DJI Airworks 2019 took place in LA this year. DroneDJ was invited and we recorded a number of the keynotes, panel discussions, and sessions that we think are worth sharing with you. We used automated transcription software on the videos to capture all that was spoken in text, however, this method is far from perfect. It does, however, offer you the benefit of searching through the text and skipping to the parts that are relevant to you. I will put a link to the entire text in a Google Doc so that in case you’d like to help clean up the text, you can. Actually that would be much appreciated because it is simply too much work for one person to do. We will update the articles on DroneDJ if better quality text becomes available. This is a bit of an experiment so we will see how it goes. More videos from DJI Airworks 2019 will go live soon. Let us know if we should keep doing this or if we are wasting our time.
DJI Airworks 2019 in LA
This keynote covers:
- Mario Rebello, DJI: Welcome, DJI update, DJI data security, strong growth in commercial drone business
- Romeo Durscher, DJI: LAFD, Disaster Relief Program
- Richard Fields, LAFD Battalion Chief
- Al Poirier (?), LAFD
- Jan Gasparic, DJI: P4 Multispectral
- Chris Bainter, FLIR Systems, FLIR MUVE C 360
- Jan Gasparic, DJI: Argas T16
Mario Rebello, DJI
Mario Rebello: [00:00:00] Or announcements from us over the next couple of weeks a couple of months.
[00:00:11] Our mission has always been and remains consistent and very clear which is to make Innovative technology that’s safe, secure, reliable and accessible. We want to deploy our product to as many parts of the world many parts. Of the country or as many parts of the country as possible this year.
[00:00:31] We ventured into uncharted waters by launching our very first action camera. Another first from DJI was the announcement of Robomaster S1 an educational platform built to easily introduce new users to AI, engineering and robotics and let me just tell you it’s a cool cool toy, but also a very educational tools.
[00:00:55] Putting everything in one package. It was very smart for the company to do this. On the Enterprise side, we also introduced are sentence to are all our newest professional level drones. For those of you who are unaware or are not clear what Airsense. It’s an alert system that uses ADS-B technology to warn drone pilots of potential hazards from traditional aircraft flying at low altitude.
[00:01:24] As more users around the world continue to adopt our technology. We believe it’s essential to maintain a safe air space environment that enables aerial operations to scale in an organized safe and structured way. Of course, there are many other safety announcements at that DJI has introduced in the past such as geofencing, obstacle sensing remote ID technology and other technologies that continue to evolve.
[00:01:55] Our efforts to bring these enhancements to market are not a result of any government mandate or legal requirement to do so. It’s because we want our customers and end-users to be responsible participants in the airspace.
[00:02:12] Just as we’ve led the industry on safety, we want to lead a constructive dialogue and pathway to industry standards as it relates to product and data security. A few weeks ago, a public official claimed that DJI success and their reliance on our technology was due to dumping of low-priced quadcopters on the market. It was also alleged by the same official that information from DJI drones is being sent back to China. Friends, let me be very clear, false. Accusations that have been made against us that have no bearing, unfounded, unsubstantiated and not a scintilla of evidence over the last two to three years has been determined or found within our product. Our product is safe, clean, and secure. And I do encourage all of you to continue to use the product and I will tell you this very clear. We, the DJI team here in North America would support from our colleagues that at HQ. We will defend and protect our product and our brand and we will go and meet with anyone, that will challenge our product raised concerns with our product and we what we’re looking for is to have an audience with him. Give us an opportunity to defend our product. Let us give you the evidence that you’re looking for and we want to clear our name and our brand from the allegations that have been made and continue to be made against us. This is just unfair not only for DJI, but for everyone in this room. And it impacts what you can and can’t do with our drone technology or anybody’s drone technology, but we feel very strongly that our product has been reviewed analyzed by third-party validators, by government agencies themselves and at all times we have been approved and secured and clearly been shown that our product does not do what the allegations have been made against us.
[00:04:21] I’m going off script. I feel very strongly about this issue as I know my colleagues in this room feel about the same issue.
[00:04:31] But what we can’t do, is do this alone. Be very frank with all of you, if we’re going to be successful in addressing these allegations. These accusations that are all misleading and false. We’ve met with a number of government leaders in Washington who tell us there is no evidence against you, but there are others within the same agency who make these allegations, leak memos, draft memos by the way, never formally addressed or sent out.
[00:05:01] What we’ve learned in the past year and what we continue to do is to engage and confront the accusers or those making the allegations against us. But as I said, we can’t do this by ourselves. I know that a number of you have stepped up and are working based upon collective efforts as well as your own individual efforts.
[00:05:22] I encourage everyone in this room to step up and engage and address these issues, because I can assure you and we will continue to assure you, that our product is safe and secure and reliable. In fact, we proactively sought an audience with individuals and organizations making these allegations as I said earlier to directly address these concerns give them evidence or show them evidence that they are misinformed on the matters, but until today, we’ve not received a response.
[00:05:58] For this to work that has to be two-way collaboration, and two-way dialogue to address these issues in a very proactive manner look security is an ongoing effort at DJI and we welcome feedback and input from all of you to further strengthen and enhance our product portfolio. We need your inputs to improve the product that we’re delivering and make it safer and more secure again these allegations lack the evidence needed. And it needs to stop. This politicizing the Drone technology is only going to damage the industry for all of us collectively. In order for our industry to truly unlock its potential we must operate based on facts and commit to an open and constructive dialogue. I can’t repeat that, right. It is so important to have that two-way communication and really sort of discuss facts. Not discuss myths in allegations. We have demonstrated that data is not our business. We have handed over control of the data and the networks to you the end users to manage the data. And we’ve subjected ourselves to third party audits and we continue to subject ourselves to third party audits and reviews of our platform. As most of you know, DJI stays very nimble in order to remain flexible enough to adapt to our customers needs customer needs our priority for us.
[00:07:28] This is how DJI Enterprise was formed and how customized drone programs, like ‘Government Edition‘ solution has been developed in partnership with the Department of Interior. And I can tell you there’s more solutions and customization coming to address these concerns and these issues. As our users become more aware of the unique ways in which drone data must be managed and secured, we have in turn enhanced our data security protections to meet these growing expectations and demands from our end users. As you know, in 2017. We established a successful bounty program and this past year. We’ve gone several steps further. We’ve established an internal Product Security Committee focused on reviewing analyzing and really absorbing as much information as we can so we can make those necessary changes. Likewise, we’ve also established a Product Safety Committee to focus and really double down on the work that’s ongoing to ensure that our skies remain safe. And we continue to provide safe solutions for all of you the end users.
[00:08:34] The fact is and the truth is DJI is committed to addressing these core issues both on the safety and the security front. And we’re planning to move forward in a more aggressive manner to address these issues.
[00:08:48] In addition, we’ve also established a set of principles focused on three key elements of what we’re planning to do on a go-forward basis. First a commitment to transparency and education. Engaging with stakeholders, engaging with key decision makers is absolutely critical on a go-forward basis. Second a commitment to continued research and development. DJI is committed to continuous investment in enhancing security protocols, cultivating a security conscious culture and developing unique solutions for customers with the most rigorous data protection needs. And then lastly a commitment to continued outside validation. Working with key stakeholders working with validators that can come and review our platform and our systems to give you and others the assurance that the product is safe and secure.
[00:09:37] DJI’s committed to subjecting ourselves to greater and greater review and security. We have nothing to hide. We want to share what we know, share the information, and share the facts with all of you. Look we remain committed to these efforts, but we must recognize that the whole industry must collaborate on addressing these issues together.
