Turner Construction: Inside the Job site of the Future
In an industry where timely decisions directly impact cost, safety, and schedule, traditional methods of manual and delayed data capture are no longer sufficient. Turner Construction is pioneering a shift—from focusing on how data is collected to how it is applied—delivering actionable insights to the right people at the right time.
Jason Tillman Director, Product Marketing at Skydio joins Gary Chapman, Regional VDC Manager at Turner Construction, as he shares how Turner is transforming its approach to site monitoring through a network of on-demand, autonomous drones. By automating routine site scans and integrating real-time data into existing workflows, Turner is significantly reducing the lag between observation and action.
At the center of this approach is the concept of the Digital Superintendent—a fully autonomous, always-available resource that provides continuous site visibility without increasing headcount. Whether scheduled regularly, triggered remotely, or deployed following weather events, this solution ensures up-to-date site conditions are always accessible.
If you’re exploring how to scale real-time data automation and drive operational excellence, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
- Well,
- hello
- everybody, and, uh, thanks so much for joining us today for
- the, uh, webinar Inside the Jobsite of the Future.
- Before we dive in, I just want to cover a quick, a
- few, uh, housekeeping notes here.
- And first, much like many webinars you guys may have
- attended in the past,
- we will be recording this. And so if you need to step away or maybe you
- wanna revisit a part of the conversation we'll have here today, uh, we'll make sure
- we send you the recording afterwards, just for your reference.
- And then if any of you have any questions along the way, by all means feel
- free to drop those into the, uh, question and answer area, and
- we'll make sure we'll keep an eye on those and respond to those at the next best
- opportunity. I know that we wanna keep things a little bit
- more interactive here,
- so we'll try to address as many of those throughout the, the webinar,
- um, and, uh, get your answers. So with that, we'll go ahead
- and get started here.
- And so, um, my name is Jason Tillman, I'm the director of product
- marketing over here at Skydio, and I'm thrilled to be joined by Jerry,
- uh, Gary
- Chapman from, uh, Turner Construction.
- And Gary, perhaps maybe you can, uh, briefly introduce yourself
- and your role over
- at Turner.
- Sure, yeah. Hey, Jason. Uh, happy to be here for sure.
- Um, but my name is Gary Chapman. I'm our virtual design and construction,
- uh,
- regional manager, um, for Turner Construction.
- Um, sitting in the Nashville, Tennessee office is typically my neck of
- the woods.
- Um, and kind of support projects through the
- southeast, um, and really just all
- over the company. So, yeah.
- Excellent. We'll go ahead and get started here by kicking off
- through some of the
- current challenges with job site oversight today, and then we'll,
- um, take a look at what's changing with the
- tools we actually have available at the
- moment. And then, uh, Gary will take it from there
- and show us what it's like to
- put something like this into practice, and how Turner's actually using
- drone-based
- automation to improve coordination, quality, and efficiency out there.
- And so to get things started, let's think about what it takes to keep a
- job site on
- track. And so there's dozens of moving parts,
- there's multiple
- subcontractors, tons of equipment, weather delays, and
- tight schedules. And the big challenge isn't just executing
- the work, it's
- really knowing what's going on in real time.
- And so the superintendent may walk the site maybe once a day.
- You maybe have the safety lead checks in maybe once a week.
- But nobody can be everywhere at once, and most of the data, whether it's
- photos or updates or observations, um, those are really collected
- manually, inconsistently, and uploaded later, if sometimes
- even at all. And so that's a massive visibility gap
- that really
- slows everyone down.
- And so let's look at how decisions typically unfold.
- And so maybe something happens at the site, maybe it's a trench was filled in or
- maybe a delivery was missed. But unless someone really documents it,
- shares it, and escalates it, really nobody knows about it.
- So there's a lag between these processes, steps here of incident
- capture, reporting it, and then ultimately making the decision.
- And so by the time that someone acts, the schedule's already slipping or maybe
- someone's already at risk. So what we really need
- is a way to compress this
- timeline to get actionable visibility while work is actually happening and
- not simply after the fact.
- And so this is an example of what an efficient, scalable mission workflow could
- look like. And so you start with the mission,
- um, you plan the flight remotely, you collect the data, send it to
- the cloud, and then have it analyzed, reviewed by your team, all
- without needing anyone on site every single time.
- But for most teams, the reality is actually quite different, especially
- during that capture stage where things oftentimes break down.
- So it could be because of the person, uh, who you need might be unavailable.
- Maybe the drone that you need requires a skilled pilot.
- Uh, perhaps even maybe that the site may be too large to cover
- quickly,
- or maybe even that the images may not be detailed enough in order to make a
- decision or, or otherwise. And so this slows down everything
- and limits what you can inspect. And then necessarily how often.
- And so drone-based inspection, particularly those autonomous drones,
- really solve this capture problem. So first, it's fast.
- You can scan a site in minutes rather than hours.
- Second, it's consistent. So you get the same angles,
- you get the same
- altitude, the same flight path every single time.
- And that's huge for progress tracking and comparison over time.
- And it's also very versatile. So with modular sensors, you can zoom in,
- um,
- on things. You can get thermal readings for hotspots
- or maybe even
- wide-angle views of staging areas.
- And because no one really has to walk the site or operate the drone manually,
- you can... You really reduce that risk while increasing your coverage
- out there.
- So this really brings us to the concept of what we refer to as the digital
- superintendent. So think of this as kind of a virtual
- assistant for site
- oversight. It's always available, and it's always aware.
- So instead of relying on someone walking the job site with a
- checklist, the system flies on its own.
- You can schedule flights daily or hourly or wherever really is most
- convenient for you. You can trigger them remotely,
- and you can inspect
- overnight, pre-shift, or maybe even after storms
- or other events.
- And it's a new way to really maintain a level of situation awareness, not
- with people, but with better automation.
- And then the data it captures flows directly into your systems for
- analysis or review or really what's, what's, uh, needed for your moment.
- And so how do you really bring this to life?
- And so we really see this as with the Skydio X10 and the Dock.
- And then the X10 is the drone that is intelligent and it avoids
- obstacles. It flies even in areas where GPS might not
- be the best
- and unreliable. And it's modular, meaning really it can adapt to your
- changing needs. And that includes attachments offering
- RTK/PPK for those precision mapping situations.
- It could be spotlight when you wanna put more light on a
- particular area,
- or it could be speakers if you want to have a one-way
- communication to maybe
- someone breaching your perimeter or maybe some sort of security violation
- that's
- out there. And so, um, so whether it's really needing a wide
- area overview or maybe a detailed look at maybe some rebar placement,
- it really adapts with your needs there.
- And then the Dock is really designed for those tough job site environments.
- It's IP rated, it protects the drone, keeps a charge, and then
- allows it to fly fully autonomously.
- And then, uh, for connectivity, how do you actually maintain that?
- We have Skydio Connect, and that really makes sure
- that you're not tethered to the
- site. And so you can fly remotely from a
- controller nearby.
- Um, you can control it, um, a lot more remotely over LTE or
- 5G from hundreds if not thousands of miles away.
- And this flexibility really means that you can
- inspect when you need to, um, and what you need to inspect,
- regardless of who's physically on site.
- But, you know, really, this isn't really theoretical.
- You know, autonomous drones have already been in use
- by, um, those in the
- construction industry, uh, particularly those companies you actually
- see here.
