Exploring Drone Technology for Energy and Utilities with NYPA

In this webinar, DroneLife Editor Miriam McNabb, joins experts from The New York Power Authority (NYPA), ANRA Technologies, and leading drone manufacturer Skydio to discuss how the utility is integrating drones and advanced software solutions to inspect and monitor power generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure.

This webinar explores how integrated drone and software technology can streamline workflow efficiency, minimize risks for front-line workers, and facilitate safe operations. NYPA shares how they can create a shared situational awareness across its enterprise, leading to faster response times, improved workflows for everyday operations and maintenance projects, and emergency response activities during weather events and other critical situations.

or today we're going to be taking a deep dive into the Drone program at the nation's largest state Public Power organization the New York Power Authority or nypa will be looking at their drone program from all sides so our panelists our nypa's uas program manager Peter kalasidis here to discuss the software environment that facilitates the program we have honors Chief strategy officer Brent Calvin and to talk about the hardware issues we're joined by skydio's utility Solutions specialist Corey Hitchcock thank you all for being here and thank you everyone in the audience for joining us today so Peter I'd like to start with you and get right into it you are an Air Force veteran you've been flying uncrewed aircraft since you were eight years old you've developed drone programs and solutions all around the world commercial military government tell us what the goals of nypa's drone program are well uh so to start off I am a nerd and I'm proud of it we like nerves we like nerds our goal here at New York Power Authority is to do work more efficiently having our people capture the data and owning the data this is contrary to what other organizations are doing across the country and what we're trying to do is to not replace the person but limit how many times our climbers have to climb the tower limit how many times people have to dangle offside a bridge to look at it risk the machine not the person and and that's been the overall driving force behind safety okay so absolutely a great value proposition there is is simple you know safety gravity Works anytime you can send up the machine instead of the person you're better off we'll get more into the data later on um let's move into kind of the the software environment that's supporting those goals so Brent you're a Navy veteran licensed commercial pilot remote pilot with anra you're serving in research groups and standards boards all over the world how is Andre as a software provider working with nypa to help them meet those goals of doing more with drones instead of you know having to have human resources up as he said hang off the side of a bridge well Peter said it nicely it's it's really how do we make our customer more efficient and if possible how do we make those operations safer and so that used to be a spreadsheet managed assets and resources and Enterprises and there's still a lot of people that do that and that works fine but when you want to scale those operations you want to optimize the efficiencies you want to have your drone operations do more for you then it starts to become a an opportunity to develop software that we can put in the hands of someone like Peter who manages a program to manage all these assets all of his resources Pilots batteries drones and so forth and then allow the workflow to be able to assign missions to those individuals to go out into the field and deploy those same Technologies using our platform in a way that wasn't really possible a couple years ago but with the Advent of our software being able to understand the airspace how to manage drones within that airspace and then start to bring in other pieces of the New York Power Authority nipas they say the Nipa Legacy systems into that same platform and it really starts to become really interesting for for Peter and other Enterprises that want to be able to connect with these new technologies with existing platforms and maybe enhanced traditional methods or maybe even think of new methods of obtaining that same data so we've been very happy working with Peter and Nipa so it's really about sort of taking it from this idea of somebody's going to go out and fly a drone uh to the nitty-gritty of where when how with what equipment and managing that whole Fleet so we'll dive into that more now I want to talk about the hardware because uh you know we've got Hardware working here Corey I've had the opportunity to hear you speak at drone industry events many times before joining scadio you were with Southern Co you're an expert in power and energy inspection actually according to the Nuclear Power Authority first guy to inspect a working nuclear reactor very cool very cool with the Drone and now it's scottio you're helping develop those autonomy and Doc Solutions designed uh for to help utilities kind of realize their goals in their Roi so let's talk a little bit about why sort of autonomous Hardware is important in this context when you've got workers who need to go out and perform routine inspections wide variety of applications uh in Nipa and other big power companies so talk a little bit about how the hardware Choice sort of influences those operations yeah so so I think the um the the main thing that kind of leans towards the whole autonomy solution inside the power system or utility inspections or utility operations is the fact that you're operating around you're operating a drone around energized conductors up to 765 KV and uh and you're operating those those drones in in very confined spaces at times and the ability for the the um subject matter expert to be the one using that drone as a tool in the toolbox you know just to see higher farther gain a little bit additional situational awareness provides a lot of value and