[00:09:59] As with most emerging technologies, there are no clear guidelines to assess the security of drone technology. That’s real world today. This is why we’re calling for an industry-wide security standard that will strengthen public confidence and drone use, increased market competition and help industry stakeholders prioritize the protection of data. These standards need to be origin agnostic, risk-based and industry led. A clear framework that sets forth industry standards will create a level playing field for all and ensure that drone operators have access to the most advanced and secure drone technology in the marketplace.
[00:10:42] Today, we will introduce you to a series of new solutions that address some of the global challenges we face such as sustaining a growing global population while preserving the environment and ensuring that those who serve and protect our communities are able to do so safely and with the best tools at their disposal
[00:11:02] On day 2, tomorrow, we will walk you and talk with you in greater length about how we can work together to really create an enabling environment where these technologies and tools can be utilized and their greatest potential. But in the meantime, where we are in the commercial drone industry today and what some of the emerging applications that are on the on the horizon. What are they and we need to go into greater detail to better understand what those are. To start let’s look at the growth that we’ve experienced together. Earlier in this year the FAA recognized that the commercial drone industry was accelerating, shifting their 2018 forecast to today. So currently the FAA is predicting that by the end of this year, the industry will be where it should have been by in 2021. That really is a strong indicator of the growth that we’re starting to see and that we continue to see in the industry. That’s a two-year acceleration and the forecast through 2022 is even more ambitious and very impressive as that numbers up on the on the screen indicate. It is expected that we will hit nearly double the amount of drones today and use in the next three years.
[00:12:20] So really, DJI has seen the growth not just in the United States, but globally. So far in 2019, DJI has seen its commercial drone business grow at over an 80 percent growth rate. 80 percent growth rate in the past year, since we last met at last year’s the Airworks conference.
[00:12:41] Across verticals we’re seeing leading organizations scaling up such as Corteva deploying the largest act drone fleet in the world. Rio Tinto mining giant who has expanded the drone operations globally. As well as the Department of Interior doubled its use of drone technology in the past couple of years. We’re also increasingly seeing advanced use of drones in public sector such as the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s statewide drone program where they’ve used drones to environmentally perform analysis, accident reconstruction, and Public Safety as well as hurricane preparedness, as well as post hurricane activities to support the rebuilding of the community.
[00:13:25] But speaking of Public Safety, this is one industry where drone technology continues to prove its value. Across the United States, California is among one of the leading states that are spearheading drone adoption within Public Safety, which is why we brought Airworks to Los Angeles.
[00:13:44] Without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce Romeo Durscher who will share more interesting details and developments as to what’s happening to Public Safety Arena. Romeo.
Romeo Durscher, DJI
[00:14:01] Romeo Durscher: [00:14:01] Good morning everyone. Welcome to Airworks 2019. A very special and warm welcome to all of our Public Safety attendees who are here from not only the United States but across the world. And, that to me is very exciting.
[00:14:19] Los Angeles Fire Department. Thank you very much for having us here in your city and yesterday for hosting us for pre-conference public safety training day where we brought not only Public Safety attendees, but also individuals and Public Safety agencies from the regions together to start talking, networking, sharing best practices and preparing for future deployments.
[00:14:45] It is a true honor to also have the world’s second largest fire department, America’s premier fire department, FDNY here with us. Then Washington State Patrol, a department operating over a hundred and ten drones of accident reconstructions so that they can open up a road quicker. THat has tremendous impact on the public if you can get home quicker, if you can get to work quicker that impact is valid. As Mario mentioned North Carolina Department of Transportation leading state agencies, but I also want to welcome our friends from Sweden. We have the Swedish national police here and the Swedish contingencies agencies with us.
[00:15:34] And somebody that I’m excited to learn more about, Artelia. Artelia was used right after the devastating fire at Notre Dame on April 15. But that’s not it we have with us today the person who started and led the drone program for the Paris police. And thanks to robotics, ground robotics as well as aerial robotics, the cathedral still stands. Right after the fire, Artelia was tasked by the French government to use technology like drones to inspect not only the outside of the cathedral but also the inside and Bernoit Bunoit will have a presentation about their experiences Lessons Learned little bit later today and highly encourage you to attend this presentation.
[00:16:33] Saving lives. There are three things that today I would like to address. One is the state of drones in public safety. And when we look at the United States, we see a tremendous curve of adoption rate within agencies across the entire United States. We have roughly 40,000 fire and police departments out of those 40,000 roughly 500 have an unmanned aircraft unit associated with it. And, it makes sense to have a drone program when you don’t have direct access to a manned aircraft like a helicopter and fixed-wing. And it make sense to have a drone program. Even if you have a helicopter or fixed-wing. We’re also seeing this tremendous increase when we look at RFPs, request for proposals, that were submitted by state and local entities. Over half of them are for Public Safety use of drones. But in order for this growth to continue we need to set standards. And those standards as Mario said are not only in public safety, but across all the different verticals that we are seeing our technology being used from agriculture to construction ,inspection, oil and gas and once we have those frameworks we can set the standards. And that is extremely important when it comes to training as well because we have so many great training programs across the United States but we need to pull them together to create one standard so that the fire man in Los Angeles who may be moving to a different department can transfer his certification that has meaning. Or when we deploy to a natural disaster and we show up with a certification that the Incident Commander knows what the capabilities of the operator of the visual Observer and the Drone Data Specialists are.
[00:18:34] The pieces are coming together for large-scale deployments and here in California. We are one of the states that is prone to have natural disasters. Not only the earthquakes that occasionally happen, but as in recent history wildfires, and I would like to share with you some information from a deployment.
[00:18:53] I was part off last November in Paradise, California northern part of the state were a wildfire really caused one of the most destructive events in the state. Almost 19,000 structures were lost together with 85 lives and the damage of this wildfire was tremendous. We responded with a team of 16 Public Safety entities from both fire and law enforcement and we flew over six hundred missions. Collecting seventy-two thousand plus images and videos and we ultimately mapped the town of Paradise. 17,000 acres. That is the equivalency of 13,000 football fields or soccer field for our European guests. Then this data was sent to our colleagues at DroneDeploy in San Francisco. We hand-carried the data down there and DroneDeploy is one of our ecosystem partners providing 2D and 3D orthomosaic maps and GIS systems so that the public could go and look at the communities. Can look at the state of their homes and this data even almost a year later is still being used for insurance purposes to speed up the process of these homeowners that lost everything for reconstruction purposes, for debris removal. Data that is tremendously impactful to so many.
[00:20:33] And speaking of impactful the drone has saved 279 documented lives as of today these 279 people that were saved by. Are here and still with us because the drone was part of the emergency response was The crucial piece that they’d find or help that individual and this is priceless. Along with saving lives, we help Public Safety officials with mitigating their risks to their own people on the ground because getting more information is crucial. And that leads me to a very exciting announcement today. DJI is announcing its Disaster Relief Program and that will help not only during large-scale deployments but it will help in the future and here’s what we’re doing. We are going to be supporting Public Safety entities and organizations, which have already deployed to large-scale disasters fully integrated into the incident command system and we will support them by a variety of things. We will support them with up to dated new digital technologies both on the hardware and the software side. We will support them with tech support and manpower and together. We will not only execute the missions that need to be flown, but learn right after action report and take that knowledge back and build upon that knowledge to create even more solutions. And the six entities that we have vetted so far our Los Angeles Fire Department right here. They have deployed to multiple wildfires. Menlo Park Fire Protection District, Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, both of these entities deployed on several wildfires up in Northern California. Axon on a partner of DJI’s as well as FlyMotion and the PSUR team in Texas which comprises of members from different Public Safety agencies that come together and respond as a unit. To me that is exciting and worth an applause.
[00:22:56] At this time, it is my true honor to introduce Battalion Chief Richard Fields with the LA Fire Department.
