Michael Leczinsky, a professor of practice in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity (CEHC), and Don Berchoff, CEO and founder of TruWeather Solutions, join the series to share their predictions for what ethical and technological challenges the drone industry will face in the new year. TruWeather Solutions is a UAlbany-affiliated company that focuses on providing weather data and business analytics for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).
Michael Leczinsky, a professor of practice in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity (CEHC), and Don Berchoff, CEO and founder of TruWeather Solutions, join the series to share their predictions for what ethical and technological challenges the drone industry will face in the new year.
TruWeather Solutions focuses on providing weather data and business analytics for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The company is a participant in Empire State Development's (ESD) START-UP NY Program and is affiliated with the UAlbany Innovation Center and Innovate 518.
The UAlbany Innovation Center helps grow technology ventures and seeks to harness the intellectual capital of four research clusters at UAlbany, including: climate and environmental science research, biomedical science and biotechnology, forensic sciences and cybersecurity, and advanced data analytics.
Innovate 518 is the Capital Region's Innovation Hot Spot. The program, a NYSTAR initiative by ESD, is managed by the University at Albany.
Photo by Patrick Dodson.
The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.
Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Welcome to the UAlbany News Podcast. I'm your host Sarah O'Caroll. I have with me Michael Leczinsky, a professor of practice in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity. And Don Berchoff, CEO of TruWeather Solutions, a UAlbany affiliated company that provides micro-weather data and business analytics for unmanned aircraft systems. I have Leczinsky and Berchoff here to discuss where the emerging industry of drones is headed, and what ethical and technological challenges 2020 might bring. Don and Michael, thank you both for being here.
Don Berchoff: Well, thank you for having us.
Michael L.: Thanks. Pleasure.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Now going to the informatics side, were there any surprising takeaways from 2019, as someone who is studying this industry. And also as we look ahead to 2020, what kinds of growth do you expect to see and where do you expect to see it?
Michael L.:
Well, I think one of the things that when it comes down to the sensors, when it comes down to the data, the modeling we've seen, not just in 2019 but in years past, Google and Facebook have been working in terms of improving quality of life, or services. We've seen some of these aircraft's, not particularly a rotor aircraft's, but more fixed wing, solar hovering aircraft. Or in the case of Google, project Loon where they've put a balloon in the sky with the idea of beaming internet.
Michael L.:
I believe this was implemented in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. And I think these sorts of things are being researched and, and thought about in terms of 5g, in terms of serving remote areas throughout the world, in terms of disaster recovery. Some of these things are being developed in real time. And I think we're going to see in 2020 applications for this technology, we didn't anticipate.
Michael L.:
In Africa there's a group called Zip-Line that's delivering blood and medical supplies, and medicine using fixed wing craft on a daily basis, and they're saving people's lives, or improving people's lives, and quality of life. And agriculture first responders... I mean the applications for drones and drone technology is really incredibly wide, and we're going to continue in 2020 to see brand new ones that we didn't consider.
Sarah O'Caroll:
And Don, what are some emerging technologies that you see will be ones that you'll be needing to reckon with, or are already grappling for the year ahead?
Don Berchoff:
One of the concerns is national security. As you know, DJI is a Chinese company, and they have a lot of the commoditized drones on the market. But that... the military and the government are not allowed any more to purchase DJI. So that's... that has implemented a market here in the US for American made drones. Which we're starting to see now emerge, because now there's a reason for it. It is important to have drones that meet the mission, but I am a little concerned that if we have too many different models of drones it gets a little difficult to manage them in the airspace for weather.
Don Berchoff:
Because if everyone has a different type of weather impact, how do you keep people out of trouble? Today the way we manage air spaces, big aircraft, manned aircraft, we basically break it in three types, small, medium, large, and then we could put out weather alerts and hazards for those. But if you have 50 or a hundred different types of aircraft that can fly, you don't want to ground everybody if they can fly. So what we're doing is we're working on building software that can customize by aircraft, their own personal weather, hazard warnings and geo-fencing. So this is one of the challenges.
