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A podcast about drones and the people behind them. An educational and entertaining take on the current state of drones and what flies ahead in the drone world.
Mark Masterton (00:00)
Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the Drone is the Future podcast, live here in Detroit for Exponential 2026. We're gonna be joined by a few guests here talking about the future that drones are gonna play in military and other industries. So strap in, listen to what flies ahead. And what role do you think AI and autonomous systems play in the future of defense?
Doug Rodson (00:21)
You know, that's a tough one to answer, because it's evolving so quickly. You know, with autonomous systems and AI, honestly the the sky's the limit.
Dustyn Brewer (00:32)
If anybody's ever heard of the Donkey Kong Vongo control with the DK Vongos, we got it to work. We got
Mark Masterton (00:38)
DK Bongos.
Alvin Brunner (00:41)
invented AI, us fallible humans. And I found as these technologies go, we're never really as smart as sometimes we think we are, you know, when we miss stuff. So we just gotta make sure it's run through the ringer and apply it in the appropriate way.
Mark Masterton (00:56)
Drone as the Future is made in partnership with Drone as a Service. Make your survey, mapping, or inspections safer, faster, and more efficient with the help of our team. Elevate what's possible with droneasaservice dot com. All right, so first up, can you tell me a little bit about yourself, who you're with, and what brings you here to Exponential 2026?
Doug Rodson (01:17)
Thanks.
Well it's great to be here. my name's Doug Rodson.
Dustyn Brewer (01:21)
My name is Dustin Brewer.
Alvin Brunner (01:23)
Well, my name is Alvin Bruner and I work for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Doug Rodson (01:27)
I am the technical director for UAS integrations at the Skyway Range in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Dustyn Brewer (01:34)
This is also one of my first dalliances into the drone space. I have a very illustrious career of a lot of different stuff. I ran a brewery for about six years in Middle Tennessee. It was a ton of fun. Good community brewery. worked in marketing in the sporting goods industry for a long time, but that's really the the underlying theme of all of it is community building. So that's really what I do for Zephyr Drone Simulator. I've been with them for almost a year. It'll be a year next month.
Alvin Brunner (02:02)
And I've been working UAS or drones since they hired me in 2010. So I've been doing this quite a while. And I'm here at Exponential and we have a booth here that we help make sure we answer questions and greet people and help solve their problems, hopefully. So I'm an AFS 700 and those are the folks that actually work on waivers, exemptions, and things like that.
Doug Rodson (02:25)
Our range is wholly owned by the Osage Osage Nation, which is there in northeast Oklahoma. There's about twelve hundred square miles of area there that we're able to do some different types of drone testing that allows not only an urban environment, but also rural environments. And so it's actually very sparsely populated areas there's that allows a
A variety of test conditions. There's also four different facilities that you can actually fly in and out of. Skyway Range itself is very near the city of Tulsa, underneath the Modi C veil. But we've also got facilities that are way out in a very rural area there that allows for a variety of different
Dustyn Brewer (03:01)
Zephyr drone simulator is a essentially real-world physics drone operating simulator that is pilot focused. We are brand agnostic. We don't care what the drone is, but we make sure that we get the flight physics right. We take industry specific, like the actual flight mechanics of it.
And then do real world testing and then put that into our simulator. So it feels like you're flying a drone. And then those are adapted into different scenarios and modules that we have set up for public safety, search and rescue, tower and bridge inspection. The use case goes on and on. Everything is built through the Unity engine. our development team really takes care and pride in the level of like real world effectiveness that this has on drone pilots so that they can build up that muscle memory.
So that they don't have that anxiety of picking up a controller for a drone for the first time and no, I just crashed a thousand of dollar drone. It
Mark Masterton (04:00)
Been there done that.
Dustyn Brewer (04:01)
it does. It happens to everybody. And we we actually just looked at a bunch of case studies through different insurance groups because we're all in this new frontier. So you're seeing all these different parts of the industry start to grow. And one of those is like what happens when it crashes? And what happens to the pilot? Not just, you know, physically with something breaking, but mentally.
