Episode 6: Unlocking Zero Grid & Multi-Drone BVLOS

Alright. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining another, regulatory webinar here on public safety. I'm Jakee Stoltz again with the Skydio regulatory team.

Today, I'm joined, by Sujoy Banarjee from our product team. He's gonna help me, talk about some product features that support some of these regulatory initiatives. So, Sujoy, you wanna do a quick intro?

Sure. Welcome, everyone. I'm Sujoy, director of products for, for Skydio. I focus on the flight experience. I'm responsible for the user interface between the pilot and the drones, as well as a number of the autonomy features like pathfinder, subject tracking, obstacle avoidance, on the vehicle itself. Very excited to be here.

Awesome. Thanks, CJ.

And the, you know, the two topics for today were are are unlocking zero grids, and so basically doing Beyond Visualize, like, flight in zero grids routinely, and multidrone, which, you know, a lot of agencies are excited about. And Steve Oscar has been a tremendous partner at Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Unfortunately, he's unable to join today. Something came up that just couldn't be rescheduled, and life happens.

So he he does send his regrets and and wishes he could be here, and and we're bummed about that too. But, it's no problem. We're gonna just kinda move on with Adam, and we'll hopefully, get a chance to bring him back, another time. So so you're stuck with with me and Sujoy, unfortunately, today.

But we're gonna kinda just get into it here. We've got, two good topics to to discuss. And before I do, just kind of a housekeeping item. I sort of start most of these webinars now with with a little plug on this.

So if you haven't yet, worked through the process to get either your two hundred foot or your four hundred foot public safety Part ninety one waiver, I highly recommend doing that. You know, there's kind of no reason to wait at this point. So we have a website guide that covers the process, gives you details on how to work through it, you know, points you to the different forms you need.

We have some guidance and forms available as well upon request.

So really just, you know, you could pull your phones out, grab the QR code here. I think we'll put the URL in the chat as well. But just recommend bookmarking this and go through the process. And even if you're an agency that's, like, maybe you're not sure you're ready for DFR yet, or you're kind just thinking about it, you're in early stages, this waiver can still be useful to you.

You can still do your visual line of sight operations under this waiver, and then it also includes that ability to do beyond visual line of sight, of course. So so even if you're not quite to, like, DFR yet, there's still kinda no reason to wait, and you could go ahead and get this waiver. So, so just a plug for that. And it was last updated on September tenth, so not too long ago.

Really importantly for this discussion today, I added some new information on how to get these airspace authorizations that we're gonna talk about. So there's kind of a whole new block of information on that website, and we're gonna dive into that more today here.

Okay.

So let's jump into the topics at hand. So, yeah, I mean, just to kind of plug Las Vegas Metro PD for a second, unfortunately, with Steve gone, I'm not going to do it any kind of justice, but I honestly think they've got one of the most forward leaning, kind of, mature DFR programs, you know, across the country today. It's just a really tremendous program with great support all the way up to the top and then great people like Steve leading the charge. So, yeah, you know, again, I'm not gonna try and do it justice.

It's a great program. Steve's a great resource. So, you know, I'm sure many of you know him and are chatting with him about his program. But if not, I would recommend getting to know Steve.

So so we're gonna kind of jump to the airspace situation there. And this is your great thing. So as their program has evolved, know, we pretty quickly ran into some some airspace challenges there.

It's not unusual for bigger cities to have some zero grids, we call them, and these are kind of areas around airports where you would need either additional approvals or for a while there, they were effectively kind of no fly zones for beyond vision on-site. But Las Vegas is particularly unique because really like the entire strip, the Las Vegas strip is kind of covered in zero grids. And that's what you see here. So there's four airports in the region.

Harry Reid is kind of in the center, and then there's an Air Force Base and two other smaller airports. But two of the airports are basically connected with this kind of corridor of zero grids that overlays the strip there. And this is obviously like a really important part of the city.

And and Las Vegas Metro has, a lot of public safety work to do in this area. So so as as we kind of progressed and and they worked into Beyond Visualized Site operations, this area became, kind of a pain point for them, and we we wanted to help figure out a way to get routine beyond visualized site operations in this area.

And that's just kind of a closer shot. And they do have they have, like, multiple area commands in this area. Their headquarters is actually in the zero grid as well. So just to kind of double tap the point that this is a really key area that was kind of off limits for their their DFR program for a bit.

And so, you know, there's just a bit of a short timeline here really on sort of the regulatory progression over time. I mean, we've been really kind of working at this for a little over a year. Las Vegas Metro was one of the first, about a year ago now, to get one of those two hundred foot waivers that kinda kicked off this whole thing.

And then just under a year later, they they received permission to fly routine beyond visual line of sight operations in the zero grids in early September, the multidrone as well, which we'll get into.

Okay, so now just kind of getting into, like, sort of the more technical aspects of this. You know, if again, if you're an agency that has an area like this, if there's zero grids that are impacting your ability to fly in certain areas, Or it could be, like, lower altitude grids, these fifties, these hundreds, where they're you can fly, but it's it's at a low altitude that may or may not work well.

