just kinda educate yourself on how to fly these missions effectively. First is the three d scan manual. This is a great manual to to give to your personnel, which walks them through step by step how to create a map capture or a two d orthomosaic, also how to do a surface scan, and also three d scan too as well.

And we're gonna talk in a later section about training, but within Skydio Academy, there's a great training module that's just on three d scan for X ten. So with the document and the training module, prepare your team to go out and fly these missions, go out and fly them. And then, you know, part two of that three step process was that that post processing platform. So, start to look into some platforms.

GeneX is one. There are many out there, but look into them. A lot of them offer free trials. But start capturing some data sets, go out there, get a free trial on these platforms, do some post processing, and determine which platform you like, and then use these as deliverable and start to incorporate those in. And like I said, go out, start planning, have fun with this. It's also great stick time for pilots. It's just more stick time, more training, more enablement for your team.

Mira, over to you.

You're on mute, ma'am.

Speaker 1 Joys of technology.

Thanks so much, Jason.

So kind of getting to the next topic, kind of keep moving along a little bit here is staffing and operational support. Staffing, to be honest, is like one of the things that we get asked about significantly, whether programs are just starting their DFR programs or when we look at large scale events here. So you actually have to kind of sit there and actually do the math for it of how many people do you actually need, how many hours, how many shifts, when, where, actually sit down and list everything out. So for Skydio with us, when we come across different events like this, especially these large scale events, we provide a lot of on call technical support, preposition regional support, depending on what agencies and our customers need to support them. But Steve, I'd love to hear from you specifically when it comes to large scale events. What does staffing at LBNPD look like and how do you approach your staffing for these large scale events?

Is it, you know, everyone on staff? Is it a combination of contractors? When? Where? What does this picture look like?

Speaker 4 Thanks, Mara. Yeah. So with LVNPD, we we have a hybrid model. We have commissioned pilots. We have civilian pilots.

And currently, within our drone operations center, we have day shift and swing shift operations. No graveyard as we speak right now, but hopefully in the future.

So those operations in our drone operations center is basically public safety support. So helping our patrol. Any drone program is just it's a support unit. So for us, you know, we have our staffing module that our model that we actually employ.

But then when it comes to a special event or a large scale event, then we look at, okay. You know, like, we talked about the preplanning and everything else for the events. Now when it comes to staffing, you know, we usually like f one for us, we which we just recently had, we had a couple dock locations that had coverage for f one. So with us, we designated a pilot to monitor those dock locations to have overlap just in case if an emergency happens, we have an extra layer of protection with drone coverage where we could have a drone launch and get there within a minute or seconds depending on where the location was.

But we would have that look that done, and then during the preplanning, we would you know, for us, we set up two teams. Two teams of three that were set up at different locations to cover the the basically, the majority of the f one events for us.

And, you know, we built in so that the pilots wouldn't there was no issues with fatigue because they could swap in and out with that. But those guys were flying for that event the whole time for the ingress, egress, for the safety of the mem or the people that were attending the events, and for any calls or service that happened within the events, they were designated for that. So we had a couple different layers for it, for that. Now we also did have a aviation supervisor out there. If it was me or somebody else, they were out there to basically coordinate because we do have manned aviation here as well.

And for these events, we're we're flying our helicopters, We're flying our drones. There's other drones that might if there's a TFR, they got approval and they're flying.

And we built in communications, like for us, we use Zello. It was just an app that we used for communication with our manned aviation plus our other drone pilots that got approved to fly out there so that we could coordinate and have, like, corridor set up with those pilots flying and with us flying. But there's a lot of coordination. It's a lot of preplanning that goes into this.

And for us, you know, we're lucky enough that we don't have to do contractors, even though I know other agencies might have to.

But that kind of goes into the training, which we'll talk about next as well.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Absolutely. And and that one hundred percent gets us kind of to the next topic of training and readiness. You know, you had mentioned earlier about having those teams going out there a little bit earlier, stressing kind of the fatigue and what the situation, the duration that they're gonna be at. And all of that leads to this training and readiness, which, of course, overall, where all of this is preplanning and ensuring you just have the best setup as possible and make sure everything's accounted for. So when we look at training and readiness, it goes without saying how valuable training is, I think, to everyone listening for sure. And so for us at Skydio, there's a range of things that we offer to support from our online academy for customers.

This is free for you, but also for anyone listening, if you're not an existing Skydio customer, we do offer our online academy, a free trial for the FIFA World Cup games.

