Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Drone Network explores how drones are reshaping the world. Hosted by Bryce Bladon, the podcast documents the tech, economics and people piloting the world's largest standardized drone imagery network.
**Bryce Bladon:** Hello and welcome to The Drone Network, the only podcast to cover the world's first autonomous aerial data network. I'm your host, Bryce Bladen, and on this show we document the tech, economics and people piloting the world's largest standardized drone imagery network. Each episode we explore how drones are reshaping industries, creating new economic opportunities.
And literally changing how we see the world. On today's episode, we explore how consumer drones have evolved over the past decade and a half, how they've led to the creation of an entirely new kind of infrastructure, and what that has ultimately unlocked for the drone industry and people as a whole.
Today's guest is Alec Wilson of Spexi and LayerDrone. Alec, welcome to the show.
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** Hey Bryce. Thank you for having me.
**Bryce Bladon:** So, Alec, I wanted to talk to you about how your journey building the world's first autonomous aerial data network effectively started.
## [00:00:56] How did consumer drones enable the world's first autonomous aerial data network?
**Bryce Bladon:** Drones have been around for over a couple decades at this point, but they have changed substantially. When DJI released the first Phantom in 2013, we weren't anticipating a new category of infrastructure, but that $1,000 quadcopter and all the models that followed really did create something unprecedented.
And I think we're seeing that in front of us. A global network of pilots with professional grade equipment in their hands that's also consumer accessible. Alec, how has consumer drone technology evolved from a fun hobby to ultimately the back pinning of a decentralized data network?
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** Yeah, it's a great question.
And um, DJI is definitely at the, the center of the answer. Um, they are a drone technology company based of China that has been developing drones, um, in this space since, as you said, the Phantom in 2013. And I remember when that phantom came out, um, I was. Uh, I, I was still in school. I was studying, uh, physical geography at the time and drones.
It was still super early, right? Super early. And, and the technology wasn't that great. They wouldn't go too far from the controller, you know, that was in the early, early days, but it was around 20 17, 20 18 when I really started to take notice.
## [00:02:05] How Alec was introduced to drones
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** And I was, I was a commercial helicopter pilot at that time, flying professionally in Western Canada.
I was having to actually dodge them from time to time in the low Vancouver airspace, which is where I was doing a lot of flying. There weren't good regulations or any regulations really at that time to govern the use of drones in the Canadian airspace and the integration of drones in the manned airspace was, was at that time a a problem.
And it was a problem that I was literally facing. You know, physically with my helicopter. And it sort of dawned on me how much this technology had, uh, increased in its capability. And I got really interested, um, around that time. And it was then when I got the opportunity to start a company called Coastal Drone, which became Canada's largest drone pilot certification in training technology company, um, where we help the Canadian government figure out how to regulate these drones into the manned air space.
## [00:02:55] When regulations and drone technology converged
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** But then also what were the training standards associated to them and how could we get pilots to. To get to that standard so that they could fly safely and get things done with drones in a way that didn't cause problems for man aviation. And it was right around there where drone, the drone tech itself really started to go right.
Um, you had the introduction of the foldable drones, so the Mavic series of DJI, where it wasn't just a rigid body of drone. Now the arms and the legs could fold in on itself for easy transportation. And the sensors started getting a lot better. The cameras. Rivaling the cameras that you could buy, you know, in professional, um, photography stores and like digital cameras.
And their use of them was exploding, uh, as well.
## [00:03:35] How Alec (COO) met Bill (CEO) imaging for Google Maps and Earth
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** And I was still flying helicopters and working on the drone regulation side of things when I met Bill, who's the CEO and founder of Spexi, who was in the early, early days of building software company to, uh, coordinate drones because he saw the same thing he actually used to own.
A company that owned aircraft planes that most people don't realize. But the, the best imagery that you still see on Google Maps and Google Earth is actually from fixed wing planes with holes cut out of them and very expensive million dollar cameras in that hole looking down at the city. And the planes fly grids across the biggest cities in the world.
And they do this repeatedly. It's very expensive, it's very hard to scale. It's very carbon emitting. And Bill thought, you know, these drones are just, they're, the tech is just getting so much better, like the rate of cell phones. There's gotta be a way that these are gonna eat into the world of earth imaging from satellites and planes.