So if if you get one of these two hundred foot waivers or these four hundred foot waivers today, it's gonna have a provision in it that says you can do the OnVisualized site operations, in uncontrolled airspace, of course, you know, up to the two hundred feet. But in controlled airspace, you're you're limited to the UAS facility map altitudes, and that's kind of this highlighted provision here.

So, again, these facility maps are in any any controlled airspace in the country.

There's gonna be these gridded up areas. I'll actually just kinda go back to this this picture. So there's gonna be a gridded up area if you're not familiar with these. And in each grid, there's gonna be a number. And this number kinda represents the maximum flight altitude above the ground that the airport is comfortable with drones flying and without any kind of extra safety analysis.

And so your this the default approval for these two hundred and four zero four approvals is just that you can fly below these these numbers. And in zero grid, that effectively means again that your fly altitude zero.

So then the waivers also contain a provision at the bottom here now that says you can get an airspace authorization through CAPS if you want to fly above these grid numbers.

These provisions have been in waivers for quite a while now, even back to kind of the early approvals in, like, April, March of this year.

But one of the key issues for the last kind of six months was that the FAA had no way to, like, execute this. So one one group in the FAA, the Flight Standards Group, put this provision in there, but it's really a different group, air traffic organization, that was sort of responsible for issuing these airspace authorizations. And the two groups hadn't quite figured out how to do that yet. So there's kind of this this lag for a couple months, which is which has now been resolved. But but, yeah, for a little while there, it was kind of impossible for the FAA to issue an airspace authorization.

So I do want to hit on kind of one common misunderstanding that that I think is out there. So because there was kind of no way to get these official airspace authorizations, I think some agencies just kind of took matters into their own hands. They started just, like, reaching out to the airport or the tower, or they were maybe advised by some other vendors. But kind of the question is, like, if I just call the tower and they say yes, like, am I good?

Can't I just do that? And that that makes sense. You know, I don't think that's necessarily, like, risky, to do that, but, unfortunately, it's just not, like, the official way to get this approval. So if you're doing it this way, I I would recommend now that you kind of go through the the official process, get one of these airspace authorizations, and make it official so that that you've got yourself covered, and you're not kind of operating in sort of this this gray area where where the FAA could come and ask questions that you don't have answers to.

And and part of the part of the reason for this too is, like, the airports and, like, these tower managers, they're not always in the best position to kind of know what UIS policy is. There's sort of this core group at the FAA that's doing UIS policy and making all these things happen. But then that information doesn't always get out to the airports and towers that you're interacting with. So, like, in a lot of cases, these airports have no idea what these beyond visualized site waivers are or how ADS B is being used or that there's a limit of two hundred foot.

Like, they they don't always know these details. So then when you ask them to fly BV loss of two hundred foot in the zero zero grid, like, I would say nine times out of ten, they're they're they wanna help you and they wanna be supportive, and try and make things happen, but they're just not, like, in the right position to, sort of officially approve that. So so, yeah, but we're here to to tell you the process to go through to make it official here. So how do I get approval then to fly in one of these zero grids routinely?

And I'll just plug the the website again. So you you can basically follow along. I'm just gonna kinda cover three of the steps that are on the website here. So if you pull up the website and scroll down a little bit to the Request the Partner E1 airspace authorization section, That's basically what we're going to talk about here for the next fifteen, twenty minutes.

Alright. So here's kind of the three top level steps that you'll need to work through. We'll just kind of go through each one of these in series. And I will say this could change.

You know, FA did a tremendous job of, like, streamlining the two hundred foot waiver process.

It used to be much, much more onerous than it is today. You had to go in caps and submit things and all that stuff. And they did a tremendous job of streamlining it. It's basically just an email exchange back and forth now.

This process hasn't quite been streamlined yet, so it has kind of some elements of the old process in it that may change, but this is what it is today. So the first step you'll need to do is go through and get access to CAHPS.

And so CAPS is the FAA's web portal. It's it's a it's a website where you log in and you actually submit these requests, these airspace author request authorization requests to the FAA.

The the other kind of term for it is COA. And so you you may hear that term, but I prefer to kinda use airspace authorization to avoid confusion. So you need access to this. Some of you may have access already if you previously were getting these Part ninety one COAs before, you know, this this whole process changed, you may already have access to this.

But if you don't, here here's how to do it. So you need basically, two two forms, two documents, and you you'll email these to the FAA to request an account. And that's kind of, one of the, you know, things about this website that you'll kinda learn, learn about is that you can't create your own account. You can't, like, self log in.

The FA actually has to create the account for you. And when they do that, they're vetting you to just make sure you're eligible for one of these accounts effectively. So so need two things. So you need a public declaration letter and then this CAPS access form.

The public declaration letter, this needs to be created and signed by outside counsel. This is kind of that old process for those of you that are familiar with COAs.

So if you're like a police department for a city, this would be like your city attorney, you know, county, county attorney. If you're a state level agency, your state AG, they would draft this letter up and sign it for you. And this is a letter basically kind of certifying that you're a public aircraft operator, you're a part of government.

And it is worth noting if you've gone through the two hundred foot waiver process, there's a letter where you're self certifying this as well. So these are kinda two different letters.

So it it probably is not too hard to get mixed up here, but just trying to keep it keep it straight. Like, there's a public declaration letter from outside counsel. You need that for this process, and that's different than the letter you submitted for your two hundred or four hundred for waiver.