Don Berchoff:
So I think the hardware industry is still kind of unfolding about how this is going to emerge. On the software side, you have like the unmanned aerial system drone, but they call them unmanned aerial system traffic management service suppliers. And they are really starting to... these are the [inaudible 00:04:08] this is the folks that are going to control, or at least manage the airspace below 400 feet as a federated organizations off of the FAA. The FAA is not going to be actively involved in flight planning and things like that below 400 hundred feet. These companies, these states, these nonprofits are going to set these up, and they all have to talk to each other at some point. There's been a lot of companies that have blossomed, and we're starting to see a consolidation of the software side because-
Sarah O'Caroll: That's already happening.
Don Berchoff:
Yeah, it's happening already, and what's going to wind up probably happening is you're going to see bigger companies like Talus and Airbus and Amazon, they're going to probably buy up a lot of these organizations. All of them bring certain talents, believe it or not because we're learning, right? This has been like a lab in real time, and each of them have a certain capability that companies want. And so you're going to see more integration. So I think on that side, that's what I'm looking for.
Sarah O'Caroll:
And when you were talking about having a lot of options, if there are many different kinds of brands all in the air, it would be harder to identify these, and be able to manage the safety of drones, which makes remote ID so important. To be able to identify where is this drone? Who owns it? And why are they flying?
Don Berchoff:
That's correct. So public safety is going to be the number one priority at the FAA. As such, we need to be able to view drones as a potential threat, and the public should feel safe to know that the FAA's on that and there they're setting up this remote ID concept where drones will have to be able to identify themselves, and we'll know who they are. They have some kind of digital footprint, or something. That's still being worked out right now. And that... that's the big... and there's actually an FAA policy, it's... that's coming out this month if it hasn't come out already on this.
Don Berchoff:
And so everybody's going to have to follow that. But it's really important for Homeland Security, because just like the internet has been weaponized, drones will become weaponized. And every great technology that brings a lot of societal benefit, unfortunately there's people out there that take advantage of that, and use it... in... for their purposes. So I think that's what we're going to see this year, a lot of remote ID discussion, and try and... to ensure the protection of the public.
Sarah O'Caroll:
I am curious to know a little bit more into how the college is working to prepare the next generation of students. And I know you all had just launched a drone lab, which sounds like is going to have some exciting testing types of practices going on. So what can you share about what you're looking for?
Michael L.:
So we're really excited about the drone lab. We've got many things that we do in that space. One of them is support our courses and our classes. So this last semester I taught a class called Maker Spaces and Drones. And as a part of the work we did in that space, students first created their... they basically assembled a kit with their own drone from scratch. So they had all the different components, they learned how to solder if they didn't know how to solder. And they took all of the components and assembled them, and then they flew their drone in the drone lab.
Michael L.:
We also worked with a drone simulator program so that we could fly in a virtual space where we could simulate wind, we could simulate different courses, we could simulate different drones and different hardware profiles. And we also flew drones. We looked at some of the consumer and off the shelf technology, and we looked at it from the perspective of operators, what does it mean to have line of sight? What does it mean to use FPV or First Person View? What does it mean to be looking at a screen?
Michael L.:
And we're really happy to work with industry partners and with folks in the community to bring awareness to this technology, and to offer the space for the hands on experience for the application, for the research. It's really been a wonderful lab, and there's very few spaces like this around. And so to offer our students and our partners this opportunity is really a testament to our commitment to merging technologies and technology, and the vision of our leadership where we're really happy about the space.
Sarah O'Caroll:
And Don, what are some characteristics that you'd want to be looking out for, or technological expertise in those who could be working in the drone industry?
Don Berchoff:
This industry is going to rapidly evolve, in order for it to be a scalable industry that is going to be affordable and keep the costs under control. We're going to see more automation in drone flying and drone control. So I don't know what that time steps are going to be from going from where we are now, where somebody out in the field launching a drone, maybe by hand. To a drone now that's in a box that has all the ability to fly automated, and there's maybe somebody still standing there watching it. To somebody that is actually in a control center and this drone in a box is going to be launched and tracked back at a control center, to having one person manage that. To having one person now managing 20 drones in a box at the same time, launching.
Don Berchoff:
This is where I see the evolution of the industry, so our students and our educators... I think it's always important to have the basics down, you've got to understand how things fly, why they fly. And so you always should go through those. It's just like in weather, we have great models, but we still want somebody to be able to forecast without a model. But we should be working towards a technology and software and training, that's going to teach them how to move along that evolutionary path that we're going to go to over time here. I don't know if it's going to be three years, five years, or 10 years, but that's the path. And so we're going to have a lot of automation.