having that autonomy and the autonomous collision avoidance and those other behaviors that uh that we have allow the operator the SME operator non-aviator to become an aviator very quickly and and to uh to allow them to be trained to operate the equipment very quickly and very efficiently so you're taking an inspector who's a subject matter expert and allowing them to fly the Drone rather than having to go the other way around hire a licensed pilot and teach them the subject matter correct yes yes because you can't you can't push 20 years of experience into a you know a person overnight you just can't you gain that experience from that time so it's super valuable Peter what does the Nipa Fleet look like um you know what how many pieces of Hardware are you dealing with how many Pilots are you sending out how many missions are you uh performing in general so right now we are up to about 57 days of flight last month alone wow we have a total of 63 drones half of them are on the panel here today and the other ones DJI you know uh uh but for that system it really requires a person when when we start dealing with Sky Duo it's amazing because the Automation in it anyone can operate it and that's been a really big usage uh one of our oldest Pilots he's 72 years old and he flies the system perfectly the number of Pilots we have right now we're up to uh 63. with another 20 in the queue um we have exploded in in that realm over the past 19 months uh since I've joined the Nipa so that is amazing that's a really significant program you have running here and I'm curious about when you say you have 20 more in the queue is that sort of internal uh resources who indicate that they're interested so what we do differently here is I broke it up into a there are some type of drone missions that we as an organization shouldn't even attempt a lot of organizations struggle with lidar when they say we're going to start up a drone program they're like we're going lidar and then they realize they need to have a classifier on schedule and you have to fly a particular way and the longer you don't fly the system the operator becomes Rusty I ignored all that and I said we're doing visual inspections as our flights increase that will are will do more and more comparable missions but right now it's get your 107 we'll teach you how to fly I usually tell them to go get uh one of Corey's drones and then they can go out and do their missions after the training but right now it takes about two months for the part 107 and then a month of Flight Training before they can do a Nipa mission great and so is that an internal training system that you're working with okay so you've developed your own training system excellent okay so uh let's unpack that a little bit um you know really an efficacious way to get started with a drone program you're absolutely right I mean we have all in this industry heard horror stories about the hundred thousand dollars worth of Hardware that stays in the closet so let's talk about kind of the benefits that you get just from the visual inspection so the the the kind of most immediate mission that you can do and then I want to bring in Brent and Corey and talk about kind of how how this works on a day-to-day basis you know how the Drone Works how the software Works managing those missions but what are the benefits that you're realizing from just doing those visual inspections by drone so typically what would happen is someone would have to climb up the tower or use their binoculars to see I'm gonna go with the transmission inspection since we're transmission it's that is broken and then they write up a work order now what we can do is say that is broken here's the photo of a break or here it is over time degrading so having that data set then just a written piece of paper saying it's broken and it lost a cotter pin well you can start watching how much is that cotter pin rusting or loosening over time you can actually watch how much of that hole is elongating over time and that data set will be invaluable when you can say this is a brand new Dead End uh uh uh shackle and then every year there's the whole elongating just a little bit more that's when the data becomes really valuable one two a hundred photos not very valuable when you have a thousand a terabyte of just shackles wearing over time that's when we'll see the real money and the real savings start to add up so that's when you kind of can go into a predictive maintenance uh model where you're saying is that where you're saying you know instead of it breaks and we go out and fix it we're fixing it right before it breaks so um you know and and keeping those systems working so um let actually I'm going to start with Corey now so Corey when somebody takes out a scadio drone and says okay I need to inspect this asset whatever that asset is um how is this pilot interacting with the Drone how's this working just just give us sort of a basic overview so that people can really get an idea of how the operation uh Works a little differently than you know having to do everything with sticks well sure so so skydo has the ability uh as as most people know to uh operate aircraft manually so that's the kind of the traditional method what sets uh scottio apart from uh other manual drones is the ability for the visual positioning system to allow us to get very close to things and the absence of a magnetometer or electronic Compass allows skydio aircraft to operate very closely to um transmission voltages or high volt High Emi Fields uh in the past you know a drone with a magnetometer could get about I don't know 20 feet from a conductor before it started showing errors and and um and non-nominal behaviors as far as handling goes and then um with ours you can get uh avoid contact you can get as close as as four inches and and do that safely and reliably uh the other way uh skydio drones are used and and this kind of provides value in the more predictive maintenance side is the dock-based solution that operates uh from from Imagine a substation or or some