Okay. So the other form is a straightforward, just kind of one pager. If I just go to the next slide, actually, you'll kind of see what these two look like. So on the left is the declaration, public declaration letter.

We have some guidance on this, the FAA has some guidance on this. So, you know, please reach out. There's some links on the website to give you more information on this, and then we have additional resources as well. So, yeah, reach out if you're having challenges with this. And then the CAPS Access form on the right is pretty simple. It's just a one pager that you fill out some of your contact information like name, email address, and why you need access.

Alright.

Okay. So get access to CAPS. That's kind of one step. The next step is actually putting together, like, what you're gonna ask for. And so just like anything with the FAA, when you when you ask for something, they need to do a safety review. And so you basically need to consider the aviation kind of aspects of this when you're making your ask. You know, if you ask to fly directly at the airport, the FAA may kind of ask some questions about risk.

But I'm but I'm gonna give you basically some strategies to kind of think about how to create these areas and kind of understand where where aircraft are gonna be flying low here. So so we're gonna kinda jump over Las Vegas without Steve. I do wanna show, though, just, like, the the tremendous work he did. I mean, Steve really, like, led the effort to engage each one of these airports and create these shapes and and really, like, drove the success here.

So I'm just kinda wanna show, like, the the work he did and and kinda where he's at now, because of that work. So, like, the left side is the standard facility map altitudes, and that whole red area was effectively off limits. The orange areas were, like, below two hundred feet operation, so kinda limited, but it was still possible.

And then on the right side is what what he now has approved. So now he can effectively do two hundred foot operations across most of the city.

And then in the areas in the the kinda orange yellow shading on the right side, those are areas where he just needs to coordinate or kind of communicate with the airport before flying. So and these are just like the really close tight end areas where you would start to expect aircraft to be at at quite low altitudes.

Yeah. Just tremendous work by Steve, and hopefully, we'll him on to talk more about that at some point.

But okay. So so now just kind of these these high level concepts. Right? So UAS Facility Maps, like, why do they exist in the first place?

And, like, who even how did you even get to a point where there's zeros here and hundreds there? And, like, how do you make sense of this? Right? So kinda one of the the key points of this program, this facility map program, is that the FAA is basically, like, identifying areas where they are comfortable with drones flying and and they're essentially, like, safe.

And if you kinda look from the side and you just imagine, like, airplanes coming in and and landing at airports or taking off, climbing out, they're gonna kind of I'm gonna make general statements here, but there's generally gonna be kind of this glide slope or kind of diagonal line as they climb up away from the airports. And so as you get further away from the airport, these airplanes are higher, and then in theory, it's safer to allow drone operations. So there's typically, again, gonna be kind of a no fly zone right around the airport, out to some distance. And then these things kind of tear up as aircraft get higher and higher as they get get further and further away from the airport.

And so so that's kind of one kind of general thing. And then sometimes, though, these these zero grids can be in place for other reasons.

They can be in place for helipads that might lie within that control airspace, like hospitals, things like that. They can be in place just due to, like, security types of reasons.

And, you know, in, like, a case like Vegas, they can be in in place maybe just simply to, like, keep, you know, droves of tourists from bringing their drones and flying them along the Strip. Right? So there there can be kind of other reasons other than just, like, low flying aircraft, for why these these grids are developed.

And so one of the key things as you kinda develop this this approach is, like, to think about where where is there actually risk of encountering low flying aircraft, And then where are there areas where maybe there's not an aviation risk, some kind of other risk, or maybe their their grids were just drawn a little too conservatively? And so you can kind of make a case then that a professional operator that's, you know, doing a public good should be allowed to fly in this area versus, like, the general public.

Okay. So I I've put together a little example of of a a city called Fargo. This is a city I I'm familiar with in North Dakota here just to illustrate kind of some of this thought process and key points. So Fargo, there's an airport with three runways.

There's kind of a T shaped set of runways and then a diagonal runway kind of on the south end. There's a smaller airport on the left side of the graphic where those kind of yellow and red shades are. Those it's just kind of a smaller one single runway airport. And then there's a couple helipads, spread out.

And two of them in or sorry. Three of them in particular are, like, hospital related, helipads, which is pretty common in cities.

So if I was doing this and and what I'm kinda recommending to to you all if you're gonna go through this is to first just think about, like, where are these common areas of low flying traffic? And so runways is gonna be an obvious one.

And I kind of dropped these, like, red kind of shaded areas to just kind of illustrate the point. Right? So each runway is gonna have sort of this, like, rectangular shaped shaped area where aircraft are coming in, at low altitudes or or leaving.

And then similarly around helipads, you you may have this, just kind of more a circular shape because, helipads, you know, helicopters can kind of approach from any direction, and then they sort of funnel into the helipad. So each, helipad may have kind of this circular, shape around it. This is just, again, to, like, where would I just expect to kinda see a low flying aircraft, if just looking at maps?

Another tool I like to use is is ADS B heat mapping. And some of the the guidance we have can show you how to do this. There's there's a couple web options where you can just generate one of these.