And what effect, what toll does that have on a pilot? So we can help alleviate some of that by getting them used to flying, getting them used to the controls. Regardless of what the controller is, our simulator will even work on like a PS5 controller. I know we made a joke about it when we met earlier, but we've we've seen some of the weirdest controllers you can imagine.
Mark Masterton (04:38)
Please tell tell the audience how you've what controller you've wired into the Okay.
Dustyn Brewer (04:43)
As an as an elder millennial, again I'm I'm coming from a place of that privilege. I've been around. if anybody's ever heard of the Donkey Kong bongo controller, the DK Bongos, we got it to work. DK
Mark Masterton (04:56)
Okay, Bongos on the Zephyr simulator.
Dustyn Brewer (04:58)
The
simulator to work. Now we're not saying that that should be used in the industry. That's probably not the mechanics that you want to get down. But everything from a DJI controller or for SkyDio or any of those guys, like you're able to make your controller very easily adapt into the simulator and fly those drones throughout these different modules and and scenarios to build up your skills.
Mark Masterton (05:19)
So it's really accessible. You don't have to go out and buy a brand new piece of kit, brand new remote controller. You can use what you have existing and plug it into Z.
Dustyn Brewer (05:26)
And really real on whatever kind of machine you have as well. it works everything from the ROG handheld to you know, Windows eleven or on a Mac. it's versatile, very versatile. And our team is constantly making it the best that it can be. We are updating, we are focused on performance and usability.
Mark Masterton (05:47)
Ru
do you have a rough guess of how many drones you have there in the system right now? I bel
Dustyn Brewer (05:51)
Believe
we're I know we're over 20, but the exact number, I know we're adding two more. We're we're pushing a pretty big update. We're really proud. We're here at Expo 2026 and we're going to do a live demo tomorrow on Wednesday and debut our thermal, which is awesome. That is bespoke. We built it ourselves. It looks like Fleer. It is incredible. I'm so proud of this.
along with a lot of updates to more flight physics, mechanics, and just quality of life improvements on user experience.
Mark Masterton (06:21)
So any company who's built a drone can plug it into this system and test it out.
Dustyn Brewer (06:26)
We work
with the different manufacturers. We we go by their industry specs and then we we typically try and get our hands on it so we can make sure that it's true to life. And then we also listen to a lot of feedback from our pilots. They're our absolute best testers that we have. And any of those suggestions or comments or complaints, like we take those to heart and work diligently to fix those to make sure that that experience continues to be a positive one with those drones within the system.
Mark Masterton (06:53)
How have you seen the drone industry blossom since you've been with the the FA?
Alvin Brunner (06:58)
I can speak with some experience on that since since twenty ten. It certainly has grown literally exponentially. And so the name of this event is quite appropriately named. And it will continue to do that and it will ebb and flow as as as well as you can imagine. But certainly this is something that is a new aircraft in our airspace system and we are going to have to meet it. And our regulatory challenges are with that is just just that, okay.
How do we make those regulations? Are they best suited? Is a new technology going to come along that's going to upset that? Or are we just regulating toward one technology and we're not really doing a benefit across the board for all of it? So there's has to be a bit of caution. So our regulatory side of things will always move at a much slower pace than that of technology. And so that gets the fun part and frustrating. So that's why I have a job is we try to make exemptions and waivers.
to the rules that we do have so that we can allow the industry to move forward.
Mark Masterton (08:01)
What businesses and commerce are you seeing make use of that test space at the moment?