[00:24:19] VIDEO
Richard Fields, LAFD
[00:24:20] Richard Fields: [00:24:20] It’s always something we talk about technology. And so let’s just move forward. Good morning everyone.
[00:24:28] Again, my name is Richard Fields. It’s an honor to be here with Los Angeles Fire Department and a battalion chief and I am the program coordinator for our UAS program. It is an exciting time that we’re living in now. We’re just five years ago my best tool as a fireman was an axe. Today we use drone technology as a force multiplier in our daily operations. Some of the foundations of why we are here today is to strengthen the fantastic team. I cautiously use the word I lead because I stand in the back of an amazing team of professionals. People who have an aviators mindset when operating uas, especially when they represent the Los Angeles Fire Department. And that collaboration has allowed us to grow to where we are today.
[00:25:29] What the UAS does for us? And I’ll use one word its accuracy. It has eliminated in many circumstances my need to guess what my problem is. You look at the image there and firefighters that are making entry into a potentially hazardous situation involving chemicals, but I only know what I see visually. The enhancement of technology allows me to more accurately verify what my challenges are. Where heat is. Where [it] possibly be generated from to make a better plan for deploying my resources and deploying a people into safer location so we can mitigate the emergency without putting firefighters and undue risk.
[00:26:21] Romeo spoke a little bit about operating in the Wildland. The fire department has found that operating UAS as a force multiplier for our manned aircraft is a very very valuable tool. We make it clear that a drone will never replace our aircraft in the air and the valuable jobs that they do, but we can increase their efficiency. Looking at the the image there is not that large but it shows a helicopter making a crucial water drop again accuracy of information allows us to see that very same water drop and instead of communicating to the helicopter pilot that held that was a good drop by what I’ve seen visually. I can confirm that accurately with the use of cellular technology. See exactly where that drop is made and give the pilot immediate information about his next operation.
[00:27:23] We use the drones extensively and damage assessment understanding that we have a large responsibility toward our public. We oftentimes inconvenience them by asking them to evacuate an area so we can safely conduct our operations. Obviously, they want to get back to their homes. Commerce wants to get moving again.
[00:27:41] We want to reopen the freeways so people can commute back and forth. By doing accurate damage assessment, we give our incident commanders the confidence that they can let the public back into the areas where there was a fire. We’re able to look at damage assessment in our structure fires as well, so that we can see where the fire potentially started we can estimate damage and as we do what we call overhaul in ensuring that the fire doesn’t restart, we can more accuratelypPlace firefighters in the safest possible location to do their job.
[00:28:18] We use our drones for technical rescue. This is what we would call a hillside rescue or below grade rescue. Being able to see that now the Incident Commander has the ability to actually see where the rescuers are. To see their progress and how they’re affecting the rescue of someone.
[00:28:36] It gives us that visual image now where before all we had to rely on his radio communication. Other examples of technical rescues rescuing a tree pruner from a tree that gets caught in palm fronts. That was a very unfamiliar operation for us, but now being able to add a visual element to that has been very helpful for us.
[00:29:00] Using mapping post-incident to give us accurate scale and scope and size of the emergency so we can mitigate the problem has been another fantastic tool for us. Mapping to give us accurate damage assessment. Instead, we used to walk around with a handheld GPS and our observers would say well it’s approximately x amount of acres, but we can accurately give that acreage. Giving Incident Commanders again the confidence they can let people back into the area.
[00:29:34] Another element of our success is fantastic leadership. Our leadership in Los Angeles Fire Department constantly challenges us to not just bring on cool toys, but to treat it professionally. To be objective about its application to operationalize the UAS purposefully. One of those leaders is our chief Deputy of Emergency Operations, Al Poirier .
[00:30:03] Richard Fields, LAFD: [00:30:03] I’ll bring him up is a pleasure not only to have learned from him over the years, but to be mentored by him to be led by him as we build our UAS operation. So he’s going to come up and speak a few words without further ado Chief Deputy, Al Poirier.
Al Poirier, LAFD
[00:30:36] Al Poirier, LAFD: [00:30:36] They’re very good with your mic’s. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t walk out to the breakfast bar to utilize the facilities with my mic on. They’re managing it for me. Thank you for the kind words. Thank you for allowing us to be here today. Romeo said, that he was happy that Los Angeles Fire Department hosted this conference here in this beautiful city, and then he turned a corner and said welcome to the FDNY the premier Fire Department in the country. I was ready to take that. But we’re a piece of that. FDNY is a wonderful organization. Wonderful people very very competent organization. We learn a lot from them. So why am I here on the chief Deputy of Emergency Operations like you said. We’re very fortunate to have several very very passionate engaged folks in our UAS arena. Richard Fields has done a fantastic job as a program coordinator amazing individual very engaged. He actually has a full-time job other than being the UAS coordinator. He does an amazing job managing all those moving parts and then Dave Danielson here is one of our premier operators. Another person that’s completely passionate and engaged in this process and that’s important. It’s important to work the problem and I appreciate from my perspective where I sit as part of the team, hearing the people that I work with start to parrot it the things that I tell them. It has to be meaningful and purposeful. Work has to be.. How do we operationalize? It just can’t be a cool toy. There’s a lot of shiny objects out there and the folks out here that are in the development processes with drones. You need to understand that he needs to be purposeful for us. And and in my conversation with Mario, I know that that a lot of the work that goes into R&D is is examining what our real needs are. Authentic true purposeful meaningful needs. We’re a big metropolitan fire department. We cover 470 square miles here in the city of Los Angeles. A third of that was the Santa Monica Mountains Range that runs right through this right through the city, you’ll see that if you look out to the north. But the development has slowly but surely shrunk that process over my past 33 years. I was born and raised here in Los Angeles.
[00:32:50] Another thing that’s important about our organization is, I actually by default I sit on the LA Area Fire Chiefs Operational Committee. 30 fire departments in this operational area. 30 Metropolitan fire departments. The other one of the other ones is Los Angeles County a large organization that borders us. Has a contiguous border with us. Great partner. And then we sit on by default on the operations and the and the board of directors for fire scope. The firefighting resources of California organized for potential emergencies, which is the reason I tell you that is, because guidance documents and policy documents and policy for what goes on in the fire service in California is oftentimes vetted through that organization, through all of the stakeholders and policymakers and those organizations come together and decide what’s best for our state. And what’s best for our state is oftentimes mimicked by other states and entities because we go through that process. One of those things is drone operations and UAV operations.
[00:33:54] Very very transformational this particular product. I relate it to in the early days of thermal imaging cameras and FLIR technology. And when that came on the market. Became available to fire departments. It really transformed the way that we do a lot of our operations. Emergency Operations and overall operations. And drone technology is very similar in that the things that we’re utilizing drones for. We have an air operation suite unlike some organizations. We have helicopters. Manned helicopters. They’re. AW139. Agusta Westland 139. They’re about 20 million dollars each with all the equipment on board the avionics and computers. We have five of those we have to Bell 206 Jet Rangers. We have about a 125 million dollar air operations entity and enterprise out there. And we have to manage that from a safety perspective collaboration coordination and cooperation with with the drone operations. But in addition to that aircraft on ground time is incredibly important. It’s incredibly expensive to maintain that fleet. What it comes down to when we talk about shiny toys and purchasing drones and implementing a drone program. It comes down to what’s fiscally responsible and this technology this tool is proven to be incredibly efficient and effective from, from a standpoint of being purposeful and from a standpoint of resource utilization for us. And examples that be some of the flights that we do related to brush fires. We used to have to do that with fixed-wing aircraft and and manned helicopters and we had a fire last year in June of last year up in the border between Beverly Hills and Los Angeles have burned about 40 acres. And you can’t fly helicopters around in those hillsides areas all night long looking for hot spots and making sure that the fire is isn’t igniting in some areas, you don’t want it to. And you have resources on scene trying to manage that and what we can do is ground our aircraft because it’s really expensive to fly them and it puts time on the motors when we really needed we want to be available. And we were able to utilize drones to effectively fly the perimeter of that fire for the entire night to determine where those hot spots were.