Pilot training. When we look at large scale events, if you need additional support for pilot training in person, remote, let us know. But one of the key things I want to touch on here is our simulator Skydio Pariverse. So it's a great environment for us to virtually train, pilots, but also build out these environments and situations for you to actually be able to run through virtually before doing it in person, even if as a part of the pre planning stages. And so Steve, I know for you, you have these Paraverse pods, so everyone kind of listening in and watching today. So in the bottom right corner, and you also see it in this top image as well, this is what we call our Paraverse pod. It's kind of like a gaming setup.

And we load our simulator onto this.

And so, Steve, can you tell me a little bit about you know, why LVMPD uses Skydio Paraverse? Why you've decided to add them and integrate them? And what are some of the scenarios that you run on Paraverse?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Thanks, Mira. So with Paraverse and the simulators, yeah, we do have two of them set up in our drone operation center.

And the simulators kind of change the training culture for us.

You basically get high repetition with without the high risk. Because the biggest fear for us and, you know, training at Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was, you know, before you put them on the flight deck, they get to build flight hours, you get to build in emergency procedures.

For us, you know, it was great to you know, it is kinda like playing a video game, but also you get to keep those stats of building up the flight time. You know, we get to do scenarios of, like, lost link scenarios, night operations, you know, practicing over where the event might be, or where you have your docs placed, and then simulating a call for service like that's big for us where we put a radio in the pilot's hand. And if we take a new pilot who's a civilian who doesn't have much experience on the radio or police procedures, we can actually start stepping them through of like, you know, the call procedures, giving them updates on the scenario and seeing what their movement is with the drone, plus how they're talking on the radio and making sure they're communicating properly.

For us, you know, just to touch on this a little bit, training, we've definitely, you know, we have a very large DFR program and training is a pretty serious thing because we have, like I said, commissioned and non commissioned pilots. So, if we get a non commissioned pilot coming in, we we revamped our training, so it's nineteen weeks long now. So we have a new pilot come in. We, you know, I always suggest that they get their part one hundred seven to show the interest and the readiness, And then we put them through the Scotty Scotty online academy for us to kinda prep them because it does a good job prepping them for us.

Then we put them through a fifty hour course, which is just the basics with NIST and some different other or other different things.

And then we go into police procedures, radio procedures, police tactics, and then we take that pilot and show them basically our department with a bunch of ride alongs. We do two weeks of ride alongs, and then we go into our critical task book, just like a field training program.

And they do discussed and performed sections. And that's where the training really goes into it and where know, the simulator comes in, then you get them on the flight deck, and you step them through the process so that they've kinda seen everything, leading into the training so that they can be an asset, as a support unit in the drone program.

Speaker 1 That's fantastic. I will will say they say as well the Paraverse pods make for a great statement piece in the in the office too.

So these are really fantastic. And like you said, it's a great way to kind of get training for folks without them actually having to fly and build up that confidence and competence before they actually get hands on stick time.

Speaker 2 I'm ask

Speaker 4 Steve a

Speaker 2 question.

So, using ParaVerseplates of VirtualDoc in these environments and fly in these and a safe learning is great for training enablement. But what is your approach as you spin up additional pilots from a controller flow perspective? Do you go out and do dry runs? Do you stage your personnel? You do dry runs of these different areas. What do you guys do leading up to the event?

Speaker 4 Yeah. So and just to clarify, you said, well, controller users? Oh, okay. Yeah.

So for the controller users, we do the same process in the beginning. We, you know, we have them get their one zero seven, the Skydio Academy. We put them through a fifty hour course. That fifty hour course is always controller based. It's not doc based. So they always start off with controller.

And then when we get done with that, we go into basically another week long of scenario based with controller users.

So it would be setting up scenarios of a large scale events, basic car stops, person stops.

It could be a call for service. We're basically preparing them for controller based operations, And that's where we kind of get into, you know, like in those scenarios, we might have our air support come over and be like, oh, we're here on scene just for the scenario. And then they have to communicate and mitigate with air support during that call while the helicopter is flying around doing orbits around us. So we kind of throw anything and everything at them so that they're ready for, you know, the controller based operations like on a special event, you might have air support doing an orbit around you or a tour helicopter or another drone. So we kind of throw everything at them within that.

But then we always lead into the docked operations because those are so large. It's such a large like, that's your main focus with our drone program.

Speaker 2 Awesome. Thanks, Steve. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's great.

Thank you. So kind of getting into the second to last topic to discuss a little bit more here is community education.