And this is ADS B, so it's kind of caveat is, like, this is not gonna show you every single aircraft flying in the airspace, but it's gonna show you kind of the majority of them, and it's gonna give you a good sense of sort of the trends in your airspace. So this is a three day heat map, and then I just filtered it down to aircraft that are at two hundred feet AGL or below. So, like, very low as they're kind of taking off and landing. And it's more or less as you'd expect.

Right? So there's clearly aircraft taking off and landing on those three runways at the main airport. You can see the small airport on the left side of the graphic has some traffic. And then there's kind of some two little areas of, like, dots where those helipads were.

So if I just kinda overlay these two, you can see things line up pretty well.

But you may notice that one of the helipads has nothing. So there's no traffic going in and out there, at least in that three day period.

And so I just know kind of from knowing the city and what's going on there, they actually built a new hospital. And so the helicopter traffic seems to have moved to the new hospital, which is on the bottom left side of the graphic now, in that the bottom left arrow.

And they they don't really seem to be routing much traffic, maybe no traffic anymore into the old, you know, old campus. So you might catch things like this and and kind of, like this can just help, again, kind of inform your approach and your ask.

And so what you can do then is you can start to use these things to kind of identify areas where the grids are maybe overly conservative, or maybe they're there for reasons other than kind of low flying aircraft safety. And these are the areas that you can work with. Right? These are areas that you may have a better chance at getting an FAA to approve your routine beyond Vigene A site operations in.

And so if I go back to that just side view, again, like, kind of the whole goal of this is to to sort of shift these these areas a little bit closer to that to that, that glide slope and, in some cases, kind of lift them up, and you you can end up with something that looks a little bit more like the bottom, where green is kind of areas that you're allowed to fly then versus the the top.

Okay. So, yeah, that that's just sort of a a strategy I would kinda work through. And and, you know, when you know your your city and your airports and airspace, like, may know just kind of things, because every every airport's, you know, a little bit different. There's different configurations and runways and traffic patterns and so on.

So so ultimately, what I would recommend is that you create a graphic of the you know, basically where you wanna fly and then what altitudes and and have a KMZ or some kind of, like, GIS shapefile to go with that. That's gonna help when you actually submit the request so that the FAA, like, actually understands what you want. Because you have to basically communicate that to them. I wanna fly in this area at two hundred feet instead of zero or whatever the grid is.

And the other nice thing you can do is is, you know, this is not a requirement, but if you have a a contact at the airport, you could actually go meet with them and review this with them. So you could just kinda present, you know, your proposal, and maybe you're maybe they know some things you don't.

And they would say, No, you know, I actually I don't think that's safe because because of this, or, Actually, yeah, you could fly here because we don't have any aircraft going. Like, they just might know things, so you could take this to the airport just have a quick conversation with them and kind of, you know, hear hear their opinions on it before you submit it as well.

And I'll I'll go back one too. If you're if if all this is, a little bit, like, oh, man, I I have to, like, draw shapes, and I'm not sure how I'd go about that. I actually have a tool that I built to kinda put together a very generalized set of buffers from these runways.

And so, you know, you're welcome to reach out. We can provide that to you to kind of give you a jump start on this.

I wouldn't say it's, like, a guaranteed. You can just you can definitely get this exact shape. It'll be no problem. But use this shape to kind of just, as part of your process, you know, you can tweak the shape then. You can adjust it for, unique things about your area and so on. So happy to share that as well. And if you go to the website, there's a place to request this kind of set of shapes around your local airport.

Okay. So once you have the shape, you've kind of got your request together, you do need to submit it in CAPS. I'm not going get into this at all in this webinar because CAHPS is just a special thing. And for those of you that have been through this, you probably, just had, like, a flashback of pain and trauma from this website. So we have a guide, is what I would say.

Just please reach out for the guide, and it, like, goes through, like, every page, what to type in and which box, where to attach things, and so on. So, we'll just leave that at that.

So once you submit NCAPPS, it'll take the FA on the order of maybe weeks to just kind of work through their review. Theyre gonna send this request to the airport as well for their input. So theres a couple different kind of chain of approvals it has to go through. But generally, like a a week or two or or a little more to to work through that process. And you'll get an actual signed airspace authorization or COA when when it's all said and done and approved.

And then what kind of happens is this airspace authorization will reference your Beyond Visualize Site waiver in it. So the two things basically get linked.

And you can see this is Vegas's, but you can see in the upper right hand side, there's a reference where it says, you know, operations under this COA must be conducted in accordance with waiver.

And there's a reference number there. So ultimately, you'll have two documents. If you go through both processes, right? A two hundred foot waiver, a four hundred foot waiver, and then an airspace authorization. And they go together, they're kind of linked together.

One of them allows you to do the two hundred foot operations in uncontrolled airspace or in controlled airspace below the grids. And then the other one allows you to do beyond visualized site in those certain areas above the grids that you proposed.

Right? And there's usually a map and stuff in there.

Okay.

There's likely some questions. We'll get to we do have some time, I'm sure, the end for questions. So I I wanna get I wanna bring Stu Joy in.

He's had to listen to my technical spiel on on how to get one of these. But once you get a waiver, like, the next thing is, like, how do I use it? Right? And one thing that pilots wanna know is, like, where are these boundaries?