And so that's actually how him and I met. We met on a drone job and we were both testing some weird capabilities with drones, air quality sensing, I think it was. And we decided to team up and join forces. I ended up selling my company, um, to join him full time. And basically it was right around that time when we came into, I think, the most profound technology leap in drones.
## [00:04:45] The trick to drones as infrastructure? Keep it under 250 grams.
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** That's when the mini class or the micro drone came into existence and those weigh a very specific 249 grams. And there's a reason for that because when the regulators started to try to figure out what the right class of drones and risk around those classes of weight of drones was sensible to bring into the regulatory framework.
The 250 gram weight threshold kept coming up and uh, they did a lot of tests like firing drones into different things to see which were gonna cause the most damage. And the weight of 250 grams seemed to be that threshold of like, you know what, anything above 250 grams just. Introduces more risk, therefore requires more regulation, therefore requires more effort from pilots to meet that regulation.
And anything below 250 grams, you know, really doesn't, it doesn't cause that much risk. And so we're gonna make that class of drone that the 250 grams and below, which at that time was like. Hobby drones. Little, little tiny toy drones. FPV drones and even FPV drones weren't that light, so there really wasn't much to worry about.
And then of course, what did DJI do the most, uh, technologically advanced drone company in the space. They built a drone that weighed 249 grams that was almost as capable as their other drones. And we just went, holy smokes. This is a game changer. Because when you start flying them, you realize how operationally efficient they are and light and low risk and low noise.
And so the next phase of technology really I think started getting smaller with drones and more capable. And that's really where the, our story for LayerDrone and Spexi starts.
**Bryce Bladon:** Absolutely. You hit on quite a few things there and, and in my like. Far less interesting experience in drones. It is some pretty critical stuff.
The first one was that those, those first drones around 2010, even as late as 2013, incredibly impressive machines in their own way. Uh, I think the parrot AR drone was the first consumer quadcopter. I'm not sure I might have even flown one of those for a film once. I should say somebody else flew it and I got a hold the controller for a minute when I shouldn't have, but the thing I always really remember about that was it could fly for five minutes.
Maybe, maybe twice that I can't really remember. But all I can remember is that a DJI mini can fly for about eight times. Uh, that piece of equipment from 10 years earlier could that honestly looked far more impressive. And you know, that 2010 thing, uh, was, was very impressive. But by 2013 you had 4K cameras and 23 minutes of flight times in your DJI fat.
Um, and as you've hit on, uh, around 2020, we start to see DJI is dominating the consumer market. At that point, they had 70% of the market share and. Today they currently have about 90% of the American market share, but 20 21, 20 22, the DJI miniseries, the sub 250 gram drones. Those have extended flight times.
Those have consistent and exceptional image quality, and they're also consumer accessible. They're a few hundred dollars and this has always been. Of anything that's occurred, whether it's regulations that have unlocked things or the business model being viable. I think it is this specific drone and that realization of the sub 250 category that I, I dunno how to put it, other than when you crowdsource anything, data specifically.
Consistency is hard. Consistency is key though, to making it useful. And what SPEC and LayerDrone have built is a network that covers, I mean, millions. We're, we're approaching 6 million acres, we're at 6 million acres. How do you ensure a pilot in, say. Vancouver where Spexi is based and a pilot in say, Miami, are, are capturing comparable, usable data.
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** Yeah, I mean the tech has just advanced so, uh, rapidly on the hardware side and the amount of capability that is still in the sub 250 gram drone class with the mini five. Now we're. My goodness. It's just, it's remarkable to think back, you know, five years ago what it was like. Uh, truly. But the way that we keep things consistent and standardized, which is a really important point.
And one of the main things that we do here is that we standardize the inputs that drones produce by automating flight. Using our software.
## [00:08:45] How Spexi created a standard through autonomous flight
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** So pilots who contribute to the network, um, they have their own drone. They download our mobile app. That app sits on their phone, which is on top of their controller, which connects to their drone, and they basically get, they, they have to physically get close to one of these hexes or Spexigons that we call them in an area that the network needs to be flown and the flight plan for them to do that already exists in our software. All they have to do is hit the fly button on our app, which tells the drone to take off and get to the height that that's gonna image that hexagon or specs agon about 260 feet above ground. And it flies a very specific flight path or grid pattern to capture imagery that the network needs it to capture.