[00:36:09] Again, we’re using them for, another example of actually looking at what the need is for the organization. We’re looking at hazardous materials incidents. And. And equipping the drones to go out and do some of the same operations that we would have to suit up a team of hazardous materials members to go out and do gather sampling and go down range and see what the perimeter and footprint of that incident looks like. And what we’re doing is working on a the ability to utilize drones for that. So you can imagine from any First Responders that are here in the audience today, if you work on a hazardous materials team, you get the call for a specific incident you get on scene you start to do an assessment and you start suiting people up and Incredibly expensive class A suits so they can go down range. And try and determine what the incident encompasses what the material is what the danger is. You can shorten that time frame. Significantly with drone operations and with the sampling equipment that’s available now in the industry and what that does for us is it allows us to get those other resources available. Because like I said, we run thirteen hundred calls a day we take 600 people to the hospital everyday. Resource utilization for us. Keeping those resources available is incredibly important. The safety of our people is the number one. One of the number one things we think about. And this technology these this tool allows us to do that. And so. I appreciate the collaboration and the cooperation that we have with entities such as DJI and other organizations that allows us to determine what. Organically what’s working for us in the industry. It wasn’t a technology or tool that came to us and they said look at this to look what we can do with it because there it’s probably like I mentioned fire scope and at the at the LA Area Fire Chiefs level this technology drone technology. And this tool is the most talked-about type of capability in the past 18 months. It’s been the most talked about technology available in the fire service. Everybody wants to have a drone program. Everybody wants to operationalize our drone program. Oftentimes and I asked that question. I’ll see footage of look at how we use the drone during Emergency Operations and it’s not during Emergency Operations. They post it on social media and it’s it’s footage of drone operations. Well after the emergency of subsided and so that’s my big question to my staff is always how are you going to operationalize this? How do we in a 470 square mile footprint and we have a need for it on site of a fire that’s three o’clock in the morning. How does the Incident Commander pick up the radio and say I’d like to get a drone operator here and start doing a flight. How do we get that drone operator on-site. Get that thing airborne start providing situational awareness. And that’s the challenge we’re looking at right now.
[00:39:03] Another thing that I did in my career was I spent 20 years on a FEMA Urban Search and Rescue team. I deployed all across the country for some of the big disasters. Katrina would be one of the big ones that you you probably heard about. And it’s a large-scale landscape style disaster and I see when you talk about force multiplier. When you talk about the idea of resource utilization. This certainly gives us the idea. The opportunity…
[00:39:32] Inaccessible otherwise through vehicle or on foot and to do wide area search and rescue utilizing this technology. I think that the, the opportunity to utilize this technology or unknown and when I use that term organic, we’re discovering ways that we didn’t even know that we could utilize the tool and we’re validating those processes and some of them were looking at with hiker search and rescue, we’re still exploring. But we do have challenges in this city that are unique to this to Unique to this particular type of operation. I think we’re advantageous geographical area to explore because of our border with the Angeles National Forest and the work we do with U.S. Forest Service our borders with LA county and Ventura County and Glendale Burbank and Pasadena and multiple other cities. And so anyhow, thank you for what you do in this industry. Thank you for actually contributing to Public Safety and for developing a tool and a technology, that I think is ultimately going to provide for not only better resource utilization, but it’s going to save lives and it’s going to protect firefighters and police officers and other people in the public safety arena. So thank you very much for having us here. And thank you for what you do.
Jan Gasparic, DJI
[00:40:57] Jan Gasparic, DJI: [00:40:57] Hi, everyone. My name is Jan Gasparic. I’m the Director of Strategic Partnerships here at DJI. We have been hosting this conference for over four years now and every year we organize this conference. It really just amazes me so much by the leaps and bounds of the industry is able to grow in such a short time.
[00:41:22] I believe the first DJI Airworks we had was in San Francisco. We are probably just a little bit over a hundred people. And then today just four short years later. We’re at over 700 people here at the 4th year every year when we organized this conference. The reason we do it is to really create a platform to bring all the different stakeholders for the industry together under one roof.
[00:41:44] Okay, and DJI very much sees… We see ourselves as a custodian of this industry to some extend. But we very much recognize that if we actually want to realize the potential of this technology. It’s not something that we can do ourselves. Okay. So we with this conference Our intention is to bring all the different stakeholders together show you amazing things such as what LAFD is doing with this technology and it really together come, come together to accelerate the growth of the industry .
[00:42:15] I want to just take a brief look back at one of Romeo’s slides earlier. And this is the case that even the for the Wildlife, Wildfire response at Paradise. Now this is again. I think just a good example of what we can do when we’re able to bring everybody together. It’s part of the response. We had over 16 UAV teams over 600 missions.
[00:42:42] And this is in no stretch of the imagination. Is this something that DJ I can do alone. And in fact this part of the response, of course DJ I was involved but DroneDeploy provided their software for the lot of photogrammetry work with Hangar, that was also involved using their software to generate the 3D, sorry the 360 Panoramas and also company called Survey. That would help Geo locate a lot of the videos we produce. Again, this is one example of what we can achieve when we were all able to come together and operate in a collaborative manner and really we really hope that Airworks as a forum for that to showcase what we’ve done and really build the partnerships for the next year ahead. Now when it comes to partnerships. for DJI, that’s been no partner that has been with us for longer than FLIR. We originally started to collaborate all the way back in 2014 on the original XT-1 program. So with that when we when we launch that product it was the world’s smallest fully integrated thermal sensor into a UAS.
[00:43:55] The last year we followed up with the Zenmuse XT2, which integrated both Visual and thermal together. And that turned out to be an incredibly powerful tool to allow Public Safety and other inspection work to really engage with more complex operations. So we’re very excited about our partnership with FLIR at the future and what really the future holds for it.
[00:44:16] And today very proud to invite them up on stage and we’ll have Chris Bainter who’s our Global Director of DJI Business Development will tell you more about some of the amazing work. They’re doing with them on the DJI Platform.
Chris Bainter, FLIR
[00:44:34] Chris Bainter from FLIR: [00:44:34] Man, I’m excited to be here today. That was great. It’s hard speaking after you guys. So the LAFD. I gotta tell you. Anyway, well, I’m excited here today to talk about a brand new product announcement from FLIR. but before we talk about that, I wanted to talk first about FLIR’s mission, which is the innovate technologies that increase awareness and insight, so that professionals or First Responders can make more informed decisions that save lives and livelihoods. And that couldn’t be more true. When we think about First Responders. We develop tools that help give them better insights and one example that you see here is a handheld thermal camera that can see through smoke, provide better situational awareness.
[00:45:18] It was really encouraging and validating. I guess we’re just proud that that’s working so well and excited to take that technology in the XT2 with the collaboration with DJI and put that on an unmanned uas aircraft and we saw that that works really really well for First Responders. But our CEO talks about, you know, being proud or being happy with this success, but never being satisfied. You probably associate Fleer as a thermal infrared camera company, but 41 percent of our business actually comes from non-thermal Technologies in one of those is our chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive detection devices. We, that team is focused on building products that Safeguard people and property.
[00:46:08] And we leverage 40 years of experience in developing products that are ruggedized and able to go into this harsh difficult locations that are First Responders have to go into. If we think about that a little bit more, you know, I didn’t have a full respect for what happens in situations like this unknown hazards rapidly evolving environments. From a Hazmat perspective, as I’ve been told in as I’ve seen in videos they put on this maximum PPE personal protection equipment and that stuff it’s heavy. It’s hot you to be inside there for a certain amount of time before you have to come back get washed down or whatever they do to clean cleanse the suit and then somebody else goes out. So when you think about responding to these we don’t know the hazard, so they’re putting on maximum gear headed in.