- And this is a great opportunity to actually hear from Gary, um,
- and see how he's
- actually implemented this over at Turner. So I'll pass it off to you, Gary.
- Yeah.
- Appreciate it. Uh, let me get my screen queued up.
- Okay. You guys see my screen okay still?
- Looking good.
- Good deal. Well, um, as I mentioned before with Turner
- Construction,
- just a little bit about, uh, Turner. I think it's, um, it's kind of...
- It puts a lot of context on how critical the decisions we make around things
- like drones are, uh, because, you know, we're, we're the, the nation's largest
- contractor, and we do a lot of work, um, a lot of, a lot of risk that's
- out there. Um, we have about 12,000 employees,
- and that's always
- growing. Uh, we... And we complete about 1,500 projects a
- year,
- um, which is a lot of, uh, not only a lot of projects, but a lot of
- opportunity. And we do a lot of different, you know, diverse
- industries as well, right? And I think hopefully
- that should touch to a lot of
- folks on this call where, you know, historically you might look a lot of tech,
- uh, and drones is one of those, right?
- That they're only really leveraged to its maximum
- capabilities in like data centers or, or large maybe sports
- projects, and they're not really, they're not really, um,
- a good fit for those
- smaller jobs. It might be, you know, a government office, you know, or,
- you know,
- a, a, just a, a small manufacturing building.
- But with this type of, of, um,
- access and which we'll kind of get into later on, um, it really
- touches everything that, that, that really everyone on this call I'm sure
- does.
- Uh, you don't have to be in the data centers.
- Don't have to be into, to commercial offices or, or, um,
- um, or, you know, airports even. Um, this really touches
- everyone, uh, that should be on this call that's in this
- space.
- And wanted to kind of throw this slide there because to kind of show how
- important
- it is for us to choose our partners.
- Um, you know, we've, we've chosen to work with Skydio.
- It's been great for, for, you know, for I guess going on a little over a year
- now.
- Um, but with such a large network of projects
- that we have globally,
- as you can see on the screen, you know, I think we all know one mishap
- or one issue
- can have detrimental, um, you know, detrimental impact to our company as a
- whole.
- So there is a lot of red tape within Turner, a lot of, uh, risk management,
- um, that goes on. And, um, and that's what, you know,
- making the right
- choice with the right company is, is not only crucial for us, but, um,
- hopefully
- that you guys are, are taking that into consideration that, you know,
- what impacts
- one project is really... It could have ripple effects across your
- organization.
- Uh, but really just my, my, our drone vision statement, um,
- it's really
- around just having that network of, you know, on-demand sensors, right?
- I think that's the key, right? That on-demand way we could capture data
- wherever we're at, uh, that kind of fosters that shift and
- that focus
- around not so much how it's collected, right, um, but more how the data's
- applied, right? How it's, how it's used to analyze, um,
- existing conditions. How it can, um, how it can really, you know-
- Predict trends and you're really putting all of that power, uh, to, in the
- right person's hands, right? To make the best decision at that time,
- right? So I think you guys have heard of
- that a lot, probably, you know, the right
- data to the right person to make the best decision.
- That's certainly applicable to how, um, how remote
- operations with, with docks and not just docks,
- but any type of remote,
- um, robot, uh, we can kind of apply that to. So that's where I, I...
- We're trying to push everything around drones, um, and
- we're really trying to get away from that, uh, kind of manual flights and
- the, the, the, you know, a manual, um, operator or manual pilot even.
- Um, our personal workflow is pretty simple.
- For, for years now, really, we've been using,
- I would say almost a decade really,
- uh, worked really, really closely with DroneDeploy.
- We basically...
- They're an enterprise customer of ours where we run everything through
- DroneDeploy,
- whether that's ground capture with a, you know, Spot Dog or other type of ground
- robotics or, you know, of course aerial data obviously with the,
- the mini drone,
- uh, platforms out there. Uh, but really in the last year or two,
- we've tried
- to focus on, okay, what's the next version of aerial data
- capture gonna look like? And it's definitely around a dock
- workflow.
- So we really looked at, you know, you know,
- there's a couple players in the dock
- space out there and what's the best choice for, for where our vision's at and
- where we're trying to get to as a company and where we see the job site of the
- future going. Um, and so that's where we utilize our
- hardware.
- It's kind of a hard line in the sand, right?
- Our hardware is a Skydio platform, obviously an X10 with the
- dock, uh, in this case. Um, and we just simply use
- the open API that's between Skydio and DroneDeploy, um,
- to just push all of that to DroneDeploy.
- So, um, out of the thousands of users we have
- across the company,
- uh, really across the world that use DroneDeploy all the time,
- we're not really
- interrupting that process by, by introducing a different way we're
- collecting
- the data. It's still pushed out to DroneDeploy.
- So as the end user, the back-end user, they, they don't know if it came from a
- dock, uh, a drone, a person. It's, it's all in that DroneDeploy platform.
- It's easily pushed over from, um, from the Skydio API that we have.
- Uh, and what, you know, our current model
- that we've had for really years, I
- mentioned earlier that we really don't have internal pilots.
- Um, and that's really by design. We knew one day, right, that, uh,
- actually probably came a little quicker than I, I would've put my money on, uh,
- but
- one day we would be where we're at today, right?
- We would have a dock solution where we could comfortably, I think that's the key
- word, and confidently, uh, conduct remote operations,
- um, in a safe, effective way. And if we can do that, do we
- really need to have, you know, pilots that, you know,
- where we're buying new
- drones, new hardware year after year after year,
- and we're really investing
- in a lot of people's times to become expert pilots?
- Because, you know, there's a time and a place for everything, and
- we're, we're a Turner construction company.
- We're not Turner drone pilot company, right? We're... We build buildings.
- Um, as much as I would love to have, you know, a network of on-site pilots,
- we're
- just, that's just not what we do as a company,
- right?
- So we really looked at how can we leverage, um,
- uh, kind of that scalability of flying drones
- and we use, we've been
- using for I guess five or six years now, ever since they came out with it, uh, the
- data-on-demand services from DroneDeploy.
- Um, we just describe it as Uber for drones.
- Um, if you just think about that for a sec, Uber for drones, there's,
- that,
- I would think, should explain it to, you know, crystal clear of how,
- um, how you want a drone map, drone data, drone, anything to do with a drone or
- aerial data, you basically order it through data on
- demand and a day
- or two later, it's there on your dashboard.
- And we're not really, really focused on how it's collected,
- but more so how
- we're analyzing it. So this process is very repeatable.
- It's very scalable. Um, it's not...
- The upfront cost is of course is, is greater 'cause we're having to pay for
- this
- service, but you gotta look at, like having one pilot, you know,
- I'm paying them
- to fly three different jobs in a day. Um, that's expensive.
- Whenever I could have that same, you know, three projects flown from
- me sitting at my desk or from someone on the other side of the
- country sitting at
- their desk or anything that, you know, that comes, that comes, um,
- to mind when it comes to needing aerial data.
- So we really put all of our focus on having zero on-site
- pilots and utilizing data on demand.
- Um, and of course, I think everyone on this call,
- you're probably on this call
- because you already know this. But
- this, this type of technology, the, um, kind of going off script here, but
- what excites me the most about this conversation that we're having today
- is that out of all the technologies that are out there, um,
- and that's part of one
- of my main jobs, right, is to assess, you know, what's out there in the industry
- and, you know, kind of hand choose what we think
- is best at the time to have the
- biggest impact to, to our company of building buildings,
- right?
