NYPD’s Groundbreaking Waiver: Leading the Next Era of DFR

Join our expert-led webinar to explore the groundbreaking FAA waiver received by NYPD, allowing Drone-as-First-Responder (DFR) operations across 85% of New York City. Learn how this innovative solution enables faster response times, enhances officer safety, and provides real-time situational awareness in urban environments.

Real-World Success: Understand how agencies like NYPD are using drones to conduct shielded and non-shielded operations without visual observers. Expert Insights: Gain insights from Jake Distolts and other Skydio professionals about the approval process, safety protocols, and the path toward scalable drone operations. Interactive Q&A: See responses to common questions from agencies exploring how to start or scale their own drone programs. Whether you're just beginning or looking to expand your program, this webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to deploy drones safely and efficiently.

Alright. Good morning and afternoon, everybody.

Jake Distolts here with the Skye Rehabilitation team.

And, a couple weeks ago, we made a big announcement. So NYPD received a a really groundbreaking waiver that will, kind of lead the next area of DFR. And I I was trying to put together a quick video on, like, a recap of the approval, kinda what it means. And when I started, talking and recording, it it, like, quickly grew much longer than ninety seconds.

And so we decided to do a little livestream instead to kinda do that recap and also just start to answer some of the really common questions that we've been getting in the the week since the announcement.

And we'll also try and leave some time at the end for, some some live questions. So if y'all have them, you can throw them in the chat, and we'll see what we can cover in thirty minutes here. So with that, we'll just, we'll get right into it here. So just first a quick recap of of this approval. So NYPD received this approval in early September. It allows them now to do DFR operations across about eighty five percent of the city, and this is all without visual observers.

And, really, the the map on the right side here, the the green areas are are where they can do operations. Really, the the two main areas that, for now at least are limited are just around LaGuardia and JFK there, so the two busy airports.

And the approval actually allows NYPD to operate in two different ways. So I'll call them two different concepts of operation.

So concept number one on the left side here, this is what you've probably heard us talk the most about. So this is operating at two hundred feet AGL or fifty feet from structures.

And when they're operating at those altitudes, NYPD only has to use ADS B technology, for detecting and avoiding other aircraft.

And we commonly refer to this concept as shielded operations.

But what we probably haven't talked as much about but is included in NYPD's approval is concept number two on the right side.

This one is differentiated by allowing them to fly up to four hundred feet AGL or the UAS facility map, altitude when they're in controller space.

But in that case, they do have to use ADS B plus an FA approved noncooperative, detect and avoid sensor. So this would be something like a radar or the electro optical systems out there and so on.

It's also worth noting that, the approval covers day and night operations.

So, really, Beyond Vision and I site approvals for public safety have have included night operations for some time now. There was a a bit of time there where you maybe have heard of some, like, day only approvals, but that was because of the limitations of some of these, detecting void sensors.

And NYPD can also operate in uncontrolled airspace or the controlled airspace up to the facility map currents routinely.

And if they need to operate in, say, near the airport, they can always get a a special government interest approval to do that.

And so, this is just kind of a profile view of the first concept or shield operations just to kind of further illustrate the the difference in altitudes here. So, for this concept number one or shielded operations, NYPD can fly to two hundred feet AGL just broadly across the city. But, as we know, New York City has plenty of tall buildings, some much taller than four hundred feet too.

But when when NYPD is responding to a call for service and they encounter one of these buildings that's, say, two hundred fifty foot tall, for example, the approval allows them to kinda temporarily increase their altitude, and they could fly, like, over that building within fifty feet or, laterally to the side of buildings, like, in the case of really tall, skyscrapers.

And, again, when they're operating at these altitudes, it's just ADS B technology they have to use.

And then compare that to the second concept here, concept number two. This is a non shielded operation.

So flights can go up to four hundred feet in this case, but it does require the use of a noncooperative, airspace awareness technology, like a radar, like a CASI assist, and so on.

And that, you know, that has some impacts in, like, your flight distance as well. So, one thing I didn't call out in in the shielded operations case is, the maximum flight altitude is really just dependent on, at this point, on things like the the battery, endurance, or the connectivity and so on. So more other factors that go into play. It's not based on, like, a DA sensors range, though. Whereas if you're deploying, a network of sensors, radars, CASIO systems, that could potentially limit your your flight distance. You have to basically stay within the detection range of these sensors, or you have to really deploy these systems everywhere to cover your your health city, your jurisdiction.

Okay. So that's just a really quick overview of what the NYPD approval allows.