Doug Rodson (08:06)
So yeah, right now it's mostly our primary work is with the Tulsa Fire Department, Oklahoma State University, different organizations that are just now starting to get testing with us. Skyway Range is also interested in and we are building facilities to encourage manufacturing and testing there at the range in Oklahoma. But yeah, we are also building working with Tulsa Innovation Labs and the state of Oklahoma.
multiple organizations to build this system called safe tea what it is is a a system of radar adsb remote ID we are providing to what's called UAS service suppliers so if there is a company that wants to do drone delivery they are gonna subscribe to a what's called a USS US UAS service supplier to be able to schedule their drone operations
These service suppliers will take the data that we are providing, that radar, ADSB, and remote ID, and use that to potentially de-conflict drone operations around the city of Tulsa, in the metropolitan area there. So it's really a way for detect and avoid type of situations. The radar is to detect what's called non-cooperative aircraft. So somebody that's not on ADSB.
we're using ADSB, which is a requirement for all aircraft to transmit ADSB out. And the remote ID drones are required to have remote ID on there. So those three data feeds will be fused into one picture that the UAS USS will be able to provide to the operators that way. So that's actually a big project that we're working on, our primary work at the range right now.
Mark Masterton (09:56)
businesses in the drone space that are looking to grow and build, is is that good for does that make Tulsa Ogloma a bit of a hotspot for businesses wanting looking to grow in that space?
Doug Rodson (10:06)
Yes. So we do have a couple of champion operators that are looking at using these systems. We do have three USS providers, OneSky Airwise and Highlander, that are working what with us to test this system out. and when this system is mature, there are a couple of operators out there.
Really probably not at liberty to say because we haven't made I think firm commitments from them. but there is a lot of interest in that to to to come to Tulsa to do this commercial drone operation and this work. Well
Mark Masterton (10:47)
Day
typical day in the office for you then?
Alvin Brunner (10:50)
Day in the office, besides emails, is I I boiled it down to basically I read and write. Okay. They come to us and they say, hey, I want to do this, I got the schizmo, I need relief from these rules. and I make sure that there are safety cases and they can do their operation safely in our national airspace system, evaluate it. There's some actual reasoning that does go on. I don't just literally read and write, but then I write them exemptions and put other conditions and limitations.
upon those exemptions or those waivers as necessary to ensure that their safety for that particular operation in that particular place are indeed safe.
Mark Masterton (11:27)
The the drone tech has developed so rapidly over the past decade or so. can you tell us a little bit about how you've seen it develop in your time at the FAA?
Alvin Brunner (11:36)
Certainly. certainly when I was newly hired, twenty ten, twenty eleven timeframe, just trying to get the government drones in the air, and how are we going to do that regulatory correctly? Didn't say that correctly, but you got the word. was it was just a challenge in and of itself. And yet, okay, we how are we going thinking of things like B V Lose or one-to-many or autonomous or AI, all of those things hadn't been invented yet.
You know? And so right now we think of B velos as almost, yeah, we can do that pretty easily. There's some still tricks, still some development need to be done, so forth and so on to get a better refined, more economic, and and all of that. But before then it was like, no way, that wasn't even a that wasn't even on the table.
Mark Masterton (12:26)
What was it like when you first joined the FAA? Was it was it cowboy back in the day?
Alvin Brunner (12:31)
Well, I mean, some of it was, I mean, there were people that just had these things and they said, No regulations, let me go fly. And then unfortunately the FAA said, No, those are aircraft and you got to buy by the rules. And it's like, Well, we don't have any rules to set those, so I guess we better start making some and getting waivers and all that. So it's it's been a huge process. So to say that we've made progress over the past ten years and and like mentioned earlier is that we cannot keep pace regulatorily with the
The advancement of technology. When that that is for good reason, but at the same time, it's just that's the way technology has been. but we're moving at a much faster pace than the we did with airlines or the jet age or helicopters, or I'll pick one of those. I mean, in terms of regulatory pace and and trying to keep pace with industry, we've done a b a better job than than we have in the past. But this thing is moving so fast.
we almost have it like dog years. We say, if this was this happened three months ago or two years ago. If you say two years ago, that's like ancient history in UAS world, you know. I mean, it really truly moves that quickly. So that's been that's kind of why this I found this job to be particularly engaging is there's no for a dull moment, things are always changing and there's always a problem to be solved.
Mark Masterton (13:55)
What's the most exciting bit of regulation that's been passed recently that you think is gonna help the industry grow?
Alvin Brunner (14:02)
Well, the last real piece of regulation that we've had was part eighty nine. But we're about to have one eight, as you know, it's coming out.