- Um, and what excites me the most about this
- topic is
- by far, uh, um, aerial data or drones specifically
- has that biggest impact across the most folks in
- construction or, and even the AEC side.
- Um, you have a lot of technologies that might, you know, impact a certain,
- you
- know, field or a certain, uh, department.
- But as you can see, this is kind of in chronolog-
- chronological order, um,
- where from the very, very beginning at planning a site,
- site development, boom,
- drones, civil estimating, drones, site visualization, drones.
- Um, the list goes on and on and on all the way through the very end of
- the project,
- um, for those final as-builts, right?
- So our marketing, our BD teams, our owners, our clients, our design
- teams, our punch li- or our engineers, our, um, media
- folks, uh, quality control, um, our safety group,
- huge, huge asset. Uh, I've actually tried to argue of,
- of how the safety
- team should be paying for drones, not the, the, you know, the BIM or the VDC team
- because, you know, they can get just as much
- if not more benefit from just, you
- know, their safety workflow. So I think we all agree that drones are
- an, an incredible useful tool, and when you can combine that type of
- usefulness across all of our projects, it really becomes, um,
- you know, wanting more and more of it. And that's kind of been our problem.
- You can see this is our timeline. We've, uh, got about 433 active projects.
- It's a f- a few months old. Um, but we're obviously adding more
- projects, you know, year after year after year.
- Um, and we, we fly a lot, but again, we don't have any internal drone
- pilots. This is all from, um, a third-party drone service that
- flies for us and collects the data.
- Um,
- switching gears again, going through a couple more slides, uh,
- 'cause I really
- wanna get into the live demo to, to get some questions and,
- and get your guys'
- mind kind of thinking of where, where you guys could take it.
- Um, but we l- we utilize everything from, you know, this, this
- remote capability for, um, you know, for drones, not just for
- aerial data, but for ground as well.
- So whether it comes from the air, whether it comes from the ground, um,
- it all kind
- of filters into that, um, into our choice of an enterprise platform,
- which is DroneDeploy, that we've had a lot of success with,
- and I'm sure most of
- the folks on this call has as well.
- Um, kind of switching gears to our current
- state, what we're doing today.
- Uh, and this was, again, a, a screenshot from this week from about
- 30 minutes ago or maybe an hour ago.
- But, um, this is what we're doing today.
- So we have our, our dock from Skydio that we'll get into in a sec.
- Um, and our teams just go in just like a
- meeting room, um, I'm sure most of you
- guys have in your offices. You know, you can go book a, you know,
- reserve a meeting
- room. Um, but to manage the, the demand for,
- you know, the usage of, of the dock or the drone that's in the dock, right,
- um, you know, we just implemented a calendar.
- It says, "Hey, you want time with the dock? Go in there.
- If it's available, book it. If it's not, you know, wait your turn." Um, don't
- interrupt our mapping missions, our daily things
- that we do typically from 3:00 to
- 5:00, uh, or 3:00 to 5:30. Other than that, you know, there's,
- you know, our OAC
- meeting we had. I took this screenshot during our OAC
- meeting a few hours ago.
- And, uh, you know, d- we do those live updates instead of
- aerial pictures from last week or a couple days ago or even yesterday.
- It's always awesome and great, but there's always something about, "Well,
- they
- don't look like that, that now," or, "That doesn't...
- That changed," or, "This is... Has this started yet?" But
- when you show a live
- stream, um, in your OAC meetings, and for you guys that
- don't know, uh, OAC is your owner architect contractor
- meeting.
- It's the, the one formal meeting you have during the
- week where you talk about,
- um, um, you know, really high-level things with owners,
- and they really wanna know progress.
- And again, we've had a lot of success showing, um,
- just that live
- stream of the site, um, at that time.
- And the really cool thing is, and you'll see later,
- you don't even have to join
- the meeting to see what's going on.
- Everyone knows at that timeframe the drone's in the air,
- and if they really wanna
- just see what's going on with the site, just, just log into the link that we have,
- um, and you can just look at it on your phones
- to see what's going on.
- Um, they're starting to call it the drone
- show, right?
- "What time's the drone show on?" It's on, you know, every Wednesday at 11:00 to
- 2:00 or 11:00 to 1:00. So really cool way to share data.
- But that's how, you know, today we're, we're managing access and
- we're pushing it to our teams. Um, again, we just started this a few months
- back, so we're really just now comfortable
- getting people to just, you know,
- utilize it for a lot of different things.
- So,
- um,
- I can come back to that slide if we need to.
- But, uh,
- also what we're currently doing with, um, all of these missions, right, is that we
- have these pre-planned missions that fly, you know, automatically.
- We have some that if somebody picks up the phone and says, "You know, hey, Gary, I
- got a, I got a issue with the Bollinger Bridge,"
- right?
- I can just simply hit run that mission and it'll just, of course,
- take us straight
- out there to it. Um, you can import, like, locations and things from other
- softwares like Procore or, or ACC of where you can, you know, have
- a list of all of your rooms or your areas that's of interest.
- And then you can create those custom missions inside the Skydio cloud
- where... And it's kind of limitless, right?
- And that's kind of what we're doing now.
- We're having hundreds and hundreds of, of m- missions that if this
- topic comes up, it can just go straight to it.
- Um, and that's really helpful over huge sites,
- right?
- You know, one site that we're currently, uh, on now, you know, it's, uh, it's
- about, you know, five, uh, 750 acres or so.
- So if someone wants to talk about, you know, um, a,
- a manhole on the other side of
- the, the site, you know, it's a lot easier just to hit the button
- to take me there
- than to try to navigate through it and, and just see where to go and, and all that
- good stuff. So we have all of these missions
- pre-planned out,
- and really what all this is for, it's, it's to kind of feed that, those different
- AI platforms, right? We haven't really hit on that yet, but,
- but that's really what
- excites me the most, and I think that's what excites the
- industry is now that you
- have these different AI tools that are kind of doing a lot of the analytical
- work
- for you, you really can just... You're really limited on, you know,
- how often can you give it information to analyze, and that's, that's
- a big thing we'll probably, probably end on.
- But, um, keep that in mind that for me personally,
- and I know the industry as a
- whole for the most part, it's never really been about capturing the
- data, it's
- about capturing it often and having-
- Gary?
- Yeah. Go ahead.
- Um, couple quick questions that just came in.
- Sure.
- Hopefully you have on this. First one is h- how are...
- Grant was asking, "How are you assessing what kind of project
- gets a drone,
- uh, gets a drone asset?"
- So great question, and right now, um, it's
- basically everyone, uh, because two reasons why I say
- that. One is we did a, a cost anal- or a kind of cost
- comparison on how we're currently, you know, utilizing drones on sites.
- You know, I mentioned earlier we're using data on
- demand and some of these third
- party pi- third-party pilots, and there's a cost there, right?
- And, um, and we anticipate those costs into
- our overall budgets. But when we're looking at this,
- this kind of takes away that,
- that cost that we, we were carrying anyways for drone pilots
- and drones in
- general. It kind of just replaces that cost, right?
- Because now it's, it's always on site as a tool.