And so now, we'll kinda get into some questions. And I was at ICP last week, which is really amazing. Just so much interest and excitement around around drone as first responder.

And, I had a chance to talk to a bunch of agencies then and have lots of questions coming in. So I I kinda took all the different questions and and grouped them and summarized them a little bit. So, that's kinda what what you'll see in this next section here is just some of the really common questions that we've been getting, since we made the announcement.

Next slide here. Okay. So the first question is, like, is it really safe?

So there's maybe a perception at least if you're if you don't kinda live this regulatory world like I do that, you know, flying beyond visualized site without visual observers in in this really crazy airspace like New York City could be unsafe. But, I'm here to say that we we do believe that this really is safe at this point, and and let me explain a little bit more why I believe that. So, so for really over six years now, probably longer than that, but this is at least, like, as long as I've been working on shielded operations, we've been just seeing this, like, growing body of evidence that these are really safe, really scalable operations. So back in the twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen time frame, I was working at a US test site, and we were helping Xcel Energy achieve their goal of flying long distance transmission line inspections. So they wanted to fly, you know, tens of miles, down these lines to get high resolution imagery.

And we were trying to figure out a safety case for that, and we thought, well, if drones are really good at, you know, flying close to things, and these areas are where other aircraft typically don't fly. So there's always exceptions, you know, kind of corner cases to these things. But by and large, the vast majority of aircraft just do not fly close to structures, close to buildings, close to power lines.

In some cases, this is frankly hazardous for for aircraft to be flying as close to these things.

And so we we thought, well, if we fly really close where aircraft don't fly, that's that should actually be quite safe.

And so, we did we were able to convince the FAA of that back in twenty eighteen. Xcel Energy got their approval, and they've been doing this kind of operation since, fast forward to twenty twenty one.

A colleague of mine, Gem Player, also just a pioneer in space, she was working with BNSF to allow them to do, rail yard inspections.

It's much more efficient to just fly a drone down a line of rail cars and, look for numbers, than it is to, like, drive around or walk around a big rail yard like this.

She was able to help the NSF get approval also using shield operations operations again. Fast forward to twenty twenty two, we helped Dominion Energy and utilities, start to do remote operations, also enabled by shielded operations. And so by the time we get to twenty twenty four and and the NYPD announcement and approval, it really was the culmination of five, six, seven years of safe shield operations. We have customers across the country doing this now. There's many other drone operators, you know, outside of Skydio's world even that are doing this.

And so the the body of evidence just kind of grew and grew and grew. Like, these are really safe operations that, you know, the FAA is basically getting comfortable now with with allowing this in public safety as well.

And then just kinda looking at New York City, you know, more more specifically here. So, of course, we we spent many months kinda putting together a safety case for for this, request, and we did some airspace analysis and kind of some statistical things. And so we're basically just trying to look at, like, what kind of aircraft actually are flying at two hundred feet, in New York City. You know? Are there aircraft flying there? What types? Just trying to understand that.

And I I think this is probably pretty true for a lot of cities, but when you really do look at this very low altitude over cities, it starts to become pretty predictable. You see aircraft around airports, of course, taking off and landing. You see maybe some somewhere where, like, the heliports are, you know, whether it's a hospital or, Manhattan here. You have lots of air tours out on the Hudson River, of course.

But there's many areas of New York City that simply just don't see aircraft at all at two hundred feet, or it's NYPD themselves, you know, their their helicopter unit where they can just deconflict there.

So kind of the bottom line is, like, after doing this work, we determined that, really, the the chance of having an unmitigated mid air collision in controller space is about the same as being dealt a real flush. So it's like a one in a million chance.

And this is a this would be if you just flew an x ten through New York City and, like, closed your eyes, basically did nothing, which is, of course, not what we do.

So in addition to the low likelihood to begin with, we have layers of safety. Right? So we fly at lower altitudes.

We use ADS B technology.

We avoid the areas around the airports and so on. So there's layers of safety, and this all just drives that risk to a very, very low level, that the FAA is is getting comfortable with now.

Okay. So another pretty common question is, like, can I do DFR at two hundred? So and and I think some of the the background or or kind of context to this question is, you know, the if you look at, like, a a Chula Vista Police Department, they're really a pioneer in this space. They've been doing DFR for years, and, really, we're we're kinda where we are today likely because of the work that they've done.

And they they've done DFR a little bit higher, so maybe two hundred fifty feet to three hundred feet AGL.