So just hand it over to you, Sujoy, on on our map layers here.

Yeah. I think the thing we wanna call out here is that, we're working on making custom layers more flexible. So by default, when you use a Skydio system, you use remote flight deck.

You have a a map layer that will show you the standard UAS facility maps so that you can comply and see that while you're actually flying. You can toggle it on and off if you need it or not.

But we know that people are getting these these now custom restrictions, and so we're actively working on two things to help you manage that. So one is the visualization of it, so the ability to submit that information, that data, and create a custom map layer where you'll be able to see this instead of this this typical UAS map. And then the second is, basically, we're integrating all of these, new restrictions into Pathfinder. So Pathfinder is our autonomous flight feature that lets you right click on the map and fly to a point.

Today, it basically sets a target altitude, so two hundred feet or a hundred fifty feet, And it'll ramp up to that, and it will fly. It'll avoid obstacles, but it will not adjust its altitude based off of the UAS facility maps. We're working on an update, so there'll be a big vehicle update coming around the end of the year or, like, January time frame.

That will include one of the features that will include is basically that Pathfinder will obey, the FAA UAS facility maps, and you'll have the ability to actually turn that off and turn on your custom restrictions so that it'll obey the custom restrictions that you've gotten.

Sweet. Yeah. And and the the graphic here is shown too. So so this is Las Vegas, and this is basically kinda what, what Steve's pilots see when they log in now. And so there there's actually a couple different map layers going on here, but the red areas are the the kind of coordinate with the airport sort of no fly zones that match his air airspace authorization now. So that's kind of one layer on there. And then, I think he's got kind of some command area, and two mile radius around the docks, I think, as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead, Sujoy, if you know kind of some of the layers on here.

They've added that layer to just give their pilots a little bit more awareness of how far they've gotten from the dock so they have some idea.

Some other agencies I've seen use geofences for a similar idea. But geofences, you can't cross. There's no way to turn them off. So, like, if you're if you just need to go a little bit past it, geofences are a very hard restriction. So I actually kinda prefer this way of doing it.

Yeah. Sweet.

Okay. So yeah. But at least at least his pilots now know, you know, here here is that kind of area where I need to call tower before I fly into, and and it's right there as the drone's flying around. It's it's easy to see and kinda know where those boundaries are.

So, yeah, we can we can do that for for agencies. And and that's another, like, good reason to create a KMZ in that process. So not only does it help the FAA to review their and do their safety review, but then you can provide that to us. We can upload it in and and show that right in your map.

So Alright. Sweet. Okay. So let's let's transition to multidrone.

So I know this isn't this one's gonna be of interest to to some agencies out there. So this one, we're gonna just kinda hit on, like, the approval, the software side of it, and then we'll you know, Sujoy and I will try and do a little bit of justice to just, like, what is the problem that we're trying to solve here for the actual operations in your agency?

But, yeah, this will be a little bit shorter. But to kind of go back, some of you may have watched our Ascend event in in September where we kind of, you know, announced this and talked a little bit about the need here. So I'm just kind of reviewing a few of those slides here in case you missed it and just sort of to illustrate, like, the problem statement here. So so this is Clark County, where Las Vegas is.

And when we do, like, deployments and and work with agencies, we we take a data driven approach based on, like, calls for service. So given a certain number of calls for service, you can kind of see how increasing the number of docs can bring more response capabilities to your agency, so either more coverage or lower times.

But for for a big agency, like this, it gets to a point where you start looking at the numbers here, like, hundred and sixty eight docs. And how do I, like, actually staff that? Right? So in a small implementation, fifteen docs, fifteen operators, it's it's because today, it's one to one ratio. Right? It's maybe, like, not ideal, but it's maybe maybe doable, maybe stretch.

The numbers get bigger, and it just, like, quickly becomes, just sort of untenable. So so at some point, you know, there there needs to be a way to kinda make these these drones just do more work more efficiently with fewer people. And that's really what Multi Drone's about. So so we've got some cool software work work going on that Sujoy's gonna talk about. And and really kind of one of the initial use case for for this that we're focused on is this concept of on station relief. So basically being being able to have one pilot kind of seamlessly swap drones on a call for service that you can maintain continuous awareness, continuous situation awareness, evidence over a call, as drones are kind of swapping due to like battery limitations.

Okay, so the approval itself. So again, back in September, Las Vegas Metro received a part one hundred seven waiver, actually, so it's a little bit different than the part ninety one stuff going on. So this is a part one hundred seven waiver.

And it allows one one pilot to operate up to four Skydio X ten simultaneously.

And so we'll hit on that a little bit. But a couple other kind of just key things.

We also the FAA also granted Las Vegas Metro the ability to operate in lower weather conditions. We put together a safety case for that, which was approved so they can operate in visibility as low as half statute mile. And this would be compared to, like, the three miles that's kind of the standard under part ninety one today.

And then just clear of clouds, and that's compared to, like, where you have to stay five hundred feet below clouds today. So, yeah, just more capability to operate in kind of those inclement weather conditions because, as we know, crime doesn't doesn't stop when the weather gets poor.

And so then couple other things, so that for Part one hundred seven, the Parachute Recovery System we have is actually a requirement.