other type of asset you're trying to expect but but we'll talk specifically about substations because the um the dock-based Drone could be used to replace that monthly uh counter reading and and gas gauge reading inspection that dock base drone could also be used for security patrol that dock-based drone could also respond to event-based um like event based things so if you had like a differential in a station or some other issue inside the station the Drone could have a pre-programmed flight plan and uh and could operate and uh and fly around autonomously where you get into the predictive the predictive maintenance side is when um you repeatedly at a more frequent Cadence are able to capture inspection data without having to roll a truck or send a person out there or get a clearance to get close to it um you're able to uh kind of trend like Peter was talking about with the uh with the dead end clamps you're able to Trend um failures or or Trend um the degradation of your assets and understand you know when it's about to fail before it fails so that you can you know keep those customers happy and and energized and and switch out the um you know the defective equipment and be able to replace that without having it without having an outage uh directly impacting your um your Sadie and safety numbers the the higher frequency of inspection and impacts the frequency of of the outages and the um the duration of the outages are are cut down because you're able to identify problem uh equipment and swap that out without having customers out okay so we'll talk a little bit more about the dock later on because I think that's a really um significant uh development for infrastructure uh organizations of of many types um but when you say you can get four inches away so uh in in my world all about the data right close means accurate and precise and so you're getting sort of a very good rep visual representation of what's Happening um pilot flies the mission what happens to the data uh the data set and uh can be ingested into the skydio cloud and from the skydio cloud we have API Integrations with uh with different partners to allow that data to be pushed over to their system um all you know kind of if you're in the field doing it manually it can be done at the end of the day if it's dock-based solution it'd be automatic okay and so Brent you know when we're talking about these kind of daily uh missions you know 50 submissions a month um and that many pilots and that many drones how is the mission manager system um facilitating this on a daily basis you know Peter's gonna say these guys need to go here we have to make sure we have the appropriate Hardware the appropriate batteries uh everybody needs to have the appropriate permissions how does this all work

thank you you are muted so there we go there we go so we view Mission manager as an enabler and we want to put it in the hands of the customer that has not only visual line of sight operations for data collection but even beyond that to be able to scale to more complex operations and so we want to provide all the tools that are necessary for an Enterprise to go do their their job and so what I mean by that and I'll use night as an example on how we enable that data capture over that inspection or monitoring of assets whatever that might be is we are also Andra we're a low altitude authorized notification capability Lance provider for the FAA and so we in the app for Mission manager you can choose your adventure when you're a pilot for night but when you go out into the field not only can you do all the mission Manager work plan your mission fly your mission but you can also while using the same app turn and open up Lance and get an approval if necessary so that helps enable that pilot to do their their job another example is GIS data so as you can imagine there is a lot of physical infrastructure that naipa has to take a look at monitor inspect and so they have all this infrastructure mapped through esri tools and other GIS tip type tools that we're able to bring into the mission Manager application and display that with metadata so you can see not only the visualization of that data in the app but also some necessary information whether it's an identification tag or whatever else is associated with that piece of equipment and it's laid out across the satellite image or a street view image and so forth so the operator can then plan their mission accordingly or go to that specific site make sure they're looking at the right asset another example is we try to build in as much flexibility and Agility for the the mission manager client in this case for night but they have a m300 from DJI they wanted some camera control capability so we're able to do some of that work and allow them to manipulate the camera for data capture and we also want to allow Nipa to use as many types of varieties of drones as they want to include skydio and and being able to use their systems but the most fleets have more than just one type of Hardware so we want to give them the flexibility at night but to be able to fly multiple hardware systems and with our our partner skydio knowing that they're important to naipa and we're working with them when integrating the skydio Telemetry into our mission manager system so one application you can see the Telemetry from live drove operations you know where you are in the world virtually because there are all the data is integrated and so when you want to go flying in airspace you understand airspace classifications because we're pulling in that data it's where you where you can fly where you're not supposed to fly and one final point on how we enable nightbas existing systems with organizations as large as naipa it's it's most likely that there's already a tool that they're using for Enterprise management Maximo is a very popular tool that's an IBM product for enterprise software and asset management which across the Enterprise they use for various reasons and so being able to integrate a tool like Maxima or something like a Maximo for existing Enterprises means they don't have to shift things that have been in place for years and maybe countless people are using for for different reasons we're able to tap into that and figure out a way to bring that the data that we need into this platform so that the Drone operators can do their job more efficiently and and Peter I want to kind of go back to you because that's a a ton of data management there are a ton of um ways to make that data more usable more more valuable but also I would think that there's elements of simple Administration where you've got to be able to say at the end of the month um you know this is what we did this is what we spent this is what uh this is the condition of my Hardware this is what I need um and so forth so talk about sort of because you got sort of day-to-day nitty-gritty here of managing a fleet