So as everyone knows or hopefully knows, drones are going to be playing a larger role when it comes to security for the upcoming World Cup games. And the reality of that is, too, that the public is more likely or very likely to see these drones, whether that's at the stadiums during matches or monitoring escort routes from hotels to stadiums or hotels to training stadiums or even supporting security at fan events and other community events that are happening in relations to the World Cup games. So with this, it's really vital to kind of start educating the public around how these products are used to help keep people safe and also really clarify what do the drones do and what do they not do?

Because everyone has bias to some extent. And so getting out ahead of that conversation and saying, hey, we're a police department, we're a fire department, we're using drones to help in this capacity, this is what we plan on doing, maybe these are the dates that we plan on supporting operations, is really important to kind of help get the community more aware and more understanding if they do and when they do see these products that they're performing very specific tasks.

And there's a myriad of different ways we could go about this from social media messaging, doing a press release, media event, partnering with the school, outreach to your local media agencies as well, and anything in between. So if you need help with any of that, please let us know as well. But I'd love to hear from you, Steve, a little bit about what LVMPD does in relation to these large scale events because y'all are always out. I feel like every time I look on social, seeing you guys out with the community, popping up at a school, doing a community event and really kind of engaging with your communities to help bridge those relationships, build those relationships, but also build awareness around the technologies that y'all are using. So can you share a little bit if you guys do anything specific leading up to large scale events to kind of help prep the community around what your operations are gonna look like.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, first off, I just wanted to say this Skyport picture, it looks almost like it's AI generated, but it's not. That's an actual photo, and it looks great with the background with the strip in there.

But yeah. So transparency for us with the community. Like, transparency builds trust, and we you know, from the very beginning of our our program, we wanted to make sure that we were transparent with our community.

So anytime that we had a a community outreach or anything going on within the months that in the beginning of this program, we were out there constantly showing the drone, flying the drone, showing them what the feed looks like, updating them on privacy issues, and we have these things called First Tuesdays that we do where we basically have every single area command for us that goes out to the community and they provide some type of community event And we constantly get asked to do those so that we can show. And we we are transparent. We built in a transparency page so that when we're flying drones and the public is wondering if one of our drones flew over its house, they can actually go on our transparency page and type in their address and find out where the drones were flying for LVNPD.

But, you know, when we talk about major events, major deployments, we we definitely stress, like, pushing everything through PIO, our PIO office, making sure that we educate the public on major events because during major events, a lot of people like, I've always broken enforcement, drone enforcement down into two categories. It's education or enforcement.

You know, a lot of people come out here to Vegas to, hey. I wanna fly a drone to get a cool shot of the strip, to get a cool photo, but they don't realize that it's maybe a zero grid, and you can't fly a drone without authorization. And especially during a major event, maybe there's a TFR going on. So we try to educate like, hey, during these times, maybe there's a TFR for this big event. Do not fly or you will get a ticket and your drone will get impounded.

And we try to just educate everybody on this.

You know, for f one and, you know, for the FIFA coming up, we just we stressed it that because we had issues in the beginning when we had FIFA or not FIFA. When we had f one originally here, our first event, we could have done a better job at educating the public on the TFR and the enforcement action of it because we did have quite a few incursions of drones. And ever since then, we got with the FAA and we got with our local, you know, news agencies and just did constant updates and education on it to say, hey, do not fly a drone and we ended up getting less and less incursions as we had more F one events. So, it definitely is work. It does work. You definitely have to put your effort into it but you also have a team to do that And you're you have federal partners too that are willing to help out because they wanna help out and educate the public as well with these events.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Absolutely. And that's fantastic to hear too that those efforts in seeing the first event, you know, having people flying their drones and just really making that push with media, working with your PIO is so huge, to help kind of get ahead and reach out to those networks and those local news stations to kind of talk about the ramifications for people who are gonna fly their drones.

And that is something I can say on the Skydio side too. If your PIO needs support, please let us know. We do have guides and templates, and we're happy to help coach and also provide resources to support your PIOs for these large scale events.

And there is one thing I want to touch on as well. You mentioned a lot about TFRs and how information can change day to day or depending on the event. And so with that, I'd love to hand it over to Jakey, to kind of talk about what is the regulatory picture upcoming World Cup games.

Speaker 3 Yep. Thanks, Mara. So the kind of my focus here will be actually more on, like, your agency's drone program and and having approvals and getting access to the airspace during these events.