[00:47:03] The only have a short amount of time to try to assess what the threats are and then they’re headed back and another team is headed out. So we started to think it Fleer. Is there a is there a better way?
[00:47:14] Is there a safer way today? I’m excited to announce a new product is the flea remove see 360. It’s an unmanned multi gas sensor flir’s first non-thermal payload for uas platform and it’s meant to be deployed ahead of First Responders. To both locate and detect the hazardous chemical threats that might be present and map out that Hot Zone this lets First Responders know exactly what type of gear they need to use and they can respond much faster to the threat because they have an idea of the location and the types of chemical hazards that are going to be there and they can respond accordingly and then in addition it continues to work on scene to provide 360° situational awareness.
[00:48:01] As a senior evolves as things progress in stream that data back to the people that need that information to make the decisions necessary. The C 360 is a perfect complement to our already expansive portfolio of handheld detection Solutions. Let’s take a look at a video and see it in action.
[00:48:26] VIDEO: [00:48:26] Being first on scene puts you at a higher risk. But what if there was a safer way to assess the scene now, you can take command of any situation from a safe distance meet the future of gas monitoring the flare move C 360 is the industry’s first multi gas detector fully integrated with an unmanned aerial. Whether your mission is Hazmat response Emergency Management environmental monitoring or inspection and compliance situational awareness is critical take command of any situation from a safe distance. With eight sensors including a PID the C 360 provides more coverage than a typical handheld gas meter powerful visuals from the zenmuse XT 2 combined with the c 360 sensor data to give you a comprehensive overview of the scene with a flare see 360 operators can locate the source Define a safety perimeter and monitor gas concentrations in three dimensions and it allows responders to select the right PPE. Monitor analyzed log and identify hazardous gases with the easy-to-understand visual overlay be the first end and the last out with the FLIR MUVE C360.
[00:49:45] Chris Bainter from FLIR: [00:49:45] Pretty exciting. Thank you. Now. There’s a lot going on in that video. I’m not sure if you actually caught which part was the actual new sensor product. It’s the block that sits on top of the the UAS platform and you saw the snorkel that sticks out so as an active pump technology and runs that across the eight-channel sensors to be able to detect which types of threats are about present. So when we think about situations that are that are First Responders are going to go into it could be a linkie linkie tanker car. It could be a train derailment. Maybe an active fire scene.
[00:50:27] The idea is that the C 360 is your first line at this of defense? It gets sent out ahead of the First Responders again to both locate and detect what types of threats are available. Maybe it’s a chlorine gas. Or carbon monoxide and be able to locate those sources and also to help map out The Hot Zone and in those situations this again helps reduce that that response time dramatically and we kind of played out some of the scenario. How does that so not only in forming of the different types of PPE that they’ll wear the gear that is necessary and appropriate but building out a better action plan of how to address that situation.
[00:51:09] Let’s also talk about another type application. Oops.
[00:51:17] There it is. Okay, so industrial safety inspection compliance monitoring remember the C 360 detects a multitude of gases and some of those are being able to detect hydrocarbons and meth. So this is really helpful for going in locations where doesn’t. It’s difficult to get to physically and so to reach those access those hard-to-reach locations. You can send in the C 360 and it not only helps you detect where the gasses are and the types of gas is present. But when you couple it with the xt2, it really becomes even more powerful. So an example would be in XT to detecting hot gas. That you’re seeing the thermal impact and then the C 360 tells you whether it’s methane or a hydrocarbon and that helps in compliance or if there were a situation, it can help you set up a safety perimeter. And then the last one we talked about was Emergency Management and so having it remain on scene with you for 360° situational awareness as a scene progresses, maybe there’s different threats and they’re changing new ones. Are coming up it definitely is meant to be the first in in the last out in that scenario.
[00:52:27] So in summary, there’s kind of Three core benefits to the FLIR MUVE C 360. One of them that we’ve talked about is assessing the scene from a safer distance giving better see understanding of the location and types of gases so that we can be quicker response time and reducing that time to action than the last one we talked about was 360-degree situational awareness.
[00:52:51] The FLIR MUVE C 360 really does fulfill flir’s mission of providing insights and awareness. So the professionals First Responders can make more informed decisions and ultimately save lives and livelihoods.
[00:53:09] But really to understand this product the best we encourage you to come by visit us get Hands-On with the product talk to some of our experts and learn.
[00:53:19] Thank you very much.
Jan Gasparic, DJI – P4 Multispectral
[00:53:25] Jan Gasparic: [00:53:25] So I’m incredibly excited to get the C 360 into the hands of our customers. This is just one example of how DJI is creating a platform that can then allow others to build on top of in order to really focus on applications where really DJI cannot really unlock that potential themselves. So so far this morning, we focused a lot on the public safety industry and all the incredible work in progress being done there.
[00:53:59] Now, I’d like to shift it over into agriculture. Now in the early days of this industry, I think we all were everybody was very enamored about the potential of this technology within the agriculture space. But over the years the let’s say that the growth has been a little bit halting, right? Frankly. It all turned out to be a lot more complex than than a lot of us first imagined. But today we’d like to actually revisit this industry and look at some of the trends that are that are happening and also some of the opportunities that are coming our way as well. So we’re going to cover off on three things today.
[00:54:35] First is the state of the agriculture industry from DJI’s perspective.
[00:54:39] Second we’re going to talk about some new data capture platforms and what they can mean for the industry
[00:54:44] Lastly we want to give you a sense of really what really what DJ’s vision is for the industry moving forward.
[00:54:51] But first why agriculture well in the US alone and represents a 1.4 billion dollar market and this is part of a global market of nearly 6 billion. Okay, so just from a numbers perspective alone there’s a lot of opportunity if we can solve the problems that this industry faces. Nevertheless farmers historically have really faced a lot of challenges when it’s come to adopting new technology systems and there’s many reasons for this but if we could probably summarize them a little bit it really comes down to the fact that they’re not very easy to use and they’re not very integrated with their existing systems.
[00:55:31] Farmers also facing a range of different challenges. The industry has been consolidating for today over 25% of farmes own just 85 percent of the crop land. So it’s a quite a high concentration of ownership.
[00:55:46] The industry also faces a lot of financial challenges where one and a half million farms make less than $50,000 a year.
[00:55:55] Now when you consider that a lot of these individual farms, but also be individual households really start to get a sense of the challenges are facing the people’s livelihood space. Of course, being a farmer also means that you have to be very much at home with unpredictability and instability. Weather historically has always been a challenge for the industry.
[00:56:20] Of course pests that can come in and destroy large tracts of crops. Soil health this is especially an important consideration when farmers might be replanting multiple tracks of land for long periods of time. Global trade where the prices of the crops that they fetch could vary quite a lot from one growing season to another. And, lastly climate change, which of course exacerbates all of the other factors.
[00:56:54] Nevertheless we DJ we see three core value propositions for drones. First were able to through the use of drones were able to allow farmers to scout their field in a lot less time historically, they would have to walk the length of their fields and they would physically look at what the state of their plants was and assume simply because they have no other no other tools at their disposal.
[00:57:17] That was the situation for the entire field now with the use of drones are able to rapidly map entire fields and really get a holistic picture of what the situation actually is. With new sensor technology. We’re also able to start to see the unseen we can look past just a visual spectrum and really look at what’s happening with plants across multiple spectrums.
[00:57:42] Lastly with access, with regular access to real-time data. farmers can be empowered to actually make decisions and better decisions across their growing season.