so managing where the pilots go is one thing but me knowing is this a transmission based inspection does this fall under transmission for maybe some sort of reimbursement from federal agencies and stuff that's important so I need to be able to prove that our program is 55 of the time flying transmission line inspections we're doing construction work these are benefits that that are that are being passed on to our clients and we need to compute what is this value um that has been the biggest hindrance within my program and now with NRA here I can actually go in there and break down what type of mission it was was it an inspection base was it construction was it survey Grant are we monitoring our waterways um so having the ability to go down and see to how often are we charging the battery how long is that battery being flown for then we're charging can monitor the battery life itself now sometimes we go too deep down the rabbit hole but this is how you get a better understanding of what your costs are um my bosses don't really want to know these numbers but me as a program manager I need to know these numbers because batteries need to be replaced uh uh uh Corey would love to keep sending me endless supply batteries but sooner or later that door is going to close on me mm-hmm having that idea of what to expect I can plan out better and that's what enter has really been helping out with perfect if I could just jump onto that what Peter said it's um also something that we look at just an Enterprise application but I'm sure Peter will get to this I'm going to steal your thunder a little bit Peter think of an emergency management scenario where you have multiple entities that are responding in in whether it's a weather incident or something else and so it's not just Nipa it's State Police and on and on and on and so when Peter speaks into that that emergency response and he's directing traffic it's chaotic as you can imagine in an emergency response and so knowing where his assets are what they're qualified to do and the status of their availability to be able to be flown for a type of mission and is the right payload there associated with that that drone the the camera may be somewhere else and on and on and on and so those are that's another use case that when the time comes I think really helps Peter do his job more more effectively and maybe even safer great and we're talking about kind of the difficulties of managing you know missions on an everyday basis but also managing kind of the administrative aspects of of charging things back and and so forth and I think that um when programs are we I get a ton of emails from people who want to start a program they want to kind of look into what does it take to start a program I think that's something that all three of you have some insight in that I wanted to make sure we addressed today is kind of what are the hurdles to just getting started you know Peter you have this idea this is this is going to be a great way to be more efficient and and to have safer operations but how do you convince people okay now we need to train people on drones we need to buy Hardware we need to buy software we need to make this happen

it's a big one the reason to get people to do it if the safety isn't the biggest uh megaphone you have when you start buying one and you show the benefits of what the great thing about drones is I can hand 15 drones out to 15 different individuals in the same Department a month later come back they'll have 15 great ideas on how to use them because everyone thinks different the one thing I've really focused in on was not focusing in on nerc and ferc requirements because those are high inspection you need to have some skill I just said can you see if there's a downline can you see is there a danger tree can you look for uh obstructed roadways our Foresters take ATVs some of our our Towers aren't hard to reach areas they fly the Drone in flooded snowed out areas to see if they can even go down there before they get stuck small wins in efficiency pay for themselves when cell phones were first issued out a lot of people said no they can track me no why do I need a camera on my phone and now we can't go without them we are at the birthplace of this training people to fly Corey can take anyone can fly a skydo anyone can fly skydio really nice and easy the automated features you tell it where to go and you monitor it doing its job that autonomy that's there is is why the industry is growing rapidly over the past few years and it's on this trajectory because that autonomy is going no one wants to hire drone Pilots drone Pilots are just making sure the system works correctly that's all we're meant to do the data capturing device the Drone is everything did that answer your question ma'am absolutely absolutely and you know Corey what do you see as some of the hardware like you know from the hardware side what are some of the hurdles that people run into when they're trying to start a program I I think it's it's it goes back to that whole training piece and the uh the people believe that either a they need a an expert pilot uh you know I need an ATP pilot to operate my drone that's the way it