Um, and our software handles all of this flight control. It's full autopilot system. So the drone pilots are. Not, um, they're not flying, they're not taking pictures manually and in different places. Our software is doing all of that, and the drone pilots are there to monitor the airspace and the operation for safety.
They can, at any time take back manual control should they need to, and return the drone back to normal, uh, flight mode. But our software is doing the flying 99% of the time. This ensures that we get consistent standardized quality imagery no matter. Where the drone pilot is, and that's a game changer that's never existed before.
## [00:10:01] How Spexi's autopilot enables drone infrastructure at city to continental scale
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** We're able to then scale that system across fast geographies because it's so simple for pilots to contribute, and the data is guaranteed quality by our software. Everywhere that we can then sell access to that data, to a wide range of customers. And that's the big unlock, right? The, the drone space now is very piecemeal, patchwork, different drones, different softwares, different needs for customers, and there's no central image layer like there is with satellites.
We're doing that with drones and it's an entirely different way of approaching this space. And it's one of the reasons I think we're getting so much attention from customers right now.
**Bryce Bladon:** That makes a lot of sense. And I've, you, you did hit on, uh, some of the ostensible differences between, you know, how a drone would operate and a biplan would operate, but I am curious, like...
## [00:10:47] Why use drones instead of planes or satellites?
**Bryce Bladon:** Functionally, how does something like the LayerDrone network or, or even the use of DJI minis compare to say a satellite or a biplane? Like why would a customer access, uh, or lean on Spexi and LayerDrone versus say, I don't know, hiring a pilot or, or booking some time on a satellite? I thing I've never done.
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** Yeah, so it has to do with the quality of the imagery.
So resolution of the images. Then it has to do with the ability to update specific areas of that, of that data. So satellites can circle the Earth 24 7, an image, but because they're so far away from the Earth's surface in space, they can only get the quality of the actual image, the resolution of the image to a certain, um, to a certain amount.
It's about 30 centimeters per pixel on the ground. Some satellites can get better, but they're, they're really hard to access. And the typical, like highest resolution satellite energy you get is 30 centimeters. And then you have the next layer down, which is fixed wing planes like we talked about earlier.
And they're flying cities all over North America and around the world, but they're only getting to about 10 to 15 centimeters per pixel. And their revisit time to a given area is very long because the planes have to physically be there to go image. And then you have the drone layer. And until us, the drone layer was piecemeal fragmented, it wasn't standardized or consistent.
And so when you bring our technology into the mix, you can enable a standardized and consistent image layer that customers can understand and predict what kind of image they'll get no matter where it is. And that combined with the quality of the imagery, which is. One to three centimeters per pixel. So an order of magnitude better than satellites, and the ability for people that own these very inexpensive drones to go update that map, that image layer where it's needed in a more realistic sort of bite-sized chunk amount versus having to go fly a whole city.
It's those two things, the quality and the ability to update the map in a more, uh, realistic zone. Quality is, is what really. Gives us that unlock when we're talking to customers that are like, you know, we just want better data. How do we get access to it? And we don't want to have to pay for the whole city.
We'd like to pay for just smaller areas. Is that possible? That's really where this thing comes in.
**Bryce Bladon:** Probably also worth mentioning, it's very hard to, uh, improve the camera on a satellite once it's live, whereas I imagine rolling out new DJI mini models is. Comparatively simple. That said, not a rocket scientist.
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** I, I, I don't know if DJI would agree with you there, but, but maybe
**Bryce Bladon:** Fair enough. Yeah. Uh, they have so many models. Uh, I have to assume that there's, uh, they're at least very good at it.
## [00:13:17] How are drones evolving and what does it mean for the people piloting them?
**Bryce Bladon:** But actually speaking of looking at where consumer drone has come from and where it's heading, better sensors, longer flight times, more autonomous capabilities. How is this shaping LayerDrone's roadmap or or Spexi strategy for the future?
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** So right now, the network is designed so that pilots can operate in visual line of sight. So they have to keep the drones within their line of sight. This is mainly for safety, the ability for. Us or pilots or governments, or regulators to have a good situational or spatial awareness of what's going on in our airspace in the country at the altitudes that are required for drone flight is still not quite there.