And there's probably good reasons for for why they decided to do it at that altitude, but it's kinda become almost like a status quo thing. So if they're doing it at two fifty, then then I need to do it at two fifty. So kind of a question is, like, can I do it at two hundred? Is that enough?

Maybe it's too low. And so we we believe again that the answer is yes. Like, you absolutely can do DFR two hundred feet, and we'll kind of explain a little bit more here. So, so we we looked at some, flights actually by public safety agencies, about twenty seven thousand of them, and this is just like telemetry and analytics data.

We we can't see media or anything like that from these flights.

But looking across all these flights, we saw that the average flight altitude by POET safety is a hundred and forty three feet, EGL, or above takeoff location more specifically.

And ninety nine percent of the time, agencies are just staying below two hundred feet. So, if you're asking, like, can I do DFR at two hundred feet, the the answer probably is you're already doing it at two hundred feet in some ways? So agencies just are are kind of naturally operating at lower altitudes without, you know, any, guidance or or prompts to do so.

And, interestingly, like, an anecdotal thing on this is, you know, we've talked to many agencies in Oklahoma, City Police Department specifically.

You know? And we were kind of talking to them about, like, what altitudes would work for you if if we were to do this no VO DFR thing, and and their response is, well, we already fly below two hundred feet today because it helps us deconflict with our our helicopter team, our aviation unit. So, so there's good, like, safety reasons just to fly a little bit lower, and do your missions there.

And so then there's there's questions of of, you know, can I can I see what I need to see, below two hundred feet, with with the sensor package? So, here's just kind of two quick examples. So on the left side is what, it looks like, using an x ten at two hundred feet, basically fully zoomed out. So you get a nice kind of wide angle view of of a scene. You can see all sides of a building, and so this can give you kind of that big picture situational awareness as you, approach a scene. And then, of course, you know, at some point, you do need to zoom in and and start to see the fine details. You know?

Where where is the suspect's hands? You know? Do they have things? Are they a danger? And so if you look on the left side, there's a a very small kind of black thing in the middle. That's that's the truck parked on the top of the parking ramp there.

And then the right side is basically x ten at a much lower altitude now, so about forty feet above the parking garage with zoom. So, so x ten, basically, from two hundred feet down can really get you the big picture and then allow you to get close and see details. You kinda get the best of both worlds, by flying below two hundred feet with an x ten.

And then we we've heard, another kind of part here is is the community engagement. So, you know, there are, some concerns out there that if if drones start to proliferate and kinda scale across communities, noise could become a factor. So, we we've done some work on characterizing noise of x ten. We're gonna be doing some more actually. But initial studies are that the x ten is about fifty percent quieter than an m three hundred at the same altitudes.

And so just above ambient noise, we see the x ten at, like, a four decibel increase, so kind of a negligible increase over ambient.

That's about half as much as an m three hundred at the same altitude.

And interestingly too, we're seeing that the x ten at two hundred feet is actually still quieter than, like, an m three hundred at four hundred feet.

So from a noise perspective, you know, the X10 is nice and quiet, and and that helps with your community engagement, as you're scaling your programs out.

Okay. And then finally, you know, we've heard kinda some questions or maybe concerns. You You know, if I'm flying lower, then, I have a higher chance of, you know, impacting an obstacle or hitting a structure or something like that. There's kinda generally concerns about, avoiding obstacles and buildings and not having crashes at lower altitudes.

So Skyeo autonomy really solves for that. So we can fly and have three hundred sixty degree obstacle avoidance so so you avoid those objects that might be at lower altitudes. You can fly at night. You can fly through urban canyons.

You can fly underground even where maybe the FAA doesn't have jurisdiction, but point is, sky to autonomy, you know, keeps you from impacting obstacles. It really reduces the workload for pilots so they don't have to kind of remember exactly where every obstacle at low altitude is, that allows you to fly fly safely.

Okay. Another very common question, and and it kinda relates to the first one. But do I need radar? Do I need camera rays? Do I need some kind of other technology to, remove the visual observers? And the answer is no.

But your agency has a choice now.

So oops. Skip it. So, yeah, I think this one, excuse me. So, yeah, what's becoming clear today, is that if you're operating over a pop populated area and you can accept flying below two hundred feet AGL, you will not need this technology.

And that's even if you're outside of ADS B airspace. So, we've talked to date some about how this approval is kind of limited initially to, areas that have, like, mode c veils or this other kind of special airspace.

But I think we're seeing progress and and some good signs that this will be available to agencies anywhere, regardless of your space.