was back in the uh the you know pre 107 chapter 33 days and and that's not the case with uh with the schedule equipment you know you it takes about four hours uh to to get someone proficient enough to operate um our aircraft and they can uh they can get really close and get really good data that way so I think uh I think I think the training issue is is probably the the premier way that uh that skydio can help with the uh some of the barriers to developing a program and Brent do you have kind of insight on you know you you talk to people you're out there sort of getting getting to know people who want to start a program what are some of the the things they need to do to overcome those initial hurdles we're probably on the Enterprise level Merriam in that the customers that we cater to for this particular software Mission manager already have the availability to resources to like drones and Pilots but they just want to know how can I maximize the use of those in their Enterprise and move away from spreadsheet management to be able to really connect the dots allow them to get out there and fly more efficiently but also maybe safer and with more scale coming down the road to fly more complex missions and and uh that's something I want to tease out a little bit more is scalability if we have time to do that okay yeah because of course once you've gotten the initial program started then there's that point when you go from five drones to 50 drones and and that's a whole whole different deal so I want to make sure that we have time to uh at least touch on a really big one which is regulations right I mean so regulations regulations regulations we're in the Drone industry wouldn't be a drone webinar if we didn't talk about that so um

let's I'm going to start with Corey because Corey bvlos waiver with no visual Observers that's pretty exciting that's awesome so exciting so this is a very big deal so uh tell us a little bit about that this this is you know because I I write these headlines and and we've started seeing now I'm like biblus waiver bibilis waiver biblus waiver now I get exciting misses no videos right yeah so um so skydio's uh doc solution uh the ability for it for the Drone to be connected to the uh Network and be able to be operated independently and autonomously can only be truly realized that the value of it can only be truly realized with with a true BB loss no person on site type type operation um the uh FAA uh was really happy with the safety case that uh that skydio was able to make on behalf of of naipa um in that the where the drones called close proximity low altitude but basically the Drone would stay very close to other obstacles and that um Vision positioning system and the autonomy that we have on board allows that to happen and with the Drone close to those obstacles um they determined that the risks uh air risk and ground risk was mitigated to a level that would allow the operation of those aircraft in a non-operate no operator on site non-vo uh you know waiver so super exciting um I there it's it's just like the first of its kind and since 2015 when I started working with drones in the utility industry having a drone that lived in the asset or on the asset or near the asset was something that um everyone wanted you know they wanted to do that back then and it's cool to see it happening now with a uh you know fully ndaa compliant aircraft out there capturing that data Landing in the dock and then uploading it to for all the different use cases with um um security patrol uh the post event inspections and then the um the inspections uh pre and post switching you know there's a lot of autonomous switching or scada switching remote switching that happens out on the system and to ensure that the switch is operated properly you could launch the Drone to fly an automated Mission and then it sends you the data and you can inspect the switch without having to send someone there so it's pretty exciting yeah very exciting so um congratulations on that uh to all of you because that's um that's kind of moving things forward for all of us here so um you know Brent I know that in conversation with you we've talked about kind of how the the software can help sort of make the safety case just by having all of that data so tell me you know for the benefit talk a little bit about that about how using one piece of software to track everything can help you actually make a safe case for the FAA and thanks Miriam so that I think to build on the the great waiver that's been achieved by nightbun skydio and take that even beyond the proximity low altitude and in other use cases where you would not be in that environment there's a a couple different stakeholders and players that need to build a safety case that then would be approved by the regulator and I think part of what we do is we are we're a slice of that safety case and there's a couple different areas that we can help in making that risk mitigation so that you can fly that more complex Mission so imagine if Knight had a fly a remote monitoring Mission around an asset that was in airspace potentially shared by other users of that same airspace you would have to prove to the FAA why and how you would be able to fly that drone skydio or otherwise in that airspace without bumping into something called the non-cooperative Target or it's not being they're not emitting their position electronically through some kind of means so you have to be able to use other Technologies other processes procedures to prove to the fa that you can fly that mission safely and not cause any damage or harm and so Andrew is able to help with that you know we we look at the airspace and we want to more tightly couple what we do on the airspace side of our business with the mission management side of the business so that we bring the both the best worlds into the workspace environment for Night by wherever that might be and start to chip away at the threats that are encountered whether it's an air risk or a ground risk and by using other people's data whether