Aerial Achievement Awards Spotlight | Skydio Ascend '24
While flying robots are cool, it’s what people do with them that is truly inspiring. See how this year’s award winners are using Skydio drones to keep critical infrastructure working, protect their communities, and save lives.
Learn more about Skydio Aerial Achievement Awards.
- I'm gonna make a personal confession.
- Um, I'm a nerd,
- okay? And I think I can speak for a lot of my
- fellow Skydians when I say we just love to geek out on really cool
- technology.
- And let's face it, it doesn't get much cooler than making
- robots that
- fly.
- But that's not what motivates us. What motivates us was the kind of
- stories you just heard. It's what you do with the
- tech that we make that gets us out of bed every day.
- And so I'm very excited for this next session because we're gonna
- move the spotlight off of our technology and, and, and our products
- and so on, and onto you in our first ever
- Skydio Aerial Achievement Award ceremony.
- [audience cheering]
- Hey. Maybe not quite as dramatic as Adam, you know, pulling the wing wall c-
- curtain down, but in my mind it was gonna be a dramatic moment. All right.
- So we got a number of, uh, of awards we're gonna, uh, hand out
- today to recognize many different aspects
- of the contributions that our customers are making in the world
- with their drone technology. Now, this first one is what we call the
- Frequent
- Flyer Award, and this goes to those who have flown the
- most number
- of flights in a year, and it's staggering what these
- organizations have done. In fact, each of these companies, we have a
- tie, have flown over 20,000 flights in a year.
- Uh, given the 250,000 flights we're on track
- to do this year, that
- means that collectively they're like 16% of the flights being done,
- uh, with Skydio in the world today.
- And today's winners are Duke Energy and BNSF
- Railway. Please welcome Garrett Scott, Chief Pilot from Duke, and
- Nerissa Perkins [audience cheering] Senior Manager of u- UAS Operations from
- BNS.
- [upbeat music]
- Thank you. Congratulations.
- All right, why don't you hand Nerissa her...
- Congratulations. All right, we got our photographer. Come on in here.
- We're gonna get y- Let me give you that.
- We have our photographer. There they are in the back. They're, uh...
- Awesome.
- All right, congratulations again.
- [audience cheering] Nerissa, why don't you just...
- We're gonna have y'all move off this way. Thank you.
- I should have said, "When I call your name,
- come up here to my right, exit off
- to my left." [laughs] All right.
- Our next category is called From Flight to Insight, and this
- recognizes an organization that's done a fantastic job of
- turning data gathered by drones into
- actionable insights that are making an impact on their
- organization or their company. And, uh, this year's winner
- is BNSF Railway.
- And so we're gonna welcome Nerissa back on stage again to receive the
- award.
- [audience cheering]
- [upbeat music]
- Okay. Now, BNSF was one of the first adopters of
- Skydio's S2, uh, as a tool for asset management way
- back in, uh, uh, 2019. So they've been
- working through this with us on this journey for a long time.
- Um, you guys even developed an application,
- I think you called Mission
- Control. It allowed you to do unique things with
- the drones such as putting
- eyes on derailed train cars, uh, verifying or refuting rail car
- spills, post-mortem rail ins- or, uh, post- uh, storm rail
- inspections. Not post-mortem. [laughs]
- [laughs]
- That's, that's grim. Uh, and managing large container, uh,
- yards. So, uh, for that innovation, congratulations.
- [audience cheering] Thank you. [upbeat music] I
- think we're gonna get the...
- All
- right. Thank
- you.
- All right, for our next category, we call this the Best New Program
- of the Year.
- Uh, and this re- this recognizes an organization
- that has stood up
- very quickly and made an impact very quickly with a new
- drone program within the calendar year.
- And this year's, uh, award winner is Chicago PD.
- [audience cheering]
- Now, your, your... The dramatic footage we're about to watch
- here,
- uh, is the culmination of a citywide task
- force organized to solve a
- series of 30 armed robberies.
- Victims were being lured by, uh, Facebook ads to
- come buy dirt bikes, and when they showed up, this gang
- basically pistol-whipped them, held them at gunpoint, and forced them
- to give up their money.
- Um, that's not what the drone program was set up to do.
- The amazing thing is it was set up to do the- to get ready to do
- security overwatch for the Democratic National Convention.
- But within less than six months, Chicago PD had achieved their
- overwatch and had begun to solve major crime, uh,
- situations such as this. So on behalf of, uh, Chicago
- PD, please welcome Marcus Buenrostro to the
- stage to receive the award.
