Commercial Drones FM

Experience the story behind the expedition to capture the world's first thermal, radiometric images of humpback whales' blowholes with drones. This is Expedition: Too Hot For Snot.

Host Ian Smith takes you aboard the R/V Cachelot, a research vessel operated by Ocean Alliance. With drones and thermal cameras in tow, Ian—along with Dr. Iain Kerr, the Ocean Alliance crew, and Randall Warnas of FLIR—depart from Gloucester, Massachusetts in search of humpback whales.

Josh Ziering (JZ) and Josh Pruitt of San Francisco software startup, Kittyhawk, join Ian for a roundtable discussion. The trio chat about recent drone industry news like Section 336, the company's recent $5 million funding, and what the future has in store for Kittyhawk and the drone industry as a whole.

Ian Smith, host of Commercial Drones FM podcast, joins Randy Goers' Drone Radio Show as a guest to talk about what has happened in the commercial drone industry over the past 2-years from 2016 to 2018.

DroneBase is one of the world's largest, professional drone service provider networks. Think of it as "Uber for drone pilots". If you need a drone operator to come accomplish a mission for you, chances are, you can get one through DroneBase.

Dan Burton is CEO of DroneBase and has been leading the charge at the Southern California-based company since its inception. The company has grown to become a premier name in the DSP (drone service provider) space and represents an approach that can truly scale as the industry grows. DroneBase is also taking experimental approaches to software with an AR (augmented reality) app.

The drone industry report for Q2 2018, brought to you by Commercial Drones FM. Get briefed on the most important and newsworthy happenings from the previous quarter in the drone industry—all in less than 20-minutes.

Covered topics include drone hardware, drone software, regulations, drone delivery, funding, mergers and acquisitions, and more.

Drone-based inspections are rocketing in popularity. Businesses are employing drones en masse to help analyze the health of their assets. As onboard sensors and hardware improve, the software that facilitates many of the actual visual inspection activities continues to advance.

Ken Falk is CEO and founder of Scopito, a software company from Denmark specializing in helping their clients accomplish efficient drone-based inspections. Ken and Ian speak about why drone inspection software is critical, advancements in A.I. for automatically detecting anomalies in images, and much more.

Hear host Ian Smith answer questions about drones on a podcast instead of always being the one asking them. This week's episode of CDFM is a syndication of Udacity's, The Drawing Board podcast, titled, "All About Drones." Ian is joined by Adam Bry, CEO of Skydio where the two talk... all about drones.

Why is Ford, a legacy automobile company, building drones? Adi Singh, Principal Scientist for UAV Systems at Ford's Silicon Valley office, explains all the ways that Ford is researching and planning on using drones in their global business. And it's not just flying cars.

Nightingale Security is a robotic aerial security company - not a traditional drone company. But they do make robotic aerial security platforms (drones) and fleet management software that their clients deploy to help protect their assets and integrate with their existing security teams.

Jack Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Nightingale Security.

Skydio is a very special drone company with a thought-provoking inaugural product. R1, the company's first drone, costs $2,499, is fully autonomous, and it's marketed mainly to hobbyists.

So why does a startup's initial product, targeted for consumers, have me so excited? Well, the answer is not what their technology is currently capable of, but what it represents for the future of commercial drones.

When designing R1, Skydio took a unique philosophical approach to what's currently available on the market. R1 is different than other drones - it flies itself and doesn't even come with a controller.

Adam Bry is CEO and co-founder of Skydio. He graduated from MIT, was one of the early team members of Google X's delivery drone initiative, Project Wing, and then started Skydio.

I sat down with Adam to learn about what's possible right now with the powerful onboard processors and AI that guides Skydio drones, unscathed, through crowded, obstacle-laden environments. We discuss the design inspiration behind R1, a future Skydio platform and SDK, and how commercial drones will continue to evolve.