In order to enable drones to just be flying without anyone supervising them, which is called Beyond Visual Line of sight, um, flight, where the drones can fly a lot farther from where the pilot is and the pilot doesn't actually. Have eyes on that drone, or at least the airspace around that drone. And that is because we want this network to operate now, we want it to be able to scale now in the current regulatory environment, but we know that this next wave of operation is coming and that is where drones will be able to operate autonomously without the supervision of a human all the time and integrate into the man airspace. Again, without a human with hands close to the sticks or looking at the operation. The question comes down to if that's going to happen in the next five years, and if it will, will drones be able to fly where they want over busy cities and close to busy airspace? And that's a question I still don't have the answer to.
I 100% believe that there will be like corridors that are approved for autonomous beyond visual line of sight, drone flight within cities to do things like drone delivery or you know, like medical assistance or things like that. But our customers need data in unpredictable places, all across cities, and so corridors don't really help our network.
We need air drones to be able to fly. Basically everywhere where there's people. And right now that's only possible in the visual line of sight regulatory framework. The Beyond visual Line of sight regulatory framework still has a long way to go in order to make that kind of a use case, a reality and workable.
For customers who want data quickly and foreseeable future, there will still need to be drone pilots in the loop on the ground, making sure that these drones are flying safely and effectively and capturing that data. But in the long, longer term, our network will evolve to, uh, accept and incorporate beyond visual line of sight.
Regulation and therefore beyond visual line of sight operations. But I, I think my view is that there's still, there's still a way to go, you know, years, years, like five minimum before I think we see drones integrating into, uh, airspace over busy cities and close to airports and, you know, over a bunch of people.
Whereas visual line of sight can get us that now.
**Bryce Bladon:** Very interesting. Alright, final question. Somebody's listening to this show. They got a a, a drone in their closet.
## [00:16:08] What you need to fly with Spexi on the LayerDrone network
**Bryce Bladon:** What do they need to do to start capturing the Spexi app for the LayerDrone Network?
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** Hmm. So first thing is you need to have a compatible drone.
And so right now the network works with the D Mini two, mini three, mini three Pro and the Mini four Pro. We hope to soon have the Mini five Pro online once the SDK becomes available. We are also evaluating other drones, um, that are sub 250 grams that we'll be able to integrate with the network and, and non-Chinese ones as well to, uh, to make room for some of the incoming policy that has just sort of landed, uh, at the US side of things.
They'll also need to have an Android device. The Android device needs to be able to download our app from the app store, and then depending on where they are, they'll need to have a drone pilot certificate or license. In Canada, you don't need a drone pilot certificate to fly. Its sub 250 gram drone.
Regardless if it's commercial or recreational In the United States, you will need to have a part 1 0 7 license in order to fly because it's a commercial operation you're earning from this activity. Therefore, they define it as commercial. As we expand to other countries, like in the in Europe and uh, Australia, New Zealand, you likely will not need a full pilots license to fly on this network.
But the regulations do change depending on which country you're in. And then you just have to go to the Google Play Store and download the Spexi app, which, um, is available to anyone who wants to download it. And that integrates seamlessly with the Layer Drone Network, which takes care of all the incentivization and the rewards and the data structure.
So. Really, you're downloading the Spexi app. You're looking for areas that are available to fly in your city, and then you're going out and you're capturing Spexigon by Spexigon by Spexigon, and, uh, hopefully having a lot of fun while doing it. Um, I, I, I certainly know that a lot of our pilots really enjoy doing this, which is a really cool part of the network, right?
Drone pilots love to fly their drones. Um, often they lack things to do with them that have like meaning or reward or financial incentives. This is a great way to go. Have fun with your drone out in the open.
**Bryce Bladon:** Absolutely. Alec, thank you again so much for your time today and I think I'm gonna leave us there.
**Alec Wilson \| Spexi:** Thanks Bryce. Thanks for having me on.
**Bryce Bladon:** All the best.
## [00:18:07] Thanks to our sponsors
**Bryce Bladon:** Thanks for being a part of The Drone Network. Subscribe wherever fine podcasts are served to get a new episode every week and remember to leave us a five star review on your podcast app of choice, it helps a lot. Today's show was sponsored by Spexi Geospatial and LayerDrone.
Learn more about standardized drone imagery built for global scale at Spexi.com. That's SPEXI.com and LayerDrone.org. Thanks again for listening.