- [audience cheering]
- [upbeat music] Thank you. There you go.
- It's a, it's a little heavy.
- Congratulations. You get a-
- Awesome. Congratulations again.
- [audience applauding]
- This next award goes a little bit a different direction.
- This is f- our Social Impact Award, and this is
- highlighting organizations that have used Skydio drones in
- non-standard
- ways to impact education, the
- environment, the community, to do something that makes the
- world a better place. So let's see the story
- of New York Power Authority, NYPA, and how
- they are making the world a better place.
- [gentle music] I'm in a area where
- kids normally would never, ever get to probably even touch a drone.
- So the fact that they were able to get
- that experience in school, it'll open their
- minds to say, "Hey, maybe I wanna be a drone operator one
- day."
- You can turn the drone-
- That looks so cool. Hello, look.
- Hello. [upbeat music]
- A lot of them open up their eyes, but going from flying to
- seeing the final deliverable has been really, I believe,
- changing of, of what it actually can do.
- It's not just a toy, it's a tool.
- [upbeat music]
- On behalf of NYPA, please welcome the stage Peter Galatsanis.
- [upbeat music] [audience applauding] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
- There you go. Oh. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
- Thank you for the work you guys are doing.
- Oh, man, it's a little heavy.
- All right.
- To the left. To the left. You got it.
- [audience applauding]
- All right, our next category is Best Use of Autonomy.
- This is as exciting as Academy Awards, isn't it? It really is.
- [audience laughing] All right. Best Use of Autonomy recognizes
- organizations that have pushed the boundaries of drone autonomy,
- maximizing capabilities and, and really doing unique
- things with the technology.
- This year's winner is Pacif- Pacific Gas and Electric, PG&E.
- [audience applauding]
- [upbeat music] So PG&E has been a real trail- trailblazer in the utility sector.
- Uh, they were the first utility in California
- to implement fully remote
- operations with drones. Uh, they've been u- using automated data
- capture, uh, in the field. They've been enhancing system operator and
- community safety while reducing time, resource
- expenditure, and operational costs.
- Their use of drone technology reflects a commitment to modernizing the power grid
- in California, which will have impact across the state
- and beyond.
- Please welcome to the spay- to the stage, on behalf of PG&E, Kellan
- Kirk, UAS program manager.
- [upbeat music]
- [audience applauding] Congratulations.
- There it is. Awesome.
- Congratulations again, Kellan.
- [audience applauding]
- All right, our next category here is Achievements in
- Innovation, sub-category Transportation.
- Uh, this category recognizes organizations
- that have pioneered new and
- innovative uses of Skydio drone technology, uh, and
- moved it into uncharted territory, finding creative and impactful
- applications for autonomous drones in the area of
- transportation. And this year's winner is Caltrans.
- [upbeat music]
- [audience applauding and cheering] As part of the USDOT SMART program, Caltrans
- prototype tested and successfully deployed a completely
- off-grid X2 Dock system, uh, at a site near the
- California-Mexico border. This site, to our knowledge, is the very first one to
- use entirely solar power and Skylink, uh, uh, Star- uh, yeah,
- Starlink. Um, this type of innovation sets the stage for
- off-grid
- applications across the state and everywhere else.
- So please welcome to the stage Aaron Chamberlain, senior transportation
- engineer for Caltrans.
- [audience applauding]
- [upbeat music] Congratulations.
- It's heavy. [laughs]
- Yeah, it is. [laughs] Thank you.
- Congratulations again.
- [audience applauding] Our next award is for innovation as
- well,
- uh, in this case, in DFR.
- Well, you've already seen this group up on
- stage.
- Uh, how can we not recognize them for the
- trailblazing,
- uh, pr- work that they're doing at such an
- enormous scale.
- Uh, this year's winner is NYPD.
- [audience applauding]
- New York City is unlike any other environment.
- [upbeat music] Just people, cars, things everywhere.
- When you think about the officer in the car who gets the radio
- call, you wanna best equip the responding team
- of officers with as much information as possible, and we
- do a lot of that through the phone, a lot of that through the iPad.
- But if you can pull up a feed from a drone that's already there
- and view that on your phone, I think that that's, that's huge.
- It's absolutely huge. [upbeat music]
- This is gonna be the first, uh, drone as a first responder remote op
- flight.
- Uh, our remote ID is activated. We are going to launch and
- flying north at 150 feet. Now we're flying
- drones from a computer in Queens, and the drone is in the Bronx.
- This is real to us, right? We're operationalizing this in real life
- at this
- precinct, the 4-7. So all four docks and drones on the rooftop.