[00:57:54] Now when you compare drones to the status quo, which is really satellite imaging, they’re really frankly is no comparison. Drones have two primary advantages in relation to satellites.
[00:58:06] First is they’re able to map with a much higher resolution simply by virtue of the fact that we’re flying closer down to the ground. Second drones offer a lot higher data availability and with that what you mean is that when a farmer needs data, he simply just gets out his drone he can go flies field and get the data that he needs right?
[00:58:28] It’s very much self-serve. You don’t need to wait for the next satellite overflight. It’s a much more intuitive process. Really the tools are in their hands. So so we’re comparing the efficacy of the data that we can capture. We really see that this is an area that drones can greatly improve upon the status quo of the industry.
[00:58:53] Over the last few years there have been substantial increases in the performance of multispectral Imaging as well now to give you a sense of multispectral Imaging essentially, what we’re doing is that you’re taking narrow slivers of light. And then you’re comparing what you see across those different slivers.
[00:59:14] Of course. We’re also able to capture data Beyond just the visual Spectrum as well. and this technology is advancing to the point where you’re able to gather all this data and very quickly understand what’s happening plants because we’re capturing all this data were able to understand for example, if there is plant stress in one specific area due to water or due to lack of.
[00:59:38] Or perhaps or perhaps these areas that the simply have been planted for there wasn’t any standard of merged. We see the industry progressing to a point where this data is going to feed into an outlet and a analytic system that’s going to be an output a recommendation based on the data that’s captured.
[00:59:57] We’re hoping that one day you’re simply just going to be able to scan your field and getting a notification about what needs to happen. Of course if we’re able to create a standardized data capture platform. this means that we’re actually able to create a platform that allows others to really start building off of that data and use Ai and machine learning tools to analyze the data and really adapted for all the different unique variations and aspects as any farmer will tell you as soon as you get down onto the field things are really a lot more complex than.
[01:00:31] What we might first think and a one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work. The same time the stork Lee machine control is also seen a lot of adoption within within the agriculture industry and we see the same Trend carrying over onto drums as well. DJI has built a start we start our spring program back in 2015 and historically that was quite a manly piloted.
[01:00:58] But over time we see this data captured peace and the in the spring components starting to be able to communicate with one another. So we’re actually able to build full end-to-end solution. now in order to realize this vision. what’s needed is a data standardizing highly accessible data capture platform by accessible.
[01:01:20] We mean that it needs to be extremely easy to use. It’s got to be a simple as powering on the Drone selecting the area you want to map and hit it go. Second is to be very well integrated existing systems today require multiple steps and complex workflows. It’s a lot for an ending for an individual farmer to take on just by themselves.
[01:01:43] So it’s our vision if we have to simplify this and fully integrated really to we’re really able to create a lot better experience for the end user. And lastly needs to be widely compatible. We may be able to standardize the data capture piece. But after that it’s going to take a range and different solutions to really be able to unlock that potential.
[01:02:04] Today ladies and gentlemen, I’m very proud to show you DJ’s latest latest mission for the agriculture industry.
[01:02:13] VIDEO: [01:02:13] As the world population continues to grow we need to innovative ways to feed more people sustainably that means leveraging intelligence in the agriculture industry. Meet the new tool that makes your workflow intelligent the DJI P4 multispectral a high-precision multispectral drone solution designed to get you agricultural insights for targeted action.
[01:02:50] Jan Gasparic: [01:02:50] Ladies and gentlemen, the P4 multispectral. What we did for this program was to take one of our most widely recognized drones and integrating fully integrated multispectral camera, and we chose this particular system because it’s one of the most reliable and most robust of beef that we have out there in the market.
[01:03:14] Now, you’ll notice that the P4 multispectral actually has six lenses as part of its camera. Now this camera system is designed to be extremely easy to use. So what it has is that we have one single RGB sensor and you use that for the traditional mapping work that you would do and then we have a five band multispectral sensor. Each one of these sensors is a 2 megapixel sensor with a global shutter. So this has been optimized based on the feedback that we got from field for what’s needed for this type of work.
[01:03:51] On top of the Drone we’ve also integrated a spectral sunlight sensor what this does is essentially when you’re out there in the field mapping. It’ll keep on measuring the ambient lights in that specific area and the ultimate impact of this has to be end-users that we’re able to create a lot more accurate data and consistency over time.
[01:04:14] So the P4 multispectral. It’s fully integrated and ready to use completely out of the box. And we really see that this is going to be the next stage and really standardizing the data capture in the agriculture industry. Now I’m proud to announce that the P4 multispectral will be priced at $6,499 and start shipping in October.
[01:04:37] In addition, we’ve included several things within this bundle. So we’ll include a basic Tara license EGS Pro license that’s going to help you with the mission planning and also Enterprise Shield Basic Our intention here is really to give Farmers everything. They need in one specific package so they can get out and start mapping straight away.
[01:05:04] The P4 multispectral will also be compatible with DJI’s DRT K2. Now the reason this accessory is important is because when you’re mapping Fields multiple times throughout the year and you want to compare data sets over time. You really need to have very tight accuracy and with the mobile base stations were able to achieve two centimeter level accuracy and that will be priced at $9,100.
[01:05:32] So we’re very excited about the potential of the P4 multispectral and what it means for the. And we really hope that through the system we are able to standardize data capture and give people a regular tool in order to be able to leverage drone technology in a more effective way. Now as I mentioned earlier partnership is a key piece of what we do here at DJI and to really unlock the potential of drones in agriculture, we really need to be able to get at the data make that data useful for farmers. And there’s no company that’s been working on agriculture longer in this industry than DroneDeploy and they I’m very proud to invite on stage. DroneDeploy CEO Mike Wynn will tell you more about some of the amazing work they’re doing in the space.
Mike Wynn, DroneDeploy CEO
[01:06:25] Mike Wynn: [01:06:25] Nice. Yeah, super excited to be here and super excited about that handsome for multispectral before I start on that. I just wanted to think about the fire departments. DroneDeploy has actually been affected by fire twice. And I’ve actually seen a whole team of firefighters charge into our office where you have one one foot of visibility. We had a fire next door. they charged in they use their axes and fearlessly, and we actually our office was saved. Just wanted to give a clap to the Fire Department fire teams here.
[01:07:01] Thanks very much for your work I am really excited to support you. I was really awesome to hear Romeo told the story of paradise. I’m going to talk about that but during employed we support all sorts of Industries and we’re really excited to support of the drones for good activity. DroneDeploy is actually a pledge one percent company. That means we pledged 1% about time or energy to good causes and I support of that. We do a lot of work with fire teams, and that whole activity of getting 16 fire departments together through a man and his team coordinating all that and then processing 72,000 images. That’s right 72 thousand images on drone deploy within 48 hours. We think is just such a great demonstration of the scale and the value that drones can teach them. And we got to talk about that scale. So I ‘m Mike I’m the CEO and founder of DroneDeploy. We’ve been doing drones and ag since about 2014. The first industry we went into but DroneDeploy serves every industry. Farming is really big for us.
[01:08:06] And what’s really exciting about our culture right now is the scale and we see the scale here today this whole wide room adopting drones. We also seeing scale and each individual company. When we started drone deploy in the first few years was only one drone per company, maybe two or three. 2016 saw to get some 5 6 7 10. 2018 we start to see the first real wide deployments and they really probably what multiple companies now flying over a hundred drones in their feet. True scale. Let’s talk about that. So at drone deploy for those of you that don’t know we make drone software. We make sure the software that works across many different types of drones. We focus specifically on DJI the most. You can use the right platform there and our customers using all over the world. We have over 5,000 customers pay our products day and there are doing a ton of work. 1 million flights per year are happening under dronedeploy over three and a half thousand every single day and you’re going to hear about Cortiva are they doing a bunch of. Our community is super active. They’ve mapped over a hundred million acres. Sounds like a big number but to conceptualize that that’s actually the size of California. I don’t know who flew into getting into California’s today. I suspect a lot of a if you looked out that window and you think about the size of California, it is truly gigantic to think about that community of drone users using DJI using our software has mapped entire California is incredible . Really proud of all the work of the value that our customers are getting out of drones today operating at real scale. I’m going to talk a bit about how they getting to scale why this is happening the the maturity of the technology that Jan and talked about. We are really proud of a product released last couple of years with Lifemap.