- Um, you know, and the robot doesn't care
- if it gets paid a dollar an hour or 50
- bucks an hour, right? It's gonna, it's gonna do the work.
- So what kind of projects?
- Obviously this is, you know-
- New to the, uh, the industry as a whole, but we are planning on,
- uh, looking at our bigger sites first that has the largest footprint.
- Um, just because it's, you know, it's a useful tool for efficiency to kind
- of get
- around to cover large areas. But, um, as you'll see later
- on, you can do interior flights that really might make a lot of sense for
- our high-rises, right? To go in and out of different levels quickly where,
- you
- know, Spot dogs or ground robotics are kind of limited.
- So there's really no, no right or wrong answer.
- I think to answer the question simply, it's if you have a budget for drone data
- on your project and you're planning to use drones on your project, then this would
- be a candidate.
- And how you just brought up the interior, we actually had Connor ask a very similar
- question. Like, with the obstacle avoidance in the X10,
- um, and other s- some of the ca- uh, safety capabilities,
- how can this technology
- be used indoors to benefit, like, inspections or quality control or kind of
- working in place tracking? But it sounds like you-
- Mm-hmm
- ... you're gonna cover that a little bit later, so.
- Yeah. Who asked that question again?
- Connor.
- Connor, yeah. So Connor is ... He's, he's reading my, uh, what
- excites me the most too, right? This-- So Connor, this is to your point and your
- question of once, once you kinda see this computer vision
- and this
- autonomy, uh, navigation and how it confidently
- navigates its surrounding areas, that's the first place my mind went was,
- man, this
- would be a great interior tool as well.
- So, um, so yeah, we'll demo some of that.
- We'll fly into a little, little area and, uh, um, and the, the
- confidence that I have with the obstacle avoidance, um, you know, knock on wood,
- uh, you know, that allows you to kind of conduct those,
- those inspections,
- especially with the n- the 90-degree gimbal that we'll look at.
- Um, so yeah, that's, that's a, a, a great place where your mind's
- going because it's a great tool for outside, but it's not limited to
- just outside. So
- great question.
- So that future state, um, that we're looking at, of course, is
- now that we're feeding this AI beast or this AI machine,
- um, you know, let's run it through our existing
- platforms that we already have.
- Uh, what you're seeing on the screen is our existing platform that we have with
- DroneDeploy and their Safety AI platform where, um, you know,
- historically we've uploaded ground data to it, um, because we really couldn't
- capture data that often from the air and we didn't wanna fly, you know,
- once a month or once a week and then, you know, uh, it pop a safety
- issue from a week ago, right, that would've been critical
- and could've killed
- somebody, right? So we've typically only used it, um,
- the Safety AI type
- of features with ground data, [clicks tongue] uh,
- 'cause we're capturing all the
- time on the ground. But with the air, right, you can really,
- uh, feed this AI, um, AI, keep calling it AI
- beast. I think that's just the best way to,
- to describe it.
- Uh, kind of feed this AI platform
- with data every day all the time over hundreds of acres, right?
- It's not biased to how many, um... It might take a little longer to process
- it,
- right, but it's still gonna ingest it, it's still going to, uh, analyze it, and
- it's still gonna provide valuable insights that used to take, you know,
- days, weeks, or, or never even got caught altogether by our
- current
- safety teams, no matter how, how much we tried.
- So, um, that's something if you guys park your mind on of like,
- wow, if we
- could capture all the time and run it through some kinda AI platform,
- like, our safety folks could be, you know, they could show up every morning and
- say, "You know, this is what I need to address today," instead
- of, you know,
- showing up, "Okay, let me go find areas
- that I need to address today." Right?
- So it's really looking at efficiency in a super lean way to make
- our projects safer, to make our, uh, safety professionals more efficient in
- their
- jobs. And something that a lot of people don't think of that's
- a super, [laughs]
- um, you, you, your corporate folks will love to hear
- this, but it's a really high
- impact that's not really talked about that much.
- It's lowering your insurance rates potentially on projects.
- When you can capture data often, share that,
- share how you're capturing data and
- how often you are on your job sites with your insurance providers, and you'd be
- shocked to find out that they will lower, uh, or potentially, uh,
- lower your, some of your premiums that could result in, you know,
- millions and
- millions of dollars of savings across your projects.
- So,
- um, that's something that, you know, it's a little nugget for you to take away.
- It's, just have a conversation how much you guys
- are paying for insurance and just
- ask your insurance providers, "What would your,
- what would our premiums be if
- we could document the site every day thoroughly all the time?"
- You might be surprised. So,
- um,
- this is a cool slide. Uh, and this is where we're taking it.
- I put, again, future state here, um, because with, you know, I guess
- I'm sure you guys are thinking you're already aware, right?
- You do have to have a waiver to do all of this, right?
- You can't just operate remote operations with, you know, with a, just a Part
- 107 and, and that's it, right? You need to get your waivers, um,
- specifically around, uh, your beyond visual line of sight, as
- well as your waiver around a VO. Um, we've obtained both of those,
- uh, and when you attain- obtain that through us with the
- Skydio platform and the Dock platform, which is what our current waiver's for,
- uh, you really can open it up to, this is Nashville, Tennessee, for example.
- All those blue dots are all of our, actually all of our DroneDeploy projects
- where
- we fly drones on, you know, constantly.
- And there's no reason why I need to have one Dock per one of those blue
- dots, right? Um, theoretically, I could have one dot for all of
- those because they're within, um, that's about a two-mile radius
- and, you know, um, I have pushed the limits already with the
- Dock,
- uh, to about five miles, and I could've went even further,
- um, if I would've had another battery
- somewhere to, to swap it out.
- So there's a lot of, a lot of, uh,
- you know, ways that you can start to think how you
- can support projects.
- I mentioned earlier you don't have to have those big, you know, money-heavy
- projects to, to implement this kind of tech because,
- you know,
- you're spreading that cost over multiple jobs.
- So, you know, what would've took, you know, let's just call it
- $100,000 to get a Dock, which that's not the case,
- that's just a number I threw out
- there. Um, I can split that 100K across three or four projects,
- and
- now it's, it's, it's all, uh, a lower cost to support
- multiple jobs.
- So that's something that, um, we're excited about, um, to just have a
- conversation as they come up. You're talking with an owner
- or a developer,
- civil engineer, architect or anywhere about any project anywhere in
- Nashville, for
- example, um, you know, let's, I think thirty-five miles an
- hour is our max speed, but within thirty-five miles an hour,
- I can, as a crow
- flies, I can get you there pretty quick.
- Um, so that's something that we're excited to kind of push out
- more and more
- to, uh, just to support aerial data and those conversations that always comes
- up.
- So really cool, exciting concept there.
- I think we've all started probably mapping with drones and construction, you know,
- creating the good old-fashioned two-D orthomosaic, right?
- Um,
- that's still really the MVP for construction, right?
- For inspections, for, you know, f- drone as a first responder to, to
- other types of, um, uh, of industries, right?
- That might not be the case, but for construction,
- that two-D orthomosaic,
- that's key is accurate, right? If it's an accurate
- two-D orthomosaic, that's super valuable, right?
- Um, and you can see in this chart on the right
- side, this is all within our
- company, um, people still utilize, do and capture the map view the most
- often, even though we have, you know, different ways of view data
- walkthroughs, three-sixties, photos, link shares, issues,
- it's still overwhelmingly the map view.