it's a surveillance technology like adsb or radar or some kind of RF acoustic system that sense other drones and on and on and on be able to demonstrate so the regulator that with all these different pieces of the puzzle combined skydio's asset night Buzz a really nice SMS process training processes and address technology and maybe other Technologies here's how we can address this problem so I think to go scale to be able to go even further and do more with these assets and get even a greater return on investment I think that's the next step for all Enterprises and and so this this waiver that was just achieved is excellent I think the faa's mind and willingness to work to continue to build on these and demonstrate with technology that we'll be able to get there someday to scale is really exciting for us so we we look forward to these opportunities to prove the ability to help mitigate that threat and Peter how how do you think that naipa is um how do you how do you plan on kind of making use of that waiver what's what's the operational Mission look like in the context of naipa uh imagine a switch yard or a substation when a temperature sensor goes off that alarm that goes off is a Json file with the Latin long of that actual sensor itself before sending someone into that environment in unknown hazards the Drone can go and take a quick quick peek at it maybe one step further would be a Security application this past summer with what's going on we start seeing sensors dying the fence smart fence if you have it or ground sensors or something start going off the Drone can go take off and put eyes on the assets themselves oh it's just inclement weather oh it's someone doing something bad oh it's an oil leak risk the machine not the person um having it be the first on site and then giving our Engineers or giving the security better understanding of the situation is a win by itself being able to say exactly where the problem is is a bigger win and I would guess that much like you know uh uh every time a fire alarm goes off there are probably opportunities when you don't have to send a person so that's just um you know big savings in in resources imagine a point in time when firemen when they respond to a fire the first time they actually see this fire is when their eyes on on it itself but if one of our systems can go up have that real-time fire or or security incident and sending it to the responders who are automatically heading to it and seeing it on their smart device we already do video sharing we're doing video sharing right now why can't we do that with this advanced technology which we're able to do now between everyone here on stage yeah yeah it's great it's a it's kind of a collaboration and and Corey just to um ask you this question does the waiver involve other ground assets like radar or or anything like that uh that's a question more for Peter okay [Laughter] adsb ma'am okay I need to know where everyone is I'm not supposed to be pinging but I'm supposed to be receiving gotcha and that's the infrastructure we're putting into place now trying to do we're we're we haven't activated the waiver yet I haven't done remote operations yet but we're getting ready for it but you've gone through the the hardest part so ma'am I I think I could say no one thought we were gonna get approved I have filed waivers for a really long time uh we've picked out a great use case for this area in Upstate New York yeah everyone was caught off guard which is a good thing I think we were used to saying when will it happen I just was surprised it happened to us first well you've done uh everyone else in the industry a favor so um again Kudos and and thanks for going first because uh the first one's always the hardest so that's great all right um I want to make sure that we touch on the doc a little bit because this is kind of a new thing we're we're talking about it so um I know I've had the opportunity to see it in action of course uh probably um the four of us are all familiar with it but Corey diving a little bit in it and explain kind of the this is we're talking about a weather resistant computerized constantly monitoring home for uh hardware and and uh if you haven't seen it in action it's really it's it's a unique and um kind of an incredible piece of technology it's super exciting I was working with the doc today at with one of our customers and and I made the comment it never gets old watching that drone it's so cool and get here and then upload all the data so yeah basically the dock is a a weather hardened um enclosure for drone that's climate controlled it has it can cool the Drone In the Heat of the summer uh so that the LiPO batteries can charge it can heat the Drone or heat the batteries in the cold of winter um it uh it has connectivity uh built in uh it has its own Sky link radio system and it has internet connectivity um the Drone lives and charges inside the dock when the Drone is needed on a scheduled or um on-demand basis the Drone can be uh initiated on a pre-arranged flight plan or a manual slash autonomous flight plan so it's you're using the autonomy on board to make the Drone safe and and be able to operate it but you're manually driving the Drone around the environment that it that is housed in um the dock can be used for internal and external uh uses you can use it you know inside substations for security inspections you could uh nuclear dry Cask storage um that's a mandated inspection at a nuclear plant um you can use it for Logistics and warehousing uh um Counting the number of polls you've got on your pole pile that kind of thing um but the the Drone will um basically during a commissioning process for instance in a substation you could build flight plans for all of the switches that you plan to operate or switches that were part of a differential scheme and then when that scheme is operated or or when the scheme operates or a you know switch needs to be operated um then you can just click on that switch number in the skydio cloud platform and the Drone will go and