So just to kind of make that clear up front this isn't necessarily talking about the counter US side or you know like enforcement of people that shouldn't be flying these TFRs. We want to get you approval to fly where you need to for these events. So there are some resources available here. I've, done previous webinars on this part ninety one beyond visual line of sight approval. If you scan the QR code here, it will take you to a guide that we've put together on how to get this approval.

And these typically take about a week for the FAA to review and process, so it goes quite fast. This is something definitely that you could get and have prior to the events for FIFA.

And, you know, why would you wanna do why would you wanna get a Beyond Visualized Site approval?

This obviously helps with, like, dock based operations. You really have to have this type of approval to do remote operations. So if you're a dock user, I've probably already talked to you or you've probably already done this. But this also can benefit, like, your kind of trunk launched programs as well. You know, Jason talked about kind of that large scale photogrammetry.

If you wanna do that type of operation and not have to, like, move your pilots around to different places just so you can, like, see the drone and see the airspace around it constantly, this approval actually can help you just, like, set up shop in one area and do these types of missions without having to constantly see the drone in the airspace.

So definitely recommend if you don't have this approval, go and get it.

And then if you're an if you're an entity that's not a government entity, if you don't qualify for part ninety one, there's actually a part one zero seven route now as well. This is really new, so we actually don't have a good guide together yet for this. But if you reach out to us, we can give you kind of the just informal steps on what you need to do to get this waiver and these waivers effectively match each other now. The Part ninety one and the and the Part one hundred seven public safety waivers basically a lot of the same thing.

So and you know, Steve, I guess I'm curious like you actually do a bit of both as well. So I'm just curious if you have any comments on that. You have kind of your mobile DFR. You have more just like traditional, you know, drones and trunks.

You have your doc based stuff obviously. So, any any just thoughts on on waivers here?

Speaker 4 Yeah. No. I I I kind of nerd out with this just like you, Jakey, on the whole regulatory side And we do have part ninety one operations, and we do have some part one zero seven operations. The part one zero seven for us is mainly used for the multidrone waiver that we got approved for because we are currently trying to put that into our part ninety one operations.

But like with the FAA, you know, trying to get approval usually takes some time.

But for us, that's our operations. We do have a layered approach for our drone our UAS program where we do have the dock operations, plus we have the trunk deployment. You know, because during the dock operations, we can only cover a certain amount of area.

And then anything outside that area, we still wanna be a support unit, So we have the ability to launch the drone from trunks, you know, or from a patrol vehicle. So we do we'll send somebody out. We will what do I call it? Might be a little slower response time, but that's usually a call that you're walking away from. It's usually building onto something like a barricade or whatever the case is, where you can't walk away as a public safety agency.

So that's that's our operations. Now when it comes to TFRs, a lot of this stuff the biggest thing that I always stress because when you have a lot of operations and you have a program going on or your agency and you're doing a bunch of things, I've noticed because, like, delegating a lot of this work to be to the pilots is you have seventy two hours to do your request through like the SOSC at the SGI form, which is now online.

And remembering that you have seventy two hours to submit that. So you have seventy two hours, you submit it. Because we've we've caught ourself I can at least remember one time where the pilot forgot, we had to do it the day of, and we were scrambling to get it done. So just remembering that you can get it done so you can get approval, be legit to fly with whatever events working during that TFR.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, it's really kind of two calls calls to action you know number one there's kind of no better time than today to go get one of these beyond visual sight waivers whichever one you're eligible for. The result is basically the same in terms of like capabilities and what you can do with those and then yeah kind of separately just as a heads up be aware that there there will be like multiple types of TFRs. There'll be TFRs around stadiums, fan events, We know local agencies are also looking at standing up additional TFR's around different sites to help keep these teams safe.

So just kind of be be ready to have TFR's present And then to Steve's point, there is this online portal now, the FAA air airspace access program that you can create an account and actually request SGI approval to fly in those TFRs.

So we don't necessarily have a guide on that that airspace access program portal at this point because these TFRs do tend to be kind of custom and different for everybody but just you can go create an account today. It's free to do and kind of familiarize yourself with the application and the information you'll need and then you know get those in a couple days in advance so you're not scrambling.

Speaker 1 Awesome. Thank you, gentlemen. So kind of next steps on where we go from here, everyone.

A couple of housekeeping items real quick before we move on to questions, a Q and A session.