Don Berchoff:
Now on the weather side, there's three types of data collection I want from drones. The first one is, I want every drone to be a sensor. So if that's possible, at least get some wind data off of every drone, which means they're not... primary mission isn't to collect weather, but their [inaudible 00:10:15] secondary mission is to pass what they have to us, and then through our technology we assimilate that and turn around a better product.
Don Berchoff:
The second is a drone that can be launched on a regular basis to sample the atmosphere. Now here in New York we have the Mesonet, which is 17 upper level profiling sites. Which I again take my hat off to the governor, and to the work to get that here, we have the only profiling network in the country. And we're using that at TruWeather, that's why I'm here. That's why I came to New York, because that's helping us validate models for winds aloft. And that's a key factor in drone flying.
Don Berchoff:
And so we're going to be... we're actually working with the Atmospheric Science Research Center here, and others to look at how we can improve collection of data from drones and then improve forecasting. So that's part of what we use in the University Albany's technology and science for. So we... the second area... so the second... that one is collecting data, and potentially maybe every Mesonet can have a drone that goes up and down automatically and collect data. Or we might have these in cities, in areas where there's high traffic and we just need to have better data.
Don Berchoff:
The third one is what I call the weather scout drone. And this is a drone that my vision is, is that we have our Air Weather Operation Center in New York for all the world [inaudible 00:11:31] we're supporting all drone operations. And when we don't know what's going on at 300 hundred feet, or 400 hundred feet, where's that inversion? Where's that turbulence? Is it dangerous or not? Rather than keeping everybody grounded and not flying, let's launch a weather scout drone, and let's test the environment and see what's going on so that we can open up the routes faster. And so what we're going to be looking for are people who can help us in this area, whether it's helping our partner, a Media Max [inaudible 00:12:00] drone. Or it's us trying to figure out how we get this data off the drones and make it into more useful information.
Michael L.:
I think one of the things that's on the hardware end of things that we're excited about is applying some of the 3D printing research and technology. Where for thinking about a drone in a box, or drones in different situations, the parts might not exist, or the hardware, or the systems might not exist. We're working right now on a research level with some stakeholders to develop different mounts for different sensors, and different things on their drones using 3D printing in our maker space.
Michael L.:
So some of these technologies, it's sort of, no pun intended, the perfect storm here if you will, where all of these things are available and you can iterate quickly, and you can do this nimbly and quickly, where you can develop custom solutions, custom parts to then apply in real and meaningful ways. That's where things get really exciting. I don't think that we're really considering idea of... we're doing this to make a difference I think is what it comes down to. And our students are actually getting hands on experience with that as well, so we're preparing them, and working with our partners to understand the skill sets.
Michael L.:
The jobs that our students may have when they graduate may not exist at the moment. So we have to think about what are the big picture skills and skillsets. The idea of continual improvement, the idea of lifelong learning, the idea of embracing technology. Even if you look at some of the technical work, I'm sure we've both... these things change the standards, change the programming languages, change the hardware, the capabilities. I think the one constant is change. So, we're thinking about... and we've got students... one of the students as a graduate from our Informatics program, he's working full time now in the drones industry.
Michael L.:
He's working on the sales and the repair, and he's working with the hardware, but he's also doing bridge inspections. He's working with agriculture, he's working with first responders, building inspections, really amazing work. And he's only a few years out of our Informatics program. We're incredibly proud of the work that he's doing, and all of our students who enter the field with the skill sets where they can add value to... as I said, to situations that we can't even anticipate where they're going to be going in the future.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Well, lots of exciting things happening in the college, and it's been great to hear about what TruWeather is thinking about and working on. So thanks for being here.
Don Berchoff: Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Michael L.: Thank you.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Thank you for listening to the UAlbany News Podcast. I'm your host Sarah O'Caroll. And that was Michael Leczinsky and Don Berchoff. You can let us know what you thought of the episode, or who we should speak to next by emailing us, we're at mediarelations@albany.edu. Or you can find us on Twitter at UAlbany News.