Commercial Drones FM

Latest Episodes:

#089 - Indoor Drone Inspections with Patrick Thevoz May 22, 2019

Show notes

Indoor drone inspections have become an enormous ROI booster for energy companies who own and operate industrial assets. Patrick Thevoz is CEO of Flyability, a Swiss company who specializes in building indoor inspection drones. Their latest drone, Elios 2, is an impressive feat of engineering.

Patrick joins Ian to discuss the value that indoor inspection drones are bringing to their large enterprise customers. He also explains the engineering designs and decisions that went into the making of Elios 2.

#088 - Commercial UAV Expo May 09, 2019

Show notes

You're about to hear an in-the-field, or rather, "around-the-pool" compilation of quick-take interviews with people with different backgrounds from 15 drone companies at Commercial UAV Expo 2018.

The UAV Expo it's a great place to be in October and perfectly situated and spaced 6-months from AUVSI's XPONENTIAL so if you wanted, you can hit those two shows every year and then call it a day.

This audio is from the Poolside Happy Hour from Commercial UAV Expo 2018. A big thanks to everyone who chatted with me (sorry if I butchered the spelling of your name! Was hard to transcribe from the audio):

Ed Hine - Hazon Solutions/PrecisionHawk
Sylvester Greg Krutzinger - Scholar Farms
Dani Feller - Scopito
Mai Lynn Trong - Reigl
David Young - Drone Launch Academy
Hannah Marshburn - HyPack
Don Burchoff - True Weather Solutions
Lisa Ellman - Commercial Drone Alliance and Hogan Lovells
Joshua Trujillo - Oakland Police Department
Ungid Singh - Pix4D
Jared - Texas Drone Company
Joshua Resnick - Parallel Flight Technologies
Oliver Jesus Garcia
Romeo Durscher - DJI
Jeremiah Karpowicz - Commercial UAV News

#087 - DroneDeploy's Drone Mapping Software with Jono Millin Mar 28, 2019

Show notes

Jono Millin is co-founder and Chief Customer Officer (CCO) at DroneDeploy, a software company that specializes in building solutions for mapping business assets with drones. Jono goes in-depth into how DroneDeploy is leveraging computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to augment their in-house photogrammetry pipeline, Map Engine. DroneDeploy is a series C stage, venture-funded startup founded in 2013. The company has pioneered many technologies for aerial mapping and drone operations including Live Map (and Thermal Live Map), a new Counting A.I. module, and the hosts the world's largest App Market platform for drone data.

#086 - Flying Cars & eVTOL Aircraft Feb 20, 2019

Show notes

Can you imagine yourself buzzing around the urban landscape in a flying car in 2025? Bell—and companies such as Uber and Airbus—really want you to be. Whether you call it a flying taxi, a flying car, eVTOL aircraft, passenger drone, or air taxi, it all means the same thing—the future of urban mobility is approaching and it will manifest in electric aviation.

Bell, one of the world's largest helicopter manufacturers, showcased their Nexus prototype hexacopter eVTOL aircraft (flying car) at CES 2019. I was there with Scott Drennan, Vice President of Innovation at Bell to have a chat about Bell Nexus and our destiny of advancing urban air mobility.

#085 - Drone Insurance with Brandon Packman of SkyWatch.AI Feb 01, 2019

Show notes

All about on-demand, risk-based drone insurance, featuring Brandon Packman, Head of Business Development at SkyWatch.AI. SkyWatch.AI is an innovative startup offering customers a new twist on drone insurance.

#084 - Drones At Skyward, A Verizon Company with Mariah Scott Jan 12, 2019

Show notes

Why did Verizon, a $30+ billion telecommunications company, acquire Skyward, a 4-year-old drone startup out of Portland? Mariah Scott, President of Skyward, joins Ian to discuss exactly that—the decision behind the Verizon acquisition, her thoughts on the direction of the drone industry in 2019, and why the future of UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) is so critical.

"UTM is a concept—it's a system of systems. It's like the internet, it's going to grow up over time. From Skyward's point of view, what we really want to see is global interoperability." - Mariah Scott, President, Skyward, A Verizon Company

#083 - CNN Air with Greg Agvent Dec 18, 2018

Show notes

Ian is joined by Greg Agvent, the Senior Director of CNN's Aerial Imagery and Reporting Unit—known as CNN Air. When evaluating drones for business, it's easy to think of all the things they can replace. For aerial journalism and newsgathering, helicopters are the first thing that come to mind. But if you think national media organizations are going to fire the helicopters in place of drones... think again. Drones aren't replacing traditional manned aircraft any time soon.

The pair discuss how CNN is using drones in their Aerial Imagery and Reporting Unit; the types of hardware and software they use, when it's best to use a drone (or a helicopter), and getting the first waiver allowing the team to perform flights above people in the U.S.

#082 - Kespry Drones & Software with CEO George Mathew Nov 15, 2018

Show notes

Join Kespry's CEO, George Mathew, and host, Ian Smith, for a deep dive into Kespry's enterprise drone hardware and software offerings and outlook on where the industrial use of drones is heading. And would you like to know what the CEO of one of Airware's direct competitors thinks about them going out of business? Listen on and find out.

#081 - 2018 Drone Market Trends And Analysis with Colin Snow Oct 25, 2018

Show notes

Colin Snow, AKA "The Drone Analyst", joins the podcast for the 3rd year in a row to talk about his company, Skylogic Research's, annual report on the drone industry for 2018. Colin and Ian dive into five topics and key insights:

• DJI's complete domination of 70%+ market share • Customers are buying more expensive drones • Drone service providers are reporting little revenue • High-accuracy mapping techniques are not being adopted quickly • Drone fleet sizes are small and number of flights are lower than anticipated

#080 - senseFly's Newest Drones - eBee X and ANAFI Work Sep 20, 2018

Show notes

In September 2018, Parrot Group's senseFly released some exciting new professional drones - the eBee X and the ANAFI Work - along with several new camera options. Jean-Thomas Célette, Chief Strategy & Product Officer at Parrot Group, joins Ian to provide an overview of the new drones and camera options from senseFly.

New senseFly products include:

eBee X drone ANAFI Work drone

Aeria X camera Duet T camera S.O.D.A. 3D camera

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