So for Skydio, we'd love to do some follow-up webinars that deep dive into all of the topics that we covered significantly more in-depth. I would Or we would love for y'all to go ahead and scan this QR code and rank in order importance which of these topics you'd like us to facilitate some additional enablement on in order of priority for you. You know, we wanna get through everything, but we also wanna touch on the items that are gonna be the most important top of mind for you first. So please scan this QR code, rank what you'd like to hear more on, in order of importance, and we'll have more information for you before you know it. So I'll give you a hot second to scan that QR code. If you need to put in a passcode, it's just FIFA twenty twenty six.

And then I'm gonna go to the next slide.

And last QR code for you here is please let us know if you need any assistance. If you scan this QR code, it's gonna take you to a form to fill out your name, your agency, and basically a list of areas that you need support in anywhere from pilot training support to access to our online academy and pair of verse to, you know, if you're an existing Skydio customer and you're like, hey, I could really use this attachment or I maybe need a couple more batteries. Please let us know where you feel you might be at most risk, or, you know, regulatory support as well. But this way, we could kind of start working through and making sure that you have everything that's needed to support you as best as possible for these events. So take a moment, scan that QR code, and then I'm gonna hand it back over to Jason, and we're gonna kind of start getting into some of the q and a questions that you all had earlier.

And thank you so much, everyone.

Speaker 2 Awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Alright.

Jason,

Speaker 2 take it away.

Steve, expanding on a question that came in. You're circling back to if we can go back to the previous slide. Let me just give one moment.

All right. Steve, question for you that came in. So we talked a lot about pre event planning and all these different individual plans that agencies must think about. But from your perspective, operating at large incidents like F1, probably Las Vegas, one of them being the largest event capital of the world, If someone has kind of rider block, they're not really sure where to start here, what would be a recommendation from your experience of where agencies should start thinking first that, if not thought about, likely will cause the most issues down the road from a not planning perspective?

Speaker 4 Yeah, so I think with that, on the pre planning, and what would be the most significant, I mean, it's hard to just narrow down one. I think it's just the I guess it's generally the con ops, and then also the communication with the federal partners and all the community partners. And that's where, like, a real time crime center comes in. And then building out, you know, a an operation center or a CP with who's gonna be there and what's going on, what time the event is, is there gonna be a TFR? Like, getting all that information in and then coordinating with your team with your assets your assets of, can we staff this?

You know, let's go walk this site. Let's actually go to these buildings and see what's a secure site because you don't wanna be flying a drone either from the street the street where everybody's walking by and then you have some type of issue with, you know, people interfering with your operations. So, you know, getting all this information, going through, stepping through of like, oh, this parking garage here, this building here, it's secure.

We have connectivity here. We have charging. We have some power source available to us unless you're bringing a generator or whatever the case is. And then staffing that plan, and then building this, you know, with your federal partners, like for us, I know this is a UAS operation, but on the counter side, you know, for these events, we have a ground inter intercept team, and then communicating with them of, like because drones encounter go together.

Hey, we have a drone operator and using our drone to potentially locate that operator or locate that drone and see where it lands to send in those members.

And like we work closely with our federal air marshals here for the enforcement side and the FAA.

So, it's just a combination of taking that all in, and then can you support this? Because it is a large scale event, and you are going to be asked to do a lot with these events.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Thanks, Steve. A final thought from my perspective, I would say, focus on the areas that have the most impact to your operations. Don't get hung up on the documents format. Start very simple. There are many samples out there. Collaborate with your stakeholder agencies.

And just start with a Word document and start to bullet out. Use each one of these as a title and start to bullet out below those, kind of what your plan is. And then this plan will obviously build over time as you learn more about the event and more details start to come in.

Question from Abram, Is there a free post processing software? GeneX is a subscription. Correct. That is correct. Yeah. So there are a few options here.

I love GNEXT. They're like the crock pot of photogrammetry. You basically throw everything in and it comes out amazing.

There are a few options here. So GNEXT is subscription based. There are some out there that are kind of pay as you use it, pay as you go.

Some are subscription fee, like flat fee for usage. So there are a few different pricing models out there. I would recommend looking at the big names like GNXT and DroneDeploy and others out there too as well.

Again, most of them offer free trial licenses and access. So capture some data sets and go test them out and look at the feature sets that they have.

And with the NVIDIA chip on the X10, there's so much horsepower there that you can actually do onboard modeling.

So one of the cool features that I didn't call out before is that when you go out and run a map capture or surface capture mission, you can actually save the parameters of that mission on the controller locally.