- Um, because with that map view, right, you're able to now
- ingest that, that map view or that two-D orthomosaic, which is
- of course, um, also a three-D mesh that can be
- inserted into those AI analytical platforms that we talked about, right?
- That can, you know, find out what trenches
- are more than four foot deep and
- require, you know, a ladder, um, where, you know, uh,
- it can tell you how far apart, you know, fire extinguishers are from each other.
- It can quantify on a large area how many port-a-johns do you have
- on the job site. It can tell you, you know, almost any
- and everything you want to
- know
- th- through that two-D orthomosaic.
- So that's, that's our main capture is that, because we can
- utilize that for a lot of other different workflows.
- The key takeaway here is,
- is that if you don't have this
- and you don't have this in an accurate way and you don't have it in a often
- or if you're not capturing it often enough, it's kind of the opposite and it's
- kinda useless, right? How many times have you guys had, uh,
- you know, a
- superintendent you're showing an issue to and, you know, the first answer is
- like, "We got that fixed already," or, "That was from two days ago,"
- or last week,
- or, you know, "This is not what the site looks like right
- now," or, "The crane's
- on the other side of the site," or all these things and it's--
- and they're always
- right because this was old data. Even though it's fairly new, it's got to
- be
- very, very, very recent, um, that day, same day, may- a few hours
- ago, maybe yesterday at the latest.
- But when you're able to take that real time two-D map
- and run it through a
- lot of different AI platforms, you can really get some,
- some awesome up-to-date
- insights that has a huge impact to the project.
- Gary, question. Another one came in from, also from Grant.
- Um, he wants to know what kind of software
- training programs are, are
- you developing to ensure that the drones are being used effectively
- and intended
- for each project, and who must be trained within the project
- team?
- Yep. Good, good question, Grant. Um, when we do the live demo,
- I'll kind of show
- some, um, specific missions in our interface, but,
- but ultimately,
- uh, the training that's needed, um, one that all comes from Skydio,
- right? Whenever you guys get a dock, uh, that's part of their platform, they make
- sure that you have a successful rollout.
- Um, you know, they'll gather any pilots
- that you wanna have or anyone really that
- you wanna have, uh, trained on it, um, and make sure that you guys
- are comfortable
- walking away, uh, from that training, you know, with everything that you need to
- know. Um, so I went through all of that really, really,
- uh, it's, it's a simple platform. Again, you have to understand like this, this
- is made for first responders, for police officers, for people whose main
- job is not to be a pilot. They need to focus on, um, you know, an,
- an
- emergency and so it needs to be as simple and easy and reliable as possible,
- um, which, you know, of course downstream it comes to us, uh,
- we-- it's
- really not hard to train. Um, you know, after you guys watch this
- live demo, you're probably, uh, good enough to get a
- dock and, and know how to turn it on and get a link to a website and you're
- up and running. So,
- um,
- so hopefully that answered that question, but that's,
- th- th- we need to go into more detail on that.
- But, um,
- yeah, if you still have that question later on, Grant, uh,
- the live demo, let's,
- uh, circle back to it.
- So, um, RTK for construction was really quick, um,
- very important. Uh, currently with the first few phases of,
- um, with dock, uh, they didn't have RTK available because,
- you know, again,
- more of an inspection tool, more of a, um, you know, a RF, a
- police, you know, first responder type of tool.
- They didn't really need, you know, accurate data to map with.
- Um, but now that we do have the RTK module,
- um,
- successfully, uh, paired with a, with an X10, you know, we're able
- to capture that data accurately, which can therefore filter right back into
- a lot
- of other, um, insights that we're looking for.
- And this is really what we're the most excited about, is having that data ran
- through our AI platforms
- captured accurately so it can push out, um, accurate insights that we're looking
- for. And we can go into a lot more of this,
- but this is, this is again, more of a
- drone deploy, uh, type of workflow.
- It's just we're capturing the data accurately with the Dock and X10,
- often with
- remote flight deck to push it through those platforms inside Drone Deploy or
- wherever that you might be processing your data.
- Um-
- Gary-
- Or go ahead.
- A quick question from Rhett. He wants to know, like,
- do you have an established
- feedback loop for taking drone captures, creating point clouds,
- overlaying onto the BIM model, discovering installed discrepancies and
- publishing QC reports? So he's seen that he's con- uh, condensing
- this loop to the smallest period possible is a really a key output from AI
- software
- Yeah, so I mean, the question is, if I heard it correctly, is are we doing
- that or have a workflow for it? Or is that the, the, the ultimate question,
- or was
- he wanting to know are we having success with it?
- Uh, it sounds... So I'll just reread it.
- So he says, "Do you have an established feedback loop
- for taking those drone
- captures, creating point clouds, overlaying on BIM models,
- discovering install
- discrepancies, and publishing QC reports?"
- Yeah, we don't have the, uh, an active feedback loop, you know,
- really yet, um, for
- this specific platform. We do have, of course, um, you know,
- we've been mapping and
- creating, you know, those, uh, um, uh, point clouds and everything else
- that the, the drone can, you know, uh, recreate and bringing
- that back into the BIM
- model, um, and civil engineering files all the time.
- Um, and there's a lot of feedback on there,
- right?
- There's, you know, accuracy is, is always a question, like this
- is not accurate,
- um, enough to work with their BIM files or civil files.
- That's why I mentioned how important, you know, RTK or PPK is
- to work with this dock and this kind of a workflow because
- without that,
- any integrations that you have with, with BIM files or civil files or, or any
- kind of, you know, um, really any kind of file
- that you're trying to im-
- uh, implement the data to is gonna be not accurate, which is trash,
- right?
- So, um, it's got to be accurate, and that's typically
- the wor- the feedback that we'd get, um, is if something's off then,
- you know, the trust is gone, then what else could be off?
- So we don't have a feedback loop. It's more of a, that's where our BIM
- or our
- BDC folks, uh, specifically in the company kind of take
- the data,
- um, that's produced from the drone, and they kind of are responsible for
- that kind
- of integration. Um,
- and hopefully that answered, answered your question.
- Thank you.
- So the,
- so the, the cadence of capture is this last hurdle, right?
- Uh, we've talked about it many times
- throughout this presentation on how, you know,
- if we could collect the data more often, it's more valuable.
- Um, this breakdown is basically just on our data to current.
- Uh, we have a lot of people viewing it, but we don't have a lot of capture
- happening, and it's not necessarily saying
- that what was,
- you know, captured wasn't valuable to view.
- Of course it was.
- But I really would like to see that, that 8% or that blue number,
- um, be more of like half, um, or at least a quarter.
- Because the more, the, the larger that blue gets or that capture
- percentage gets, the more value or the more the people that are
- viewing it's gonna get from it, right?
- You're gonna get a lot more schedule comparisons, a lot more QA/QC, a lot more
- safety, um, issues. Uh, you're gonna get a lot more, you know,
- documentation. You're gonna get a lot more engagement on
- the project team with
- people that are remote. Um, so that's, that's what this tool does for me.
- Uh, for me and in Turner's eyes, we see, you know, dock-based operations,
- which was turning manual weekly captures, right, into hourly, you know,
- autonomous captures, right? Not once a day, but, you know,
- when you can take a map
- and only need, you know, between grid lines 5 and 13 because
- that's all that I'm, you know, interested in, uh, that can be done in
- probably less than a minute, um, depending how close the dock is from it.