And so just simply by operating at lower altitudes, you can start and scale a DFR program that doesn't require this technology. And it's almost like, essentially, you get two hundred feet for free. Right? So you don't have to buy a bunch of other technology just to get that program off the ground.

But you do have a choice. And so, there are some situations where maybe it is required to have a radar or camera ray or some some kind of other FAA approved technology. So, for example, if you want to fly higher than two hundred feet, like, if that's just a requirement for your agency, then you may need this kind of technology.

If you are gonna be operating in in really sparsely populated areas, so, like, outside of these kind of cities and populated areas, then it may be required.

We're we're kinda still working on that with the FAA, but, at least today, it appears like that may be a path forward in the near term.

And then finally, you know, if you're looking at drone detection and, like, airspace security, so kind of the other side of of this technology. Right? If if you just wanna do counter UAS type of work, then, of course, you would you'd potentially buy this technology for that purpose.

But we've I've said before, like, it's it's good to think about that separately from your DFR program. So you may want to buy this kind of technology to do, drone detection around sensitive areas, you know, stadiums, jails, airports, things of that nature.

But that may not be where you wanna do DFR operations. So you can think about them kinda separately. Put the the airspace awareness technology where you care about, airspace security, and then do DFR where you wanna do DFR. And then maybe over time, those two things can start to, kind of overlap, and you could use that technology to operate higher.

But I think for a lot of agencies, kind of thinking about those two things separately, at least initially, will allow you to scale your DFR program much faster, and in a less kind of complex expensive way. So so bottom line is you're gonna have a choice, but for many agencies in a lot of scenarios, it's at least not gonna be a requirement for you.

And then, finally so kinda last just prep question, at least, is, like, can I get this approval? You know, can my agency get a similar approval? So a lot of questions around this.

Is this gonna be scalable?

And so the answer is, I'm forecasting a little bit, but I I think yes. But I do ask for some patience. So that's maybe not a totally satisfying answer, but let me explain a little bit. So, this is kind of generally what happens when the FAA takes a big step like this and and kind of does something, first of its kind or precedent setting.

So they they get in this kind of flywheel on the left side here. So they issue in approvals to, maybe a small test group, and then they look for feedback from that test group. So, you know, things like, is the safety case actually working? Is is there anything hazardous that we didn't expect?

Is the language of the COA, you know, the actual words on the COA, is that confusing, or does it kind of hit the mark? Does everybody understand it? Do they need to change it?

Is the is the approval providing value? Right? So we heard recently, the individual at the FAA talking about, you know, kind of a spectrum. You can go, too prescriptive where, like, nobody wants to follow it anymore because the approval is just so hard and complicated, or you can go kind of too loose where it's maybe not strict enough, and they're they're trying to find the balance there. So, anyways, they need that feedback.

They can make changes, and they can kinda work through that process with that small group before they get to a part a point where it's basically good enough. You know, they're not looking for for perfection, but they wanna know it's kinda good enough that people understand, it's providing value, it's safe, and then they scale up. So we're in real time. We're basically in the left side here. You know, the FA is getting feedback from these initial approvals, and they're kind of maybe gonna work through that flywheel a couple times before they start scaling. So I I feel confident that we will reach the right side. You know, the FA will get there, but but they're just working through that that left side there before they're really kind of scaling it out to agencies across US.

Okay. So that's some of the kind of basic just, questions that we've heard so far, common questions. So I'm just gonna kinda take a look here now at the, live questions that are coming in.

Okay. So kind of first one here, and I yeah. These there's a lot of questions here. This is really great. We'll probably not we don't have enough time to hit them all. So I'll say too, we might do another one of these and and just, like, focus on more of these questions. So we'll try and get a few, though.

So a question here, would you able to would you be able to share more details on, like, specific equipments, like, ADSB, DAA, etcetera, that was used to get this approval.

So from Skyler's perspective, again, we we're really focused on that two hundred foot plus ADSB concept. So, we are, you know, constantly evaluating other technologies, and we'll do integrations, when we need to. Like, we're looking at an integration with with Ddrone as part of our Axon partnership now. But, today, at least, we're really focused on just enabling scale with two hundred feet and ADS B.

And the great thing is our system incorporates everything you need, so you don't have to go buy additional technology. So our x tens have ADS B receivers in them. The docks have ADS B receivers connected to them, so you actually have, like, an an airborne and a ground based option. Those all feed into our remote flight deck software, and we have some, displays and alerting to to make it really simple, basically.

An operator will know when aircraft are are flying nearby, they get alerts, and then they can make decisions to, take a maneuver if they need to. So it's all just built in. Nothing extra is required, from a Skydio ecosystem perspective.