Whereas in our Part ninety one, it's it's more optional. Like we definitely encourage it to be used under partner anyone as well. But there there's a little bit more flexibility for safeguarding human life in part ninety one. Part one hundred seven, it's it's just a requirement for every flight.

But similarly, similarities wise, it has a lot of similarities to the two hundred foot waivers being issued today. So it's still two hundred foot beyond Vizhana site operations. It still just uses ADS B for the airspace awareness.

So a lot of similarities, just kind of the ability now to fly more drones simultaneously and operate in inclement weather conditions.

Alright. So, yeah, this this, this waiver in particular, you know, as, like, we move forward with this, like, more and more autonomy to kind of take the workload out the pods is, like, the name of the game here. So there's a lot of work that we did with Sujoy, like, cross collaboration and and with Las Vegas as well that kinda, like, define a set of features to actually make this possible. So so I turn it over to Sujoy to, give a little insight on that.

Yeah. Sure. So when I think about, making multidrone possible and a good experience for our pilots, I think about three core things. One is reliability.

You can't have more drones in the air if you can't fly them reliably and you can't get them to control them reliably. So we need to make sure that we're, continuing to push the boundaries and making our system more and more reliable, which is something that we talk a lot about these days. The second is autonomy. So these are features like Pathfinder.

There's these are also features like deconfliction to make sure that our drones will make sure they never collide with each other.

We're also gonna be working on features like subject tracking and subject follow. We'll be we can talk a little bit about that in a little bit, but we did demo those at Ascend. And then the third is really the user interface. So you can imagine that a user interface that was designed for a single pilot to control a single drone may look a little bit different than a user interface where you're trying to fly four drones at the same time. Maybe not markedly different, but there are some pretty important things to think about.

And so, we're actually in the process of, working on a new update to remote flight deck, and this is basically what it will look like, except the, the the rollout of remote flight deck will only have one video feed to start. And then when we as we move into the multidrone world, we will you'll be able to start having multiple drones in your multiple live video feeds. And some of the nice features of the new remote flight deck are that you'll be able to see all drones operating in your organization that are flying across your operating region. So these are also include hand flown drones.

They include drones that are flown from other sites. So And so, you could do large, operations where you're able to see all the drones in the air. You're able to, you know, take a look at this. This is a picture from an image from, Ascend where we've positioned four drones around a hotel.

You could have two pilots flying two of these drones, and they would just always know where the other one was. They would know the altitude so that you could it makes it much easier to deconflict. You don't have to be yelling across, your Arctic.

And you can actually see the battery percentage as well. So you have, like, good situational awareness of, oh, okay. That pilot might have to send that drone home quickly or or or pretty soon. We also as we started thinking about multidrone, had to add, more information so you can see sort of simplified user user interfaces on each of the video feeds because we don't wanna clutter the entire screen up. You can maximize each of these video feeds if you wanna, like, really focus on one, or you can kinda have the CCTV view going on where you've got, like, all four views simultaneously.

You may also notice at the bottom of the map, you've got all drone controls. So you can actually pause all the drones. You can descend all the drones down to a hundred feet AGL to try to avoid any air traffic in the area.

You could hit return all, and that we have a demo of that. Yeah. I think it was on the next slide. But but this is kinda how we're thinking about the user interface.

From an autonomy perspective, we talked a lot about Pathfinder. Pathfinder is really important here because we basically want you to not have to worry if you right click on the map and say, you know, fly here. You should just expect that the drone will get there regardless of if if there are any obstacles in the way. Yeah.

So those are those are a lot of the big things. I one of the kinda driving principles of all this is that if flying a single drone feels kinda like a pilot game or like a first person shooter, we're moving into sort of the strategic element, like strategy games where you've you're actually, like, interfacing a lot with the map.

So you can imagine in the future, we're thinking a lot about different control interfaces, like being able to just click on a drone and drag it, to say fly here instead of having to, like, right click on the map to be able to actually, like, take the crosshair and drag that around to, like, position where you wanted the drone to look. Because can basically think of every drone movement as, like, a move here and look here, type type command. And that will provide a lot more flexibility. You can just imagine just dragging drones around the map and having them look at the point on the map that you wanna look at, and all the drones will be able to take their positions and, take a look at what you're looking for.

Yeah? Sweet. Yeah. Should we should should we roll that video?

Next slide. Yeah.

And sure enough, we did, do this was a video clip from a live test that we did with Las Vegas with with Steve's team. And so this is three three drones in the air. So they have a hive here that has three docks, and you can see all three drones returning. You'll notice that some top points, ones might pause because it's making way for the other drones. And so these are all kinda coming back at the same time. You can see all the information on the map for each drone.

And so this is like, this was a real live test. We did this, and it was it was really cool to see in in production.

We did an alpha test, so this is not on for them currently, but but we're aiming to get this on in production for them early next year, like, February probably.

Alright.

Yeah. Super cool. Yeah. And I I mean, I think, like, I I think it's kinda worth noting that, like, you know, agencies that there may be agencies out there that are a little uncomfortable with this.

And maybe too, like, are thinking about, well, how would I how would I send, like, two drones to different calls across the city and, like, manage that? Like, that might just be too much. So I think it's worth, like, noting that there there's probably just a crawl, walk, run. There there's kind of a a slow implementation of this.

