Hero Headline

Oklahoma City Police Department has achieved remarkable progress and scale with their drone program over the past few years, and recently became the first agency to successfully run a dock-based drone as a first responder program at the Oklahoma State Fair in September 2023 and again in 2024. The immense work Captain Bussert and Sgt. Dax Laporte have done to reach this stage of their drone program speaks to their passion for drone use in public safety to improve community and officer safety with the help of innovative technologies.

American Electric Power is a leader in drone program excellence. With the nation's largest electricity transmission system at nearly 39,000 miles, AEP has a ton of ground to cover. The team at AEP has replaced traditional methods of inspection with drones, and now are moving into remotely operating drones and docked drones. This gives technicians the ability to inspect assets from their office, and respond immediately to system failures. They are reducing outages for their customers, reducing operational costs and providing staff with safer working conditions.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office helped save a man experiencing severe mental instabilities in an Orlando high-rise hotel. The individual was screaming and threatening to harm himself. He then set a fire in the hotel room. OCSO deployed an X10 to see inside the hotel room from a window, providing officers on the ground intel on the individual’s location and status. With this intel, officers were able to break into the room safely, apprehend the suspect and provide him with medical care.

As part of the USDOT Smart Program, Caltrans prototyped, tested, and successfully deployed a completely off-grid X2 Dock system at a site near the California/Mexico border. This site, to our knowledge, was the first of its kind to rely 100% on solar power, and Starlink for connectivity. This type of innovation sets the stage for off-grid applications across the state of California, allowing for semi-portable, scaled, dock based UAS operations for numerous applications — including construction, bridge inspection, environmental, geotechnical monitoring, and traffic operations missions.

Thomas Butler “TF”, UAS Manager, and Matt Rogers, Operations Leader for Dominion Energy led the rapid installation of three sites within just four weeks of delivery of drones and docks, along with the fast-tracking of essential waivers. They have plans in place to deploy 15 additional Skydio dock solutions.They’re leveraging our solutions across asset inspection, emergency response, feeder inspection, and security patrol. Their vision positions them as true innovators and leaders in the utility industry.

Chicago Police Department scaled their drone program from 0 flights 6 months ago, to now almost daily flights and drone deployment during the Democratic National Convention. One person in particular to recognize from CPD is Marcus Buenrostro, who has led the UAS program from day 1 — organizing the onboarding, training, defining policies and implementation of drones within CPD. CPD is actively scaling their program to incorporate live streaming and plans to add 6 pilots to their team in the next few months.

BNSF was one of the first adopters of Skydio’s S2 as a tool for asset inspection in 2019. That effort evolved into a full scale production of dock-based asset inventory and protection program with dozens of systems deployed across the US. The BNSF program has made substantial impacts to many UAS programs across the nation. Many team members from the original program have gone on to lead efforts at Amazon Prime Air, Virginia Tech, Aerolane and more.

This nomination is for PG&E’s work as one of the largest and most advanced drone-based equipment inspection programs in the world. They were the first utility in California to conduct fully remote drone operations for electric system inspections and continue to scale their daily operations with automated inspection missions. PG&E deserves to be recognized for how they automate data capture in the field, providing a triple advantage of increased system, operator, and community safety; reduced time and resources; and cost savings.

Over the past year, NYPA has hosted their own annual STEM education summer camp, hosted multiple local schools as well as Boys & Girls Clubs. They are by far one of the most proactive advocates of youth drone education within enterprise companies that are utilizing drones. Peter Kalaitzidis and the team at NYPA are invested in sharing their work with the next generation and routinely make these outreaches a part of their job, not an exception.