Mark Masterton (14:11)
For those out there who are not quite up to date with the rules and regulations.
Alvin Brunner (14:15)
Sorry. Part 107 was the small manned aircraft rule that came out in 2017. And so since then we've had a r remote identification rule, part 89, that came out in early 2000s, I guess it was. And now we're coming out with 108, which is beyond visual line of sight. So that's a really big deal, very complex a little bit. Hopefully that will move industry and the drone integration world in the United States.
Mark Masterton (14:41)
forward. Very exciting for delivery sector and and
Alvin Brunner (14:44)
Many
other things. I mean, delivery infrastructure inspection, especially linear ins inspection, agricultural. Agricultural is is absolutely huge in the unmanned aircraft world, especially over fifty-five pounds.
Mark Masterton (14:58)
Michigan's largest military expo.
Dustyn Brewer (15:02)
Pretty
big deal. You're in lovely Detroit.
Mark Masterton (15:05)
Here in lovely Detroit, Huntington Place. how how do you think drones are shaping the way we look at military these days?
Dustyn Brewer (15:12)
Well, I mean, it's it's an unavoidable conversation. I think there is for me as a as a consummate optimist, I'm excited to see what we can do to help move things forward as far as increasing safety, of course, but increasing that that service to the body politician, right? I'd like to see a lot more happen in
not just the private infrastructure space, but also in the federal infrastructure space. And I think these military applications are gonna have a lot of crossover in those areas. So it's it's growing like crazy. I think you'd be a fool to deny that you'd be a fool to deny that we're not going to see a bigger military presence in drones. I think it's gonna save a lot of lives and that is key, like to keep that humanity.
Like this is for preservation. And that's what I hope the focus is moving forward is in that preservation.
Mark Masterton (16:13)
If you had to cast an opinion, throw it forward to how drones are changing our views on military and defence. Yeah. How do you think it's changing?
Doug Rodson (16:24)
prefaces with we're not doing a lot of DOD work at the Skyway range, but clearly in recent developments, there's there's quite a bit going on in the drone space, right? and drones are being used prolifically in in conflict around the world right now. so obviously this is something that we need to look at. Counter-UAS, counter-drone work is something that I think we all agree.
is something that needs to be looked at, especially for critical infrastructure around the United States. And what it what is that critical infrastructure? Is it a mass gathering for, you know, the Super Bowl or is it pipelines, oil infrastructure, whatever it might be. But yeah, there's potentially an issue with with you know drone attacks and we need to be able to defend against those. So clearly.
Mark Masterton (17:13)
Another
big industry for drones and growing all the time is military. Absolutely. how do you see drones shaping the future of military?
Alvin Brunner (17:22)
And tell well it you know, I've seen that throughout. And here's the beauty of the military is they get to operate less encumbered by our regulations to an extent. And they have to operate at a much higher speed and and whatnot. And in the case of war, they get to play by whatever rules they want effectively. And so they can test all these other systems, even though they might be fully tested, they can say, Hey, can this go bomb that or do this?
And they go test it and see if it does. I mean, the Predator was a classic example of that. When they first showed up in the Balkan War, they were just beginning development on that in reality. And here they are. You know, they just came around and said, Yeah, that works. No, this doesn't. Yeah, that works. Next thing you know, here they are. And they're a premier UAS in in the fleet. And we're seeing that. What I will say with this is that for as bad as war is, it does have its plus sides and innovation is one of those.
It's you innov innovate or die. And so we've seen that with Ukraine and Russia back and forth. And you want to look at how accelerated UAS technology can be. Prime example. And right now they are at the forefront of I think drone, counter drone technology and innovation, clearly. And so now we're gonna have to the fun part is, and I'm sure the US is right on top of it, clean all those wonderful lessons learned.
and start applying those not only to their own military, but that will eventually trickle down into industry.
Mark Masterton (18:55)
And what role do you think AI and autonomous systems play in the future of defense?
Doug Rodson (19:01)
Well, that