perform that inspection return and upload the data so it's uh it's pretty a it's a pretty seamless solution um and you know this this waiver kind of indicates the uh the faa's acceptance of our safety case like I talked about before um and you know our regular kudos to our regulatory Services team for uh for helping Peter make that happen and move really move the industry forward to allow that uh that remote dot to be more um you know to the true potential of it to be realized yeah and as you said huge um Improvement in Roi when you when you don't have to have uh visual observers and Pilots uh there for every operation so sure yeah okay we are going to open up the Q a at this point um please do use the hop in facility bottom right hand corner of your screen to ask any questions we will um try to respond to as many as we have time for and but while we're giving people a chance to do that I want to go around uh quickly to each of you and kind of say what's next like what is kind of the next big thing that you see happening in the context of of uh this energy space so Peter start with you what's next next year

long endurance missions you know uh that would that would be a definite game changer for an organization like mine okay uh other drones other robotics boats cars Grovers dogs perfect I know the spot thing is is I want a spot thing at one spot I get to see spot at every uh conference Brent how about you what's next next year yeah Peter's getting me fired up because I love hearing what he's saying because that's right in our um same roadmap sweet spot is we've kind of figured out at Andrew we have a a fairly wide portfolio of software products today we're only talking about Mission manager and what what's being used with naipa but we're really into remote identification we're into airspace management we're into correlating different surveillance information different Radars into one correlated Target there's some other things and so this is all pointing us to a future where it's long endurance missions more complex missions to be able to support and enable those present that safety case we talked about to the FAA to get those approvals and with the remote ID role in The Horizon we believe there's going to be an increased awareness and need to be able to support Enterprises whether you're naipa or the state police or somebody else and understanding how that will impact them and then on the multi sometimes it's called uxs with the X meaning RC or ground type of robots and I do think energy companies use more than just drones primarily the Drone asset you can see the ROI and reasons why they're being deployed it for energy and utility organizations but there's also I think a world out there that's using in addition to drones ground Rovers and different types of systems even on the water and it's not always the utility companies we did an exercise with the port of Virginia Emergency Management and Public Safety organizations where we had all three types of systems they were seeing ground on our mission manager platform and being able to stream live video to The Incident Commander in their mobile command center and so these all point to a future where whatever we can do to enable the end user in this case naipa utility companies to be able to go further faster and safer and compliantly you know we're on the we we closely work with the fa on their roadmap for airspace management Technologies and helping helping understand with the industry and with standards development and how this has all come together to be able to allow interoperability so these are all in this soup of where we're going to take uh Andrew next and I'm Gladiator might be thinking similarly yeah it's uh actually so cool with the um sorry go ahead please sorry for interrupting one thing when we talk about these multiple platforms is when we look at our day-to-day work if I have to open up 15 different tabs to accomplish one task I get frustrated but having one place that has everything right there and I use one software throughout it's ease of use meaning more people will buy into it more people will be willing to use it and we can change the an organization naturally that's what I'm really geeking out about Enron is it doesn't have a limitation uh that's what's great

okay so we do have a couple of questions from the audience but first I want to I'm gonna make Corey answer my question what's what's next next year for you guys yes so I think event-based patrols are next like Peter talked about the uh the the the fire you know the the dot based drone responding to a fire and getting there faster than the firemen can um I think uh the uh the ability for drones to respond to a distribution automation queue so when you have an outage in the field we've gotten really good at switching around that outage and getting everything back on that we can um in an automated fashion but there's still customers out so having that the ability to patrol that line before the uh Crews get there um it you know could result in being able to re-energize that line prior without having to do anything you know it could have been a momentary outage so I think I think that's probably the next big thing fantastic it's very exciting I have a home in a rural area in New Hampshire we lose oh power for long time periods so yeah very exciting okay one of the questions that has come in from the audience directed to Peter how do you see the scottio doc in connection with long-range missions

multi-rotors are are great there's a reason why the Air Force has a 15 16 A10 F-22 f-35u2 spy plane every aircraft has its own point in time we fly in an energized switch yard doing the inspection with their aircraft now long endurance flight multi-rotors are not meant to fly 15 miles down the road and then land multirotor is meant to go up get your eyes on target maybe a mile and then come home land and you're done long endurance is Niagara Falls to Montreal that's long endurance over 200 miles so those are two different data sets having their system at every substation switch yard for the easy to use inspection great long endurance flight would probably be an airplane taking some high resolutions pictures maybe a medium format 150 megapixel camera from 250 feet above you would see everything you would have on that tower for an assessment that's how I would see it they're meant for one mission the ease of use quick action long endurance flights are complicated and not legal yet okay