We're not trying to, you know, push agencies into something they're uncomfortable with. On station relief is like a really great kind of initial use case where you can start to get multiple drones in the air, but you're staying focused more on one call at a time.

And then, you know, we can kind of expand from there, and as more autonomy comes in and and agencies get comfortable with this.

So Yeah.

One hundred percent. I think the the two things that I think will happen very quickly is on station relief. The second is also if you're responding to an event an incident, you're now kind of finishing up with it, getting another drone in the air to start responding to an urgent incident so you don't have to, like, wait for your pilot to, like, get the first drone back. Given that everything is about getting on scene as fast as possible, I think it's really important for for you to be able to start start a response before you have to complete the first response.

Yep. Yep. Hundred percent.

Okay. Right on. Yeah. Very exciting.

And so, you know, we're we're we're definitely missing Steve for this conversation. But, you know, I think, actually, let me get one more slide in. Like, you know, one probably just key thing, I think, for him is is the staffing aspect. I mean, he, they they currently have Las Vegas does, I think, twenty two docs deployed. They're growing to a little under forty by the end of the year.

And so I I just if you kinda think back to I had a slide with, like, forty four docs and forty four operators and stuff, this huge number of desks and everything.

So it's like, how do you staff this? Right? Like, if you do have forty docs, how do you staff a couple shifts?

How many people per shift?

And so, you know, we hear from agencies just kinda like over and over and over again, like, just staffing is a big challenge. So, we think this is, one way to just kind of make one person a little more efficient and, you know, try to reduce initially at least that need for, like, two pilots kinda responding to one call at a time. And then, you know, I just think it'll kinda grow from there. But, yeah. Yeah. Any any any kind of thoughts to add, Sujoy?

Or Nope.

I think you covered it. Cool.

Alright. So let's let's see. We have fifteen minutes. We do have a couple questions. So let me actually pivot to that for a minute.

And then if we we still have time, I I can hit a couple general updates that I I figured I'd skip, due to timeline stuff. So, yeah, that's some good questions here.

So there's kind of one question or maybe more of just like a statement made in chat on the public declaration letter and like who needs to sign it.

And and so I'll I'll just kinda reiterate this because I know there'll be a bit of confusion on this. But for the for the two hundred foot just kinda standard streamlined waiver, the the requirement for that waiver request is that you provide the FAA PAOPSO letter, it's called. I know lots of acronyms, but this is a letter that you can sign your somebody in your agency as the responsible person can sign, and you don't need the city signed letter for that waiver.

But for these airspace authorization requests and and the purpose of CAPS and kinda getting into that CAPS system and and submitting those, you do need the city sign or the the attorney signed letter, the public declaration letter. So there's two letters, PAO, PSO letter for the two hundred foot waiver can be signed by the agency's responsible person, And then the public declaration letter or the PDL that you need for CAPS and the airspace authorization. Two two different letters kinda signed by two different people.

Yeah. And and I see John's on, which is awesome.

Glad you could join, John. And and, yeah, that's John had a great clarification step there, so I'll just I'll reiterate it. His point was that there's kinda two steps to this. So first, you need your two hundred or your four hundred foot waiver.

So that's kind of the prereq to all of this. And if I just kinda go back to this very first thing I had up almost, I'll put that QR code up again. So if you don't have your two hundred or your four hundred foot waiver, you gotta just go get that first before you do any of this airspace authorization stuff. So follow that.

Go get that. And then to John's point, if you have a need, you know, this this all is totally optional, the airspace authorization piece. You may not need to do this, or, like, your facility map grids may even be, kind of close enough and tight in enough that there's not, like, a lot of wiggle room left, to to even get access. So it's optional, this airspace authorization request.

But if you do have, like, a broad zero area and you just have a real need to fly routinely in those areas, that's what this is for. And I'll I'll add too, you can still use the SGI process, the special government interest process. So that process is used to get approval to kind of do like one off types of things for, emergencies. So if you have like a one off kind of emergency in a zero grade, let's say it's like on the airport property and you absolutely need to fly there because it's an emergency situation, you can request an SGI and that's more used for just kind of those one off situations.

Okay. Yeah. Well, question about, you know, would you meet with the airport if your area of ops is outside of their controlled airspace? I I kind of assume the question to be, but you're sort of adjacent to, these these airspaces. So I think, you know, there's there's starting to be kind of a good practice around, doing some kind of local, just coordination and communication with these programs. We're starting to even see that in waiver requirements where, like Beyond Visualized Site waiver, waivers are coming with a provision that says you have to go out and notify like the FSDO, low altitude aircraft operators that are in the area, like, you know, the MEDEVACs or, your your own air unit. Even if you're a bigger agency with an with a helicopter team, you know, you certainly wanna be coordinating with them and and kinda making them aware of what you're doing.

So I I think, like, as a kind of general statement, it it's a it would be a good practice to just kind of raise the awareness of your program with these stakeholders in your area, airports, medevacs, etcetera. And I I think just that's generally just a good thing. And, you know, if you if you need some help with that to kind of know, like, what level of detail do I tell them or, you know, how much is too much. Like, we're we're willing to help.