Then if you want to fly that weeks later or months later, you just bring that same system back out and you refly that same map capture mission that you did before, and then add that as a map, as a layered dataset on top of that existing map that you generated.

And then the last process of that workflow is an onboard model. You can process that in the field, you can hit no and save the scan, then go back into your scan library when you get back to the office, and then process that on the drone. And what you get is an output of just a photogrammetry image of that model.

It's saved on the SD card. You can grab it. You can put it into a PowerPoint as a base layer and start to overlay different things on top of it. So you can do that if you don't have any software, but there are many solutions out there. There are some that are free, some that are paid. And one of those options that Meera showed here on this QR code is if it's important to you, we can do additional follow on webinars about three d modeling and post processing.

So if you do select that as that top one, that pre, instead of planning a three d scan, we can go into a much deeper dive on that full end to end workflow about those. But I would say there are many options out there from free onboard modeling to paid subscriptions that you can use for post processing.

Let's see. Any other questions are coming in?

Speaker 1 Yes. We got one for Steve, from John Newell, captain, of the PE over at Newton Township. So they are hosting the twenty twenty six PGA championship in May. Do you have any examples of PR messaging you guys have used to get out to the public?

Speaker 2 That's great.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So, I mean, when I would say that would be something where I would probably share information with the captain, and then we could talk off, you know, offline about this and, like, share the information that our PIO has actually expressed out. But a lot of this, when it came to using our PIO, our PIO office usually takes the information from the SMEs, which is would be us with the drones and the enforcement side too, and then educating them on on what our message is and then having them push it out. But we can give examples of that, and I can, you know, I could flood his inbox with a bunch of videos, of what we've done for special events and how we've, told the community about certain things that we're doing, but that's not a problem at all.

Speaker 1 Awesome. We can ensure that both of you all get connected. And, additionally, captain, Newell, we can also put you in touch with our comms team. We do have different templates and press release templates that are available for folks to also assist with that. So we'll make sure everyone gets connected, and you all have the support that you need. I do wanna call out a a brief comment from the FIFA folks who are joining us today.

Just as a reminder, you know, don't forget to coordinate with the FIFA airspace security to allow for outreach to, you know, the thousands of employees and volunteers that are gonna be involved with all the FIFA activities just to help keep a heads up of what's happening. That's another aspect which we didn't quite touch on specifically in this webinar is coordination not only with all the other agencies working involved for the World Cup games, but also working with FIFA and other federal agencies involved. So that's definitely something, we can share more about. And also, in general, if you have not already been in contact with your local FIFA task force or the host committee, please let us know, and we're happy to help connect folks where needed.

So that way you all can start having those conversations and being involved in meetings if you're not currently in those. We do have, looks like another question.

So this is again for Steve a little bit. For pilots in the field well, this call this is from Alex Joyce at Live View. For pilots in the field, which app or website do you recommend for airspace TFR awareness?

This also might

Speaker 4 be a slight janky question, But any So honestly, for us, we actually just use any approved FA app because it's usually just updated instantly on whatever the app is.

So, like, I know it's called something else, but, like, a loft for us.

You know, we would just pull it up directly. You have the t f a, t f r URL that's act that's live, and it'll actually explain everything to you on there, but it's a little janky with, like, reading it for the first time. But if you pull up any UAS app, it usually has the TFR in there, and it actually explains everything to you of, like, it's happening at this time. It's not in Zulus, then you don't have to do the conversion.

It just says, like, on this date and time, it starts, and then it ends at this time, and here's all the different TFRs. But if you use any of the apps, and there's a bunch of them that the FAA has approved, they usually have those instantly updated with the actual TFR FAA website. That's why they're approved by the FAA.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Yeah. Apps are great. Checking those those approved websites is fantastic.

And I just

Speaker 3 One yeah.

Go ahead. So our Skydio cloud actually will show, like, map layers of, like, the Lance grids and stuff like that now too. So some of that is built in. The TFRs aren't aren't in yet, but the airspace grids are. And and when you get these either of these like beyond visual ISI waivers I talked about you actually don't need to do lance anymore you just automatically get approval to fly up to those grids.

So there's some kind of built in tools essentially and then like the TFRs might be that last piece that you're just using an app to check and Steve's spot on on those.

Speaker 1 Awesome. Fantastic.

Well, everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll be sending a follow-up email with the QR codes just by the off chance if you did not have a chance to scan them.

Thank you for joining us, and we'll be in touch soon. Thank you, everyone. Have a great rest of your day.