- So you can fly multiple times a day, multiple missions.
- Um, but the more often you can capture the
- data, I think the more valuable it's
- gonna be.
- So,
- um, I'll pause for a few other questions
- if there's any in the chat.
- Um, if not, I'll give everyone a chance to kind of,
- um, either watch my
- screen, of course, uh, do a live demo with, you know, um,
- on the screen.
- Um, but also you can, you know, hit that QR code on your,
- on your mobile device or
- your phone or, um, that link of course works,
- but it's probably
- easier just to, to watch it on your phone.
- Um, and this is how I mentioned earlier the
- drone show
- or, you know, that, that link is, uh, we've actually put the link to the
- drone show in a lot of our meeting invites.
- Um, so when Microsoft Team goes out-
- Yes
- ... to join the meeting, but then here's the link to, um,
- to see the drone,
- um, and the certain times that it might fly.
- So if you missed that link, um, we'll come back to it inside the
- interface,
- but I'm just gonna jump straight in.
- Uh, you guys want me to confirm you can still,
- you can see my screen now looking at
- the dock and the country map?
- Yep.
- Cool. So currently I'm sitting, uh, in North
- Carolina, a small little area, um, in North Carolina.
- Um, this dock here is sitting in, um, outside of Memphis,
- Tennessee, and, um, we're gonna jump into it,
- right? So
- I'll kind of go into the manual interface or manual flight, um, and then, you
- know, just to kind of show you guys, uh, um, just how it works.
- Uh, but keep in mind this is a manual flight.
- The beauty of all this is me not flying it manually.
- It's setting it up on a schedule, having it do its thing, you know, uh,
- autonomously and upload the data autonomously back to
- things like DroneDeploy. Um, you know, this is the dock opening now.
- Looks like a beautiful day in, um, outside of Memphis, Tennessee,
- and we're gonna simply launch, right?
- Um, and there's a lot of other
- FAA, um, I guess required things that's happening
- in the background right now.
- There's, um, there's a location being sent from where
- I'm at in North
- Carolina is the pilot in command, you know, back to the dock that's logging
- where, um, I'm, the operator's at.
- Um, so there's, there's, uh, ADSB in going out, and if we're
- lucky, there's an airport that's here.
- Uh, and you'll see the ADSB, um, working in
- live action. Um, it'll come up and it'll, it'll show me where that aircraft is at
- and, and, and share my, uh, um, my locations and all that
- stuff. But I'm just gonna kind of fly around.
- I'm gonna kind of do a, a full screen here just to, to get it.
- But, um, you know, you've got... I'm in, I'm w- using WSD as
- a controller. I am, um, you know,
- flying manually around. You can see, um, my top speed
- is about thirty-five miles an hour.
- Um, I'm gonna enter the pointer lock. I like to, like to use on my mouse.
- It kind of lets me scroll around, look at things,
- um, and do any and everything you could do
- from a drone flight, you know,
- if you're there on site, right? You know, drones are fun, they're useful.
- Um, and there's nothing that I couldn't do here
- that I could have done
- if I was a drone pilot on site, right?
- Um, you know, you can go down, you know, you can go up, you can do a lot of
- different things. The cool thing I'll kind of show here is,
- um, this camera, or the, uh, X10 does have a great,
- um, two camera options. The main one we use is the wide lens,
- where we can
- utilize it for, um, mapping of course is better with the wide-angle
- lens. But they both have a great zoom, uh, zoom capability on it,
- right, where if you're wanting to stay far away
- and look at, you know,
- I'm sure most of us have done facade inspections where you're kind of nervous
- when
- you're up against those tall buildings in a, in an urban area, right?
- But, um, you know,
- zoom cameras are nice for those types of instances, but this one has a 64 times
- digital zoom, and I'll kind of just, let's see this guy walking there.
- Um, let's see if we can't pop in to see what
- he's up to before he goes behind this
- tree. Oh, he's looking around.
- Looks like he just changed his mind, decided to go back to, uh,
- somewhere. Let's get a little closer.
- All right, so, oh, he's hopping in this gator with these
- folks, right?
- So, you know, you could even say, see the, you know, the name of the company, it's
- Tennessee Builders, it's there. I think that I know who that is.
- Um, so if I zoom from 64 times in back to
- normal, you know, I'm way back here, right?
- So there's a really great, you know,
- multiple levels of zoom that you can have on the camera.
- Um, you can utilize it for a lot of different
- things obviously.
- Um, you can just pop up. We, we do this a lot on this big site.
- We pop up and we'll just kind of see
- way on the other side of the site there instead of driving way out there, right?
- We might just go and look way in to see, you know, you know, where somebody's at
- on the other side of the site. So, you know, this is all that
- manual side that we talked about where just, you know,
- g- getting an eye in the sky, always having access to the site.
- Um, you know, Jason, you know that digital superintendent earlier where,
- you know,
- a superintendent can do, you know, an, a, a site audit to see what's
- going on, right? You know, we've got, uh, oh, so and so coming in
- from, I'm not sure where he came from, but, uh, you know,
- maybe you might want to know what that equipment is.
- Maybe the number on the equipment, right?
- Um, you could fly over there to it and you could see, you know,
- what's going on.
- I know there was a, some guys that got stuck out here earlier.
- Um, I think he's still stuck out. No, he got out.
- He was stuck earlier. But won't get down a rabbit hole.
- This is kind of fun stuff where you can really just fly around and,
- and really kind
- of, you know, cover some ground here.
- But let me, let me drop down, um, and show you one more thing,
- um, before I kind of run a, a planned mission.
- And again, any questions that come up now, you guys can
- let me know. If there's any in the chat, Jason, I'm happy to, to take those.
- Yeah, and Gary, a couple things to keep in mind as I hear
- that I think are pretty
- compelling. For those or, of you who scanned that QR code,
- you can look
- at this on your own device as well, so it's a smartphone or tablet or PC or
- whatever. You can use that, and you can switch between like thermal
- or otherwise.
- So therefore, if you have a whole bunch of people for
- like, you know, here's an
- example, is the drone show, everyone can have a different kind of view
- of what it
- is on here. Um, and then the other thing that's pretty
- interesting as well is,
- Gary, and this is the L version with the 50
- megapixel, um,
- wide. Is that-
- Correct, yep.
- Yeah, so the zooming that he just did was not in our, in,
- with our tele zoom. We actually have a model
- that actually has a zoom in there that
- does quite a bit more. So if you're looking for more instances where
- you need that
- zoom, we have a different, um, sensor package that does this.
- But the zoom that he just showed is actually just what you can get in the
- one that
- is more for, like he was saying, mapping and surveying and a
- lot of these wider angles that you need.
- Yep, and that's where, you know, the thermal camera that's on it, obviously
- daytime's not the best use case for thermal, but for nighttime ops,
- we've flown
- multiple times at night and really could not, um...
- You could see miles and miles away.
- We'd see deer out there and, um, just thinking of it from different use
- cases at nighttime, uh,
- um, you know, our waiver's included for nighttime ops,
- ops, so you can...
- You know, a lot of, a lot of construction happens at night,
- um, especially in urban
- areas with concrete pours and such.