- We're gonna bring it to the big city, the Big Apple.
- Now we can see firsthand exactly what's going on and be able to move police
- resources around.
- It's fundamentally going to change the way we do policing here in the city.
- Please welcome back to the stage Rich Nerag.
- [audience cheering]
- [upbeat music] There you go, man.
- Got some hardware for you.
- All right. Congratulations again.
- [audience applauding]
- All right, our last innovation award, this t- is in the utility space.
- Uh, once again, we're recognizing unique
- and innovative uses of drone
- technology in operations. In this case, the winner is
- Dominion Energy.
- [audience applauding]
- So Thomas Butler, UAS manager, and Matt Rogers, operations
- leader for Dominion Energy, led the rapid installation of three
- sites, uh, within just four weeks of delivery of
- their drones and their
- docks, along with fast-tracking the essential
- waivers.
- They have plans in place to deploy 15 additional Skydio Dock solutions,
- and they're leveraging the solutions across asset inspection, emergency
- response, feeder inspection, and security patrol.
- Their visi- their vision positions them as a true
- leader and innovator in this
- space. Congratulations.
- [audience applauding]
- Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Congratulations. There you go.
- All right. Our next award is for program excellence
- in critical infrastructure. This award recognizes
- organizations in critical infrastructure sectors that have excelled in
- integrating Skydio drones into their inspection and maintenance
- programs. And this year's winner is American Electric
- Power, AEP.
- [audience applauding]
- We improve situational awareness of forged outages and
- arm our crews with all the information before they load up the trucks with
- materials, the test equipment, whatever they need to restore.
- We have massive amounts of work, whether it be upgrading infrastructure
- or maintenance on equipment.
- From a safety perspective, we've gotta go out there
- and look at those assets, and
- they've got to match what's on our drawings,
- and then ultimately it's got to get to
- dispatch.
- We have to take people out of their normal job, whether it be 10 minutes
- away or hours away to a substation.
- Using the X10 remotely, it's just gonna save time,
- and ultimately it's
- gonna save customer minutes of interruption, too.
- We're gonna be able to restore service quicker.
- The X10's the, the perfect tool to do the job.
- We can take pictures of nameplates from 20 feet away.
- We were able to achieve everything that we needed to complete
- our 5/8 walk downs.
- Gonna go from walk downs to fly downs.
- Please welcome to the stage Alex Ramirez, VPE Customer
- Experience for AEP.
- [audience cheering]
- [upbeat music] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Congratulations.
- Well done.
- There you go. We're gonna, we're gonna look to our photographer
- over here.
- Awesome. Congratulations again.
- [audience applauding]
- All right.
- It's not best picture, but it's still a pretty big award.
- In fact,
- our last award
- is the most important one. It's the Lifesaving Achievement Award.
- In fact, it's so important that we had multiple nominees,
- and we felt like we
- needed to share all their stories.
- So before we get to the winner, I want to share the stories of the first
- three runners up,
- and those are Anderson Police Department, Pasco County Sheriff's Office, and
- Sumner County Office of Emergency Management.
- In the Anderson Police Department story, they were out actually training with
- Skydios when a woman came up in distress because her husband was
- having a medical emergency, and they were able to use the drone right there
- from training to help guide in emergency responders and save this
- man's life.
- In Pasco County, a child went missing, and they were
- able to use the drone to find the child and the person who had abducted
- them in the woods, saving the child and returning him safely to their
- home.
- And finally, Sumner County Office of Emergency
- Management, a
- man in clear mental distress, suicidal,
- was lost out in a field. They'd been searching for hours.
- They put the drone up. They were able to find him,
- get him home safely, get him the treatment he needed.
- Let's give a round of applause to our three runners up.
- [audience applauding]
- Our winner, and this is a story that you actually saw a piece of
- yesterday in the presentation, is Orange County Sheriff's
- Office.
- [laughs]
- [cheering] [gentle music]
- It is
- 9801 International Drive.
- All right, and tell me what's happening.
- So we have a very violent guest staying in this
- room. He's yelling about killing a demon, and he's, like, banging
- on the walls and stuff. We're trying to make contact, but he
- is not
- compliant.
- Sheriff's Office.
- Units responding for the 25. The room is gonna be on the 18th floor.
- He's refusing to open the door, and no personal contact has been made.
- They're saying he's extremely violent and it's just two, one adult in the room.
- Let's just walk through it, okay?
- We're here to help you. All right?
- No one else in here. Sir, we do have a drone operator down here.
