Is there a better way for Enterprise Companies to manage large drone fleets?

Today’s guests believe there is.  Lorenz Meier and Kevin Sartori are Co-Founders of Auterion, an enterprise drone software platform.  Auterion’s goal is to be the drone software platform of choice for enterprises and drone manufacturers, while accelerating the industry by driving forward open standards to create a common, future-proof roadmap. This gives everyone involved, whether vendors or buyers, confidence that they will achieve a return on their investment, and access to a wide choice of partners and integrations in an open ecosystem.

Lorenz Meier, holds a Ph.D. in drone software architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. In 2008 Lorenz created and released the PX4 autonomous drone autopilot to the open source community. Lorenz is also the creator of Pixhawk, MAVLink and QGroundControl, today’s most commonly used flight control hardware and autopilot software. He has been working in the drone and robotics industry for the past 10 years and in 2017 was nominated MIT 35 Innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review for the development of PX4.  Lorenz is also a board member and community director at Dronecode, the organization that defines the open source standards in the UAV industry.

Kevin Sartori holds a Master in Robotics from ETH Zurich and an MBA from UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business and has been working in the drone industry since 2008 when he was researching optimal control algorithms as part of the early Pixhawk team at ETH Zurich. In 2014, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and joined 3D Robotics, first as an Enterprise Product Manager and later as Senior Product Marketing Manager for Site Scan. He helped the company transition from a consumer hardware company to an enterprise Software as a Service company and lead the marketing and channel sales efforts. Today at Auterion, Kevin combines his consulting skills with his knowledge of the drone industry and technology to help drone manufacturers and drone service providers adopt new technologies, change business models, and bring new products to market.

In early 2020, Auterion release Sky Node, which when combined with Auterion PX4 enables drone manufacturers to rapidly enter new markets by making their products compatible with an ecosystem of payloads, components, services, and workflow integrations. It short, it gives companies the tools they need to deploy large fleets of drones.

In this edition of the Drone Radio Show, Lorenz and Kevin talk about Auterion’s open source platform, Sky Node and its applications and how enterprise companies can better manage a fleet of drones.

Fighting Sea Level Rise With Drones

Dania Montenegro is the Project Coordinator for Flying Labs of Latin America, based in Panama.  The goal of Flying Labs is to accelerate the positive impact of local aid, health, development and environmental solutions locally.  Flying Labs expand local markets by creating new jobs and businesses that offer robotics as a service and support local ecosystems.  There are 24 Flying Labs located in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Labs are franchised by WeRobotics to enable local changemakers who want to build robotics and AI capacity in their countries.

Off the coast of Panama lies a tiny island called Carti Sugdub. This island, home to more than 1,000 people, is threatened by sea level rise and climate change, so much so, that in partnership with the Government of Panama, the entire community is making plans to relocate to forty acres on the mainland.  Flying Labs has been ask to help in the relocation by helping to document and preserve the culture and community design.  Using drones, Flying Labs is creating a digital footprint that will guide redevelopment of the community in it new location. In this episode of the Drone Radio Show, Dania talks about Flying Labs Panama and how drones are helping the residents of Carti Sugdub mitigate the impacts of climate change and sea level rise.  Joining Dania later in the podcast is Joseph Mulihausen, Head of Drone & Data Systems at WeRobotics.

One Company's Path To BVLOS

Rob Knochenhauer is Head of UAS Regulatory & Operations at Green Sight.  Green Sight provides autonomous aerial data collection hardware and data analysis software tools t o support a wide variety of industries and applications. 

At Green Sight, Rob leads the development of the UAS operational scheme wherein unmanned aircraft are run at customer locations with a 107 certificated remote pilot on site who maintains visual line of sight with the drone while it flies. While the drone is flying, the operation is overwatched by another 107 certificated Remote Pilot in Green Sight’s Boston office. This is all part of Green Sight’s goal to eventually run unattended drone operations in the future. 

In this edition of the drone radio show, Rob talks about Green Sight, the BVLOS waiver process and what companies need to know to prepare for fully autonomous operations.

Can a Smart City Make Flying Drones Easier and Safer?

Eben Frankenberg is CEO and Co-founder of Echodyne Corp. Echodyne is a 5-year old company that makes revolutionary compact radar sensors for a range of applications for commercial, defense, and government customers. Their high-performance radars combine patented technology and powerful, intelligent software to achieve maximum radar performance. Echodyne radars are used the Autonomous Vehicle, Perimeter and Border Security, Security Integrator, Airspace Management, UAS Service Suppliers, and commercial Unmanned Aircraft Systems industries.

Eben  has over 20 years of experience starting and growing technology companies.  Prior to founding Echodyne, Eben was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Intellectual Ventures (IV) where he created and incubated new companies including: Echodyne Corp and several other leading startups.  In this edition of the drone radio show, Eben talks about how smart cities data networks could play a role in supporting unmanned air flight operations in urban environments.