- But, um, but yeah, what I'm doing now basically is I'm just,
- you know, kind of
- dropping down, um, just looking up close at some
- things inside. I also wanted you guys, to show you guys the, maybe the 90
- degree gimbal on it that's, you know, where you can look up and when you can
- combine looking, um, at some, you know, for inspection
- purposes. So I'm gonna kind of look up
- and you'll see that the gimbal will just do like a 90 degree,
- and I've got it in crawl mode now. I'm not sure if you guys noticed
- that little
- snail up there.
- Um, so moving really slow, but, you know, just from,
- there it goes, it spins around. You know, now we're looking, you know, 90 degrees
- up,
- and let me just go ahead and go on in a little bit.
- You know, Gary, a question that came in, Connor wanted follow up with regards to
- flying indoors.
- Yeah, yeah.
- He said, um, "When do you determine when to fly indoors and for
- how long? And do you have specific examples of
- when it's safest or
- possibly too risky?"
- Yeah, so I mean, obviously the, whenever people are not there is
- when we like to
- fly inside, right? This is just a, a barn that was beside the, the project,
- right, that we're, um, we don't have a building yet out there.
- But, you know, obviously you don't want to fly around
- people, right?
- You don't want to fly, um, in any kind of risky environment.
- But, you know, nighttime is probably typically the best time to fly
- indoors.
- But, um, it really just depends on, you know, what you're
- trying to accomplish. There's no really limit to,
- you know, a good or bad time. You know, if there's an inspector on site and he's
- wanting to see, you know, weld inspections, right,
- maybe you come in and,
- uh, um, and document some, some welds and,
- um,
- and, and take pictures of them. This is kind of what I
- was showing you guys here.
- When you're
- looking at this, you can really, um, zoom in
- pretty, pretty tight to, you know...
- I was seeing some ants up here the other day. I thought that was really cool.
- But-
- You know, one, one thing to keep in mind as well is
- that what you're seeing here,
- if you see a little latency in everything, this is actually a stream of a stream.
- So he's streaming it on his computer, and then he's sharing it on his platform
- So,
- um, those of you who actually are looking at that QR code,
- you're gonna notice it's
- much, much cleaner and much, uh, crisper.
- Yeah. And one thing I'll note too here is, like, again, stadiums is a really
- great one because you're, you know, you're inside a huge area
- that you can kind of
- fly up and down and look under. Um, data centers is great 'cause you have a
- lot of,
- again, high ceilings. But anywhere that you have high ceilings, you can fly.
- But that's not necessarily saying you can't use it,
- right? Like right now, um, I'm going to, like, literally, you know,
- try to hit this thing. Um, I've done it, you know, many,
- many times and it will not let me, but I'm gonna go basically...
- I'm full speed, I'm holding, I'm holding the throttle wide open,
- um, trying to hit this, uh, this column, and it's just pushing me around it, right?
- Um, now I'm in crawl mode, but, like, right now it will not go because it's
- saying
- that I'm, you know, I'm too close. So I can do two things.
- I can, you know, drop it down and then, you know, of course, go forward
- that way and then get out. You know, it finds its own way out,
- or I could, you know, find another way.
- But the obstacle avoidance, it's not your typical, um, you know,
- it's a
- computer vision system where, uh, kind of look at it like your eyes.
- If you have... You know, you can get really close to a [laughs] ...
- Most of us can, I guess, really close to something without bumping
- your head.
- Um, it's kind of the same, the same theory.
- You can get really close to things, but it knows when, you know, when not
- to,
- you know, get a little too close. And you can adjust those settings.
- Like right here in the settings, if I wanted to,
- I mean, get really, really, really, really close, I could change, you know,
- um, my
- obstacle avoidance settings were four inches away. You know, 11.
- Standard is about 26 inches away, or none at all.
- So there's a lot of control here, but with the zoom camera that's on here, I
- really find it, you know, difficult to ever need to fly close to
- something unless you're maybe trying to fly through a doorway.
- Um, and even then, uh, they claim anything larger than a half an
- inch,
- it will, you know, pick up. But, um,
- you know,
- that's, that's... I haven't crashed it yet,
- and I don't know of anybody that has,
- so I'm just comfortable of being able to get within a couple feet and zoom in.
- You can see that wasp that's on the back of that.
- But, um, so yeah, just a lot of use cases indoors.
- So,
- um, any other questions that popped up in the chat?
- Yeah. We actually have two more on here.
- Um, one of them from Grant again is, "In your quest to roll out
- and implement this kind of technology, um, who have been your biggest champions?
- Like what kind of job titles, um, of the tech at the tactical level?"
- So job titles, I mean, it's really more, you know, we have a innovation team
- that kind of looks at innovation and things.
- Uh,
- um, robotics, this kind of falls into the robotics
- world, right?
- But, but realistically it's, it's operations and our projects that
- are on
- the ground. And, um, and, and because this
- specific technology is, doesn't really necessarily require a,
- a person to be expert into hardware, um...
- and whenever you look at the autonomous flights, I'm gonna go ahead and just land
- this and run an autonomous flight while we're talking.
- But, um, it really can be anyone. Uh, you get a Part 107
- and you get your company. Every company has a little different,
- you know, um,
- way that they want to, uh, control and validate
- air traffic control.
- So I'm gonna hit cancel here. Show this.
- And we're gonna go to the map view,
- and we're gonna see where this aircraft is.
- So you can see it to my left there. Real time, it's making a
- descent. It's, um, obviously gonna land in this strip.
- And, um, it really allows you to, again, to have that ADSB out
- where you can really,
- uh, monitor air traffic control. So this is not gonna do anything.
- It's not gonna force you to land. It's just telling you, "Hey,
- there's a aircraft
- in the area." And so,
- um, that was really important to get our
- waiver from the FAA.
- They really like that feature that Skydio has and, um, you know, it's
- built in with, um, with their ADSB, uh, on the drone.
- So that's kind of a cool-
- And, and one more question from, uh, Jordan here is, uh,
- he says, "Do you encounter any issues with
- subcontractors who are concerned with
- maybe privacy or not wanting to be filmed at the job sites?"
- Uh, well, not necessarily. Some, some projects are, um,
- like hospitals and healthcare, you know, there's a concern there that, you know,
- real, a real concern that, um... I know DroneDeploy has a feature where
- they're
- starting to blur out faces and things.
- So that kind of, um, as you have platforms that will blur out
- faces, 'cause it's, again, ev- everything is smart, right?
- It's, it's running things through AI, and before it runs things through AI, it
- could easily run through, you know, facial recognition in anywhere where
- there's a
- face to blur it out, right? So that can...
- The future will get more and more where that's not an issue,
- but specifically with
- subcontractors, that's kind of part of, like, you know, when they, they sign up on
- Get on Board, right? They're, uh, they're going through site orientation and
- they're not, you know, we're not, they're not a public person at that
- point. They're a contractor for us.
- So
- not so much, but it is a real thing, especially with some clients are concerned
- with, with that around healthcare, looking in windows, some of that stuff.
- Okay.
- Was there another question that you had in the chat?
- No, no, that, that was that. That was the last one.
- So if anybody has any questions, by all means submit those in.
- We want to make sure we get your
- questions answered.
- Okay. And I'm just gonna run this, uh, this pre-planned mission, you know, so I'm
- stop messing with my, my keyboard.
- Um,
- but yeah, this is, this is one of those autonomous missions
- that are ran either
- daily or, uh, multiple times a day and,
- um, it just really puts the power of data
- capture into,
- um, you know, into anyone's hands, right?