- Do you want to see if we can throw that up there so we can get eyes in on
- that
- window? Get everybody out of here. Yeah, 10-4.
- Somebody, uh,
- will do that, but-
- There it is. It's that one. It's that window right there.
- Where, you see that guy moving? That's him.
- So he's pretty much knocked out a lot of the window then it looks like.
- Just signal 14. I have eyes on him with the drone outside.
- He's got, like, a shower rod. Now he's hitting the window.
- Oh, I think actually he's gonna break it.
- Are there deputies next door? Those are deputies?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Uh, he has a, uh-
- The companion door?
- ...
- couch.
- No.
- All right.
- He's banging on this one. Yeah.
- He's just trying to barricade that now.
- Try to move stuff over.
- 'Cause there, there's no couch in front of it
- or the couch would be sticking out.
- At the front door. Okay. And then out the side door,
- he's got a couch out on that
- side.
- And there's literally a yellow trail. Uh, I think that's request code.
- So it looks like that there is a space-
- Entry response
- ... and then barricaded past the front door.
- We're not sure if he's trying to start, like, something on fire in there so start
- working on breaching.
- [banging] Get
- out! I want you to stay! Come on,
- damn it.
- All right. Hit hard.
- Get hard?
- Hard.
- [banging]
- It's a powerful story. It's a powerful story.
- [laughs]
- [cheering] [gentle music]
- Powerful not only because the clearly mentally disturbed man's life
- was saved, we kept the officers safe, and they kept
- the other inhabitants of that hotel safe.
- So on behalf of Orange County Sheriff's, please welcome Lieutenant Rob
- Branch.
- [cheering]
- [upbeat music]
- Congratulations.
- Thank you.
- Congratulations.
- Thanks for having me.
- Congratulations.
- Give you that.
- Come right in here.
- Awesome. Congratulations again.
- [cheering]
- Thanks.
- Congratulations.
- Thanks.
- All right. If you, if you ever doubt this is a live show,
- it in fact is. And I skipped over an entire award winner,
- which
- we're now gonna go back to. Um,
- uh, and this is an award winner who I really
- should not have skipped over
- because they have been a pioneer with us
- since the very beginning, uh,
- with X2s, X10s, DFR.
- Um, this represents program excellence, this award,
- and I'm very proud to announce Oklahoma City PD as the winner.
- [laughs]
- [cheering]
- Oklahoma City 991. What's the emergency?
- My goal for Oklahoma City is to have the technology
- working for the officers and not the officers working for
- technology.
- The, the drones as a whole, especially for our department,
- has been
- n- a night and day
- difference.
- Yeah, I've got three people on the roof.
- It looks like they're walking towards on the north side.
- We got three people on the
- roof. Great job, Wayne.
- It's an amplifier of the manpower that we have on the street because they
- know
- where the person is. They can see it as they arrive to it
- because we have live
- view, live streaming.
- Suspect looks like he was hit.
- 74 says he ran in the backyard back here.
- All right. Uh, George 36 is en route there with the drone.
- It's putting the right people in the right situations with the right information so
- that we have better outcomes.
- He's laying down. He's on the far side.
- Go ahead and not move.
- Being able to talk to the community and going,
- "This is what we're doing to help
- you all." Every tool's a piece to the puzzle on how do I keep the community
- safe.
- Standby, one has been hit. All I've had is a red hoodie.
- All right. I got a victim on the south side.
- We've done the drone in the trunk, and they've been incredibly effective.
- We've had so many success stories with this.
- To be able to tie that into DFR drones as a first responder,
- having drones on top of buildings that can respond to a call without an
- officer,
- you have to look at does this help our officers? Does this help our community?
- This vision does.
- Please welcome Captain Jason Bussard.
- [cheering]
- [upbeat music]
- Congratulations.
- Thank you.
- Sorry about jumping right over you.
- No, that's all right.
- All righty. Congratulations again.
- Thank you.
- All
- right.
- [cheering]
- All right. That really does conclude this year's
- edition of the Aerial
- Achievement Awards.
- C- One more round of applause for all of our
- winners this year, please.
- [cheering]
- I cannot wait to see what the next year brings, and I hope to see a bunch more
- new faces up on stage. Thank you very much,
- and I'm gonna turn it back over to you,
- Macario.
- [cheering]
- All right. We are ready to go. We're gonna have, as I said, Scott,
- you ask,
- ask the experts out there, then off to lunch at 12:30. Thank you all.
- We'll see you out there.
- [cheering]
- [upbeat music]
Watch Time
24 Mins 30 Secs