another question that has come in from the audience can you speak to the measurable impacts and efficiencies drones have had on the program if someone wanted to start a drone program like yours how could they convince executive leadership using measurable improvements um kind of other companies are seeing

uh I'll take that one I guess um we're looking at roughly becoming more efficient when our line guys you climate normally they need fall prevention harness the whole nine and it's labor intensive to do a first look when we go out on the line and we fly a drone it's less than 15 minutes to take a quick picture if I turn on 3D scan for our goat heads uh a two-circuit system total of six insulators we're looking at 5500 photos in 45 minutes so one battery swap and I mean you get every angle of the insulator looking straight up so doing a quick inspection I can do a tower in about five minutes doing a comprehensive 45 minutes that efficiency alone with the data that you're providing is high it's only a 12 megapixel camera right now but when you're close to that insulate and that 12 megapixel is so close it is gorgeous um I wish my background worked because I actually used one of their drones to take these gorgeous DJI like shots because it all matters on how to use the sensor right okay thank you so for I think for all of you we have another um question that has been upvoted quite a bit here which is how many other states are using this program for their Power Systems I think by this program they probably mean um you know drone programs in general I don't know anybody speak to that I would say like in in your larger utilities your investor own utilities your knifers of the world um they're going to have drone programs I'd say probably all of them um I think it's it I am seeing more um adoption by the smaller co-ops and Reas across the con the country um but I I would say that uh the Drone usage and how to get drone program and maintaining a drone program with your utility company if you don't have one now you will in the future and it's just going to be as part of the business as a bucket truck or uh climbing tools you know I really think that's the case okay um here's one that uh I actually field a lot of emails about this so I'm gonna direct this to Peter this is I'm an independent contractor drone pilot with a scadio kit have inspected for other energy providers is there work or any room for small Independence in the program to inspect yards transmission towers etc for naipa

this is a touchy point the one thing I'm priding on my pride myself on is keeping our Pilots internal to our employees heavy lift like spring drones or lidar systems those are specialized systems that we will Farm out but doing an inspection where our Union guys our managers that do it now should keep that job right and that's been something I've been striving for is to keep it in in-house program because then you can react to the industry I can help companies out with insight and our guys always our people always have work and let me put this a different way if somebody was applying for a job at Nipa and they said we are I am already an experienced drone pilot would that be an advantage it would I would think so all right Miriam just to build on that a little bit though one of our customers is using the same platform as nightbas is New York metropolitan Transportation Authority and they have vendors that come in that support MTA projects in New York City in the surrounding area that are building things and they have their own drone system and so I completely understand and appreciate Peter's comment but there are opportunities for the industry for that gentleman or person that lady that asked that question to be able to engage in a way that is outside of Nipa that allows them to further their own business whatever that might be and so there's the idea here is to be adaptable and so we recognize that and so the platform we create I'm sure scottio once a lot of people find their drones no matter who they are for their businesses and similarly we want a lot of different people using our software great yeah I think I think during like Storm Restoration when when it's all hands on deck and you need more hands that's uh that was kind of in my former role where we found the use of contractors valuable um kind of plusing up for that those types of or very large inspection project that happens you know on a odd Cadence okay I'm going to um one of another questions sorry they're coming in fast how much of a learning curve is there for inspectors using a skydio for the first time and Peter you mentioned a gentleman in his 70s um going right for it no problem what is your experience giving sort of people who have not flown a drone before uh the scadio and saying okay this is what we need to do as an experienced pilot when the Drone starts to alter and avoid it's what it's going to hit as an experienced pilot I find terrifying

it's my beginner Pilots start to they don't realize it it is an amazing aircraft not everyone flies 50cc balsa wood airplanes okay that is not scale scalable is bringing anybody in and within hours having them fly it and if you're flying their system you are using the engineering softwares with it we are doing it for work we're not flying for fun so you're flying with a purpose and you basically make sure hey it can go up to to six feet two meters uh six feet up and then it performs the inspection you're not actually flying it okay you have you are flying it you're holding the sticks you you are flying it but really the drone's flying itself it's easy I promise you all it's easy um