See. Next question here. So why why would I need radar or other technology in sparsely populated areas under two hundred feet? Yeah. So so this is a really good question, and this is something that's evolving a little bit in real time. But the the crux of it is that in sparsely populated areas, you have different different types of low flying aircraft than you have over cities. And the the main categories are, ultralights, hot air balloons, and and kinda some of those, like, recreational operators that do operate at very low altitudes, typically.

You also have crop dusters, you know, who are are not always equipped with ADS B, although we're seeing that the percentage of them being equipped going up and up and up over time as well. So those are some unique hazards for drone operations, low operations in rural areas that are just not present in cities. You just don't have ultralights or cities and hot air balloons. And, in fact, they're they're prohibited by, you know, their part one zero three and so on.

So so that's why we're we're kind of we're still working through, like, the sparsely populated areas. And at least for now, the FAA is looking for some way to mitigate that that group of flyers. And so radar could be one solution for that, but, you know, we're, again, we're kinda still looking at other ways that might be a little easier.

Alright. Let me get here. So do you think a shielded approval might work in areas that there aren't many tall buildings by keeping it low altitude? Yeah. So, you know, New York City is pretty unique. Right? I mean, there's areas of the city where, like, every building is over four hundred feet.

But on the flip side, there's probably many, many, many cities where there isn't a building above two hundred feet. Like, I I live in North Dakota, and I don't I don't think we have a two hundred foot building in the whole state. So that kinda makes it easy then.

For for those cases, you basically can just fly two hundred feet AGL, and you don't have to worry about, you know, flying up or up over structures or between urban canyons. So, effectively, you just operate at two hundred feet AGL, use ADSB, and that would be covered under, the approval that NYPD got. So, let's see. Can you discuss any special rules, restrictions regarding military airspace and if you've successfully neighbor enabled operations there? So, I'm actually gonna I'm gonna slightly broaden the question a little bit, to just kind of special airspace more broadly.

So at least today, we're looking for kind of pathways to enable, like, the most operations, at scale before we really kind of focus in on some of these, like, unique airspaces that might be in your jurisdiction.

So, like, Newark even, for example, there's the the Hudson and the East River. That's a special flight rules area because there's just so much helicopter traffic, in those areas.

And so we kinda made a decision, you know, early that, you know what? Like, if we just kind of exclude flying in these areas, we can at least get eighty five percent of the city unlocked.

And that's kinda more value than, like, trying to focus in getting that approval in that in that special flight rural area. So that's that's kind of generally our approach. Like, if if you work with us, we're going to just figure out the a way to enable you, in that quote, unquote, eighty five percent.

And we may ask you to at least initially just exclude some of these kind of special areas, the areas around the airports, like a a military airspace, etcetera.

But there is work going on to figure out ways to operate. So we're not we're not just, like, walking away from that, but we're trying to get you into the areas that are kinda easier to start with, get you started, and then we'll we'll kinda work on those special areas, on a case by case basis after. Because it, you know, it might take a special, procedure that's, like, local to that to that, military base or, you've heard perhaps that some agencies have had success creating, like, kinda custom airspace maps where it's different than, what the UIS facility map says. And so, yeah, we're we're just kind of working through that. It's a little bit case by case, and so we're kind of focused the least initially on just the areas that are all kind of consistent, and we can just enable scale and operations in those first.

Okay. I think we're at time. I'm gonna pick one more, and then we'll table a few of these for round two at some point.

Let's see.

How does, we'll hit this in here. How does DFR get around line of sight? Yeah. So I I think I hope at this point, maybe that was kind of answered.

But, again, just to, like, hammer kind of one more time, it didn't hear before we drop down. So the safety case is really kind of two main things, flying lower where aircraft typically don't fly, and it's back to that, like, one in a million chance. Right? If you just flew a drone and closed your eyes, maybe a one in a million chance that you would have a midair.

And so we take that low risk already, and then we add layers of mitigation. So we fly lower. We add in our ADS B sensors so that we can mitigate the aircraft that we do see. We avoid flying in areas where there is a high density of low flying aircraft.

And so it's that that whole safety case together is what allows, you know, NYPD to get this initial approval and then, hopefully, many other agencies to follow.

So, yeah, I think we're we're a minute late even. I just wanna thank everybody for your time and and the questions. So if we didn't get to your question today, I'm gonna go through these, and we'll maybe try and group a few more of them and potentially do another, another livestream like this very soon. So, again, thank you for your time, and we'll see you in the next one.