[01:10:09] The first question we get asked when we came into that cultural market. Can you deliver me the data and media team? I’m out there at the field right now. I want to make decisions right now. Not tomorrow. Right now. And so we had this immediate quest to be able to deliver data in real time. And that’s what Lifemap is. It enables our customers to make decisions at the field Edge literally while the Drone is flying and you can watch this video. The Drone is creating an otho-rectified map of that site. It’s not real time in the sense of ten minutes later or will pull your Windows laptop and put in the back of the truck. It’s real time on your iPad processed on your GPU right then and there I’ll customers are starting to walk to those areas of Interest. There’s trouble spots while the Drone is still in the air. That’s true time to Value. And what that’s enabling time to Value it is the true scale. We seeing three things. From our customers that was leading to scale ready operationalizing this technology.
[01:11:16] The first thing you need is reliability. The stuff needs to work 10 times out of 10. The whole industry is making great strides on reliability.
[01:11:26] The second thing you need is ease of use this stuff must just work. That’s how expectations are now right you buy a product and it just works. You put it down you press the button it flies. It gives you the data you need no fuss. No. Clicking let’s have got lots of buttons. It’s easy. And at ease of use is critical to scale because you can imagine if you’ve got hundreds of Pilots.
[01:11:48] You want to send hundreds of your team on week-long training courses to figure this out. To require lots of support. This product is did suggest work and just working needs to the third thing that’s important for Enterprise scale. And that’s time to value. you need to get that value immediately quickly to enable you to make the right decisions. and that’s all about. You’re going to make good decisions at gives you the return the Investments as the amount of time you put in even minimize that investment we can maximize the ROI. It’s around all these things. You need an Enterprise platform that enables that and we talked a lot about Security today DroneDeploy is proud to be the only ISO 27001 certified software company in our space. You need the Enterprise user management the feed management the audit trails all that to enable secure and scalable operations fuel products. and that’s enabling companies like Corteva to grow to massive scale and ready on print interview plus drones right now and hear more from Jeremy. I’m going to try and tell his story he’s going to come up next. Be really proud of the work that Corteva is done and how quickly they’ve scaled that program.
[01:13:02] But it’s not just big companyies. Corteva is the number one sequencing company in America. We have lots of small companies. Small businesses whether it’s a single growers using the technology or small service providers, but even to the mid-sized companies that pay Equity the equity is a great story. They’ve been using drugs for a couple of years and they just got great metrics. They are a co-op in the midwest who helps their Farmers provides provides a crisis. So it wasn’t season chemicals and what they found was that transition to using drone deploy. Way from other drone Technologies, they were able to capture two and a half times more data per day. That’s all the time to value, ease of use. reliabilityt. Enable to do all those things and you capturing all this data they’re able to actually build more trust with their customers deliver better decisions better advice and they found their able to increase their sales by 7% sales of chemicals and seeds and increase the retention rates by 10%.
[01:14:03] That’s real business value being delivered by drones. And this really we put hundreds of these stories. We going to drone deploy blog you’ll find lots of them. Real people are finding real value real numbers real Roi so I was talking about the midwestern California. So I thought I should highlight Californian customers involves Farmers about what five and a half hours Northwest of here in the east of here here and they are saving $15 per.
[01:14:31] And then what a 1,200 Acre Farm Thousand Acre Farm, excuse me. Into that map saving a hundred eighty thousand dollars a year with drugs. I can tell you their budget for the drone team is not a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. they’re getting massive Roi.
[01:14:50] And all the things that are enabling these companies of those three things reliability ease of use and time to value. And that’s why we’re super excited about multispectral and the P4M and we see a product that can deliver all those things. Up till now dronedeploy just being focused. Get ready on the RGB will you’ve heard from our customers? You can capture a ton of value in agriculture just from seeing your field from above. But there’s a next steps, but I love seeing the unseen and we’re excited to make that available to our customers. So we’re really excited to be announcing will be supporting the p4m and the data. dronedeploy be a launching full five multi spectral processing. It’s going to be available in Q4 and you can learn more about that at the dronedepoy conference which we October 16th. We’ve super proud of the work that our photogrammetry is being team has been doing we were 60= Phd’s working on that full-time computer vision machine learning. I think you’ll find if you use drone deploy before. You haven’t used it for a while. I think you’ll find that we can actually deliver you the best data quality of any product as all through the cloud. It’s infinitely scalable. So you can process 16,000 acres in 48 hours. If you’re ready, need to. We’re really really proud of what this team has done. We’re really proud to be able to support this product and they’re excited to be able to do more for the agriculture agricultural community. Thanks very much.
[01:16:19] My pleasure to invite Jeremy happens to the stage. They’ve been doing incredible work with drones of the last couple of years and you were a proud to support him and his team
Jeremy Groeteke, Corteva
[01:16:28] VIDEO: [01:16:28] A birds-eye-view, a way to see all the hard work on the farm with pride. Today, we’ve brought the bird’s eye view to the field to bring Precision to farming operations and see what we’ve never been able to see before.
[01:16:50] Nothing matches the importance of boots on the ground, but now with eyes in the sky we’re able to help farmers work smarter than ever.With the world’s largest agriculture drone Fleet. We can provide real-time data that matter on individual Fields all in a matter of minutes. It’s a powerful tool in their tool kit and offers information every grower wants to know. What’s going on in my Fields right now. Spotting problems early can save an entire Harvest. With real-time aerial views. We can spot diseases and pests pressures before they get out of hand in what Springs early-season flooding can be seen assessed and action recommended. It can even measure planter error and field right after emergence to help Growers save time increase yield and make the right in season decisions for their bottom line with smarter seeds precise crop protection and data…
[01:17:57] Jeremy Groeteke: [01:17:57] …
[01:17:57] And the Drone. Basically anything I can see with my human die. I can train a machine then to start doing that for me automate it and to standardize that other things we learn Pilots there is a bell curve of population for pilot control and operation. So we knew we had to go out there and standardized procedures, flight altitude takeoffs. These were new tools and Technologies. And so we had to implement that standard operating procedures across the organization on our with our teams. We’re a global company not every country has the same governance process for flights. So we layered on another layer of security and safety for our organization to make sure that all our Pilots around the world have basic operational skills, so that we’re not. Just giving them a box and software and go do stuff. We have to train them put them through rigorous training to know that when they went out. They were safe and secure with those operations in those platforms. So key learnings on our side was standard operating procedures security and quality was one of the key things but if we had to move from pretty picture to data very quickly and that’s one of the key things that we learn so as we continue to scale. You know pretty pictures are nice. They’re easy to sell those type of things but decision-making power is done off of data. So as we scaled our Fleet, we seen very key things go on. In the very beginning, product positioning was very something simple. And this was the pretty picture we started here. We would take the phantom for put it up in the air and take a view basically where I can’t see. I’m a fairly tall guy. My son 6-9 he’s taller than me, but we still can’t see over corn and a hundred sixty eight sixty acres in the back of the field. I need to be able to get up in the air and see what I can’t see. That’s what that platform allowed us to do. So we could see the impacts of germplasm in the environment and know which ones are the best products for our customers to produce food for all of us to eat here at lunch. So that was the visual The Next Step was Edge processing. So I still had to move SD cards in that first one with product positioning. The next thing was edge processing. And that was where our partnership with drone deploy came into play. Now. I can go out there with live map put the bird up 160 acres in 20 minutes or less and know exactly what’s going on. My agronomist in the past would take four to six hours to do that same process. And now can do that in 20 minutes. And that’s. Park in the pick up getting the Drone out setting up and putting it away back in the case. They can be done in 20 to 25 minutes. So that was the next thing is you see in that example. That’s a windstorm in southern Minnesota. You can see some lines that are running vertical or horizontal here. And what that is is tile underneath the soil draining water away. So we have water drain away and a healthy root system. When I don’t I have large corn with a wind storm comes through the interesting thing is this is one of our germplasm plots at impact site and you can see tons of hybrids that are successfully withstanding mother nature in that environment and that’s how we use for product advancement. So again moving from pictures out to data was the key thing. The last step here is machine learning algorithms. So here within our internal organization, like I said, we’ve converted over 20 some traits. This is just an example of stand count so I can now count plants look at Gap analysis as well and different crops and different components case study. We did as a grower in South Texas or a 200-acre farm. We did the Gap analysis flight again about 25 minutes We uncovered that the grower left over 20 acres with nothing planted. Because of the machine the planner wasn’t set up right wasn’t dropping seed and he just left 20 acres at zero yield potential what that grower then did was that field Edge decision that day knew he’s not going to invest that much more inputs into that crop because his potential was just reduced. So now he has Financial impact to his operation at the field Edge and can make a better livelihood as he moves forward.