But I would say, like, again, nine times out of ten, these these are just, like, people in your community that are curious and just, like, wanna know more, and this is cool stuff you guys are doing with drones. So, yeah, I think everybody's just kinda excited to learn more and just learn about it. So let's see.

Question for you actually, Sujoy. So can you can you speak a little bit more to the train follow in Pathfinder? There's just kind of a question of does Pathfinder include train following as well?

Pathfinder does include train follow. So if, I saw the question. If you're having any issues with that, reach out to your account team. I'm in the area, actually, so we'd love to come by and visit sometime.

But, but, yeah, Pathfinder does do terrain follow. We, for each dock, basically, purchase digital surface models of DSM data and, and terrain data as well, for the for the vehicle to follow.

Sweet.

Yeah. That's a key one for doing that two hundred feet AGL. Right?

Just kind of Yep.

Removes sort of the the mental workload of keeping the drone at the right height. Yeah. That's awesome.

Okay. Another question here about mutual aid. So, like, if go to support another agency with mutual aid, and so you're sort of, like, in a different part of the country or maybe, like, outside of your kind of typical jurisdiction, can you still fly BVLAS? The question is actually, can you fly BVLOS under their waiver, like the agencies that you're supporting? But I would actually kind of frame it as the waivers, the two hundred foot and the four hundred foot waivers are basically nationwide kind of blanket approvals at this point.

And and the four hundred foot ones, if you have one of those, you know, the the four hundred foot is limited to where kind of your DA sensor is, but then you're still allowed to do the two hundred foot outside of that area. So so very likely, your waiver, if you have one of these, covers you to fly two hundred foot beyond Bajahni site in other areas of the country. So, you know, so another way of putting it is you could just use your own waiver still to do that mutual aid, in a nearby agency. Main thing is just the airspace again. So keep, you know, keep an eye on the facility map grids. If you do get into control airspace, those same limitations do apply there.

Yeah. And then a good question about, like, does this airspace authorization process apply to, like, visual line of sight or more kind of like patrol operations?

It's so, like, not DFR. If I'm not doing, like, doc based DFR, can I still do this? And the answer is yes.

You can definitely still run through this process, and it would kinda all be the same.

So, yeah, you're definitely welcome to do that if you're, you know, kind of in just a challenging airspace area and you just wanna do, you know, handheld kind of visual NSA flights.

Yeah. Still got a bit of time. So multidrone. Is multidrone, only valid under one zero seven? So as I mentioned, you know, Vegas' approval is is a part one zero seven waiver today. So, this person astutely recognized I haven't talked about part ninety one multidrone.

So the answer to that is is we are working on the Part ninety one path as well.

There's we did expect that Part ninety one process to just take a little bit longer.

For context, and I hope it's not the same length of time, and I know John's listening, so I'm kinda talking to John here. But for context, the initial two hundred foot waivers took about a year to work through.

And then everything got streamlined, and now just, you know, these are rapid approvals within a week, which which is awesome. So, we we kind of figured part ninety ones would take a little bit longer. And so but we're working it. There's there's a kind of a queue building up.

We're we're helping agencies get requests in, and we're we're hoping to get some of those approved soon. And then and then we'll see what kind of process comes out of that. But but, yeah, we're we're we want it basically to be a choice just like it is today. You can do a part one zero seven waiver.

You can do a Part ninety one waiver, just kind of whatever suits your agency and your your mission best. So, okay. And then just, yeah, like a related question, is there, like, a guide for this yet?

So the answer to that is no. So we're still quite early, in sort of the multidrone journey.

So it's not at a point yet where we kind of have, like, a very clear process ahead. It's it's kind of just back to sort of the traditional, you know, safety review process and the FAA's part and, and figuring this out with them. So we don't have a guide yet today, but hopefully we get there, and that's kinda always our goal is to get some of these first approvals through. We'll figure out kinda all the commonalities and and a way to sort of streamline it, and then, you know, we we want every agency to have this capability at some point.

So, all right. I think, actually, it's okay if we end a few minutes early today. We were missing Steve and and all his, awesome experience and context. But, again, we'll him on another day.

I'm gonna drop I just want to get to the last slide here as kind of we're filtering out. So I'll just leave this, as kind of an outro here. So three QR codes here. One goes to our previous webinars.

So I've got webinars on, like the two hundred, how to do the two hundred foot waiver process, the actual waiver itself. So like, if you have one of these waivers, and you just kind of want to learn about it, or like, sort of hear a version of what you can and can't do with that, there's a webinar on that. We talked about four hundred foot in the last webinar with Cincinnati PD. So you're welcome to go view those.

The the BB loss guide that I've shown a few times is in the middle.

And then the QR code on the right side, this airspace map, you could grab this and bookmark it. It's it's just a Esri map with FA data in it. So the US facility maps, the airport database, the airspace boundaries, and so on. So it's like similar to visualize it, but it has the airport database in it, like the heliports as well. So, you know, you can just use it as kind of a reference tool as you're if you're putting together an airspace authorization request, kind of learn about your airspace. So that's a resource as well.

But, yeah, thanks everybody for joining, and then we'll we'll see you on the next one. So stay safe until then.