- So
- what's gonna happen now-
- So can you-
- Or go ahead.
- No, yeah, just walk us through, like, what, what's the mission on here?
- So, um, these are the points that you're seeing here,
- the numbered points on the
- right-hand side are the areas it's gonna go and do some sort of action.
- Yep. So what you're seeing here, these are pre-planned missions or pre-planned.
- It's got a, a waypoint mission of course, but, um, it's really cool 'cause you can
- see I planned this waypoint mission at different elevations, right?
- So-
- Even the camera angles, you can see where it's gonna point to.
- So, um, you know, and this is where I want hundreds of these,
- uh, where-
- Yeah
- ... whenever I'm trying to have a conversation
- around, I can really create
- customized missions, views for mapping, just for progress,
- just for videos, um, anything around that.
- So,
- um, that's what you're seeing here on the
- screen.
- And before I launch this, one of the really cool feature
- is this inspection mode.
- So I can go into inspection mode when I have the cover off.
- Um, instead of, again, manually, you know, seeing if there's an issue with the
- drone, um, you can kind of tilt the hood and see,
- um, you know, if there's any bugs on there,
- if there's any kind of
- issue with the landing dock, if there's any, um, you know,
- whatever that
- might be. Um, you can even spin the props, uh, on there
- to check and make sure the props are good.
- Um, one thing to note too, this, it runs on s- we're using a
- Starlink temporary internet connection.
- Um, but you know, you really want a good, a good, uh,
- established ethernet connection that's hard lined to this dock,
- um, to, to get the maximum amount of latency and,
- and no
- issues with uploading. But,
- um, but you can see I'm spinning the props,
- making sure all that works.
- But I'm just gonna exit inspection mode.
- I use this a lot of times just as a camera to see who's on the ground around it.
- There's of course a weather station on it, right?
- So you can, um, get live weather, um, weather
- information. Um, we had a couple tornadoes out in Memphis a
- couple weeks ago, or
- about a month ago now. We were literally flying in the tornado
- weather and, and
- capturing, um,
- uh, live data on, you know,
- like flood con- you know, flood plains and when...
- what happens when it pours rain, you know, flash floods and things.
- So it's pretty cool to have that capability to, to be on site
- whenever, um, you know,
- uh,
- storms come or something that's unforeseen or planned happen. Security, right?
- You can tie these back to your, uh,
- um, you know, a fixed camera. We've had that too.
- We've got some fixed cameras that we've got out, uh,
- along the site perimeter.
- And the, um, the open API with it will trigger,
- okay, the drone will launch if it's s- you know, detecting motion in this area,
- and it launches and it goes, and it records, um, it's ex- that exact,
- you know,
- GPS location that we identified.
- So you can integrate this across a lot of different platforms, not just
- DroneDeploy, um, in a lot of different ways.
- You can set it up on a schedule. Um, as it's flying now,
- I'll kind of flip over to another,
- um, another view that you can see. You know, this is
- flying, like right now, if I was, you know, Jason, for example,
- he could come in here and he could commandeer this
- and become the pilot,
- right? Um, if he had access to there, right?
- He could come in and, and take control of, of the drone,
- um,
- if, you know, if there was an emergency or something, right?
- So I'm kind of commandeering myself here, but in theory
- you could do that.
- So
- mute up. But right now, what it's doing, again, it's, um,
- you know, you can see it's following the camera
- path.
- It'll turn to the, the, the angle that I wanted.
- This works really great for like marketing and some, some other platforms that I've
- been in in the past where, you know, I kind of couldn't get the right
- angle that I wanted, or maybe I wanted a different gimbal angle
- at certain way
- points. Um, maybe I wanted to increase the vertical
- reconstruction of
- something and, you know, wanted to look under some trees or, or
- whatnot. But you can really get creative
- and customize on,
- on how you capture all of this data.
- Gary, we got a question here s- uh, asking, "How does the drone respond
- to temporary flight restrictions?"
- So for TFRs, uh, good question, and that's where, keep in
- mind, this drone was built for first responders,
- right?
- So because this drone was built for first responders,
- let's just say that there's
- a emergency in New York City and, you know, they needed the
- drone as a tool to, you know, to capture a bad guy or for what- whatever
- they needed to use it for.
- You know, just because there's a TFR that's in the
- area does not mean it's gonna
- ground the drone. It's still gonna allow them to do it.
- Um, you know, it, it will still pop up a notification,
- but it's not gonna restrict
- you from doing it, which is good and bad, right?
- Um, that's really up, up to the pilot still at, at this point,
- right?
- It's, you know, before you fly, before you're conducting flight missions,
- before
- you have any kind of scheduled, uh, missions, right, um,
- you know, just you need to make sure there's no TFRs
- or no, you know, if there's
- any NOTAMs that are out there or anything that you might need to know.
- So that's still the responsible, um, responsibility of the pilot.
- Uh, 'cause I didn't, I, I guess I didn't mention
- that on the pre-planned scheduled
- missions, kinda like this one is, um, before that thing does go in the air,
- there
- is somebody, um, that we designate as a pilot in command.
- Typically, it's our person on site. Um, currently it's our safety guy right now.
- Um, and our superintendent is a backup.
- But before that thing goes, they get a thing on their phone that says,
- you know,
- "Safe to fly,"
- and, and they hit that safe to fly as long as it's safe to
- fly, right?
- Um, if nobody
- clicks that safe to fly, then it would kind of default to another
- pilot, you know,
- command that we've designated. Um, it could be a DroneDeploy,
- it could be whoever,
- and, you know, they would be responsible for making sure
- there's no NOTAMs or
- TFRs or anything out there.
- A good question.
- All right. It looks like we're getting kind of, uh,
- right up on time here.
- Um, just wanna see if I can show one final screen
- here,
- uh, for you guys.
- Just a second here.
- Uh, so first off, Gary, thanks very much for sharing that with us.
- Um, I, I know that the, the live demo's always something that's,
- that's always
- piques up interest and gets a lot of questions on there too.
- Um, one thing I wanna share with you guys
- is we actually have another webinar
- coming up here pretty soon. It's gonna be the 11th of next month,
- and that's gonna
- be achieving, uh, precision mapping with RTK.
- So it's all about precision mapping.
- We're gonna have a whole bunch of customers from construction companies,
- the DOT,
- uh, Ohio DOT's gonna be there. We have HDR Construction, um,
- that's gonna be there. We actually have a, a, a consultant who specializes in
- precision mapping as well is also gonna be on there.
- So it's gonna be minimal Skydio talking and a lot of customers talking on this
- one. So I highly recommend if you wanna register, uh,
- just scan the QR code
- here and we'd love to see you there.
- Again, have something very similar, give the microphone to the customer,
- have them
- talk, and provide that over there.
- But, um, for that, I'd love to, uh, Gary, thank you very much for,
- again, um, uh, being here with us today.
- Been some great questions for everybody, and thank you for everybody in the
- audience for being here. We will make sure we send off a recording
- of this
- afterwards, but, uh, um, tha- again, thank you very much and, uh,
- hopefully we'll see you, uh, next month.
- Yep. Thanks everyone. Thanks Jason.
- All right. Thank you.
- See ya.
Watch Time
1 Hr 1 Min 30 Sec
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