[01:22:08] So as we move forward within our organization and partnering with group like you guys as well one of our key principles of scaling up breakthrough Technologies, so we can do a lot of things and what I call proof-of-concept hell where we’d get out there and we do this and I only can do it in this environment or in this small scale and that’s great. I can do that internally. I have tons of sensors that we have in our research. I mean I can do plant. Hi. Through lidar technology. I can do thermal. I can do multispectral for color and crop as you can see with the examples. But if I can’t scale it, I can’t improve Agriculture and a farmers way of life. And so that’s one of the key things where the partnership with DJ is beneficial is bringing technology and platforms that allow us to scale our Technologies to Growers to ultimately improve Agriculture and at Corteva that is the end of the day our. It’s to enrich the lives of those who produce my dad my brothers. And for those who consume I don’t know how many of you are farmers, but I can guarantee your all consumers because you either had breakfast or you’ll have lunch and every time you have a meal you’re involved in agriculture because that’s where it comes from. And so that’s what we’re about with Corteva agriscience has to ensure that progress for generations to come. My middle son is actually a pretty solid gamer. At least he thinks he is this technology is bringing back a whole another generation, whether they go clear to the farm to do this or whether they engage with organizations like us and yourselves to improve agriculture. This technology is whether other Technologies are bringing a whole new landscape of generation back to Agriculture, and that is what we. So with that I thank you and I’ll turn it back over there.
Jan Gasparic, DJI
[01:24:03] Jan Gasparic, DJI: [01:24:03] So I’m so excited about the work that Corteva is doing so today. Unfortunately, we’re running a little bit behind schedule. So I’m going to zoom through the next our next few slides quite quickly. So at the last section, so just bear with us for a few more moments. And the next session will start at a quarter to eleven. So just rub got a little over 10 minutes. So I like to just take a little bit back to our original mg1 spraying the drones today. We talked a lot about remote sensing want to cover off also on the potential of actuation of drones actually going out there and making changes into the environment. DJ his first foray into this field was back in 2015. That’s when we launched our first MG1 Agras. We were then able to very quickly iterate on top of that platform where every year we’re doing a new product release of the MG1s and the MG1P and through that through those generations of products were able to greatly improve the overall spring performance and also the level of automation that’s built into that platform. Now I want to share with you some of the impact that this technology has had over the years. Two dates DJI drones have sprayed over 50 million acres of farmland and just to give you a sense of scale. That’s more than the entire arable cropland in France. And this is all been sprayed by DJI drones. Date we’ve shipped over 50,000 units of Spraying Systems across a range of different. Now as this as this technology is Vernon adoption. A lot of this has been concentrated in East Asia and so far. We’ve also seen a big ecosystem emerge to really support this technology. We’ve seen over 3,000 technical Specialists to be trained by DJI. So these are folks that will repair and maintain the systems. We certified over 30,000 Pilots. So there’s a tremendous of Workforce that’s out there actually supporting this type of work. Now since 2015 we’ve been able to validate the concept and I we’ve identified Three core value propositions of drones for spraying.
[01:26:17] First is the rate of the reduce the inputs. We’re Able to increase the productivity through the amount of automation we’ve introduced. We’re also able to reduce the amount of risk simply because there’s less opportunities for contact poison. So ladies and gentlemen today, we’re very proud to announce that our latest platform for spray. The Agras T16 is now going to be made available in North America as well. So let me give you just a few highlights of the system the t16 improves dramatically Upon Our older systems in that it has a foldable design and IP67 protection. That means the system has a degree of water and dust resistance. The t16 with the system. We’ve also increased the capacity to tank from 10 liters to 16 liters, which is roughly four point two gallons. And with a new spring design system, we’ve been able to increase the spray width to about 6.5 meters or roughly about a little over seven yards. And the reason this is important is that when your map sir when you’re spraying large tracts of land if you’re able to increase the spacing between your individual between your individual flight tracks. You actually have to cover a larger area. The t16 also comes with the terrain-following radar. So this means that you’re able to maintain consistent height between the sprayer and the actual top of the canopy. And throughout the generations of this product. We’ve really been listening very closely to the needs of the of the operators in the field and one of the common things that kept on asking us for was for an fpv camera, so they could actually see out there in the field really what was going on. And of course this has been integrated into t60 along with obstacle avoidance systems as well. So over the next year DJI is going to best a lot of resources into really seeing what we can do to stand up and replicate some of the successes we’ve seen in East Asia here in the North American Market.
[01:28:19] And just to close it off. I’d like to give you a sense of what our vision is for some of the work flows that are going to emerge when we have all these systems being able to talk to one another. So we see that in the very near future a farmer is going to be able to go out there in this field setup was with this P for multispectral and do a basic map. It’s going to generate a digital surface model. We will then load that load that model and that data into some analytic software such. Mike’s DroneDeploy and from that we’re going to understand really the different areas of concern and then that’s going to move on to generate a spraying flight plan and that’s going to be done with some of the software that’s utilized T16 system. Then of course that’s going to be loaded off onto the t16 and then the mission can be executed automatically. So we’re starting to get to a point of the industry where we have all the fundamental components here. It’s actually started building these end-to-end workflows and DJI sees its role in the industry to really providing the platform of the core technology, technological building blocks and empowering others to really start building these systems on top.
[01:29:31] Now, of course when these challenges is also opportunities. We definitely need to recognize that the regulatory environment for spraying and North America is challenging. We’re going to work with our partners to see what we can do to stand up proof-of-concept programs are actually going to validate this concept and see what we can do to replicate the success. Training and support represents an enormous really an enormous opportunity for everybody in this room. In order for this technology be deployed effectively has to come with a lot of training and support we’re going to be working over the next year for the address of this and build up that capacity here in this market. Lastly we’re going to need a sophisticated distribution network really be able to get the geographic distribution that we need in order to have this technology deployed down there at the fields.
[01:30:19] So that rounds us off and thank you for letting us share really what our vision is for the agriculture industry and everything’s become so that’s it for day one key notes. Sorry ran a little bit over time. We have a lot of exciting programming for you tomorrow morning as well. So. Enjoy the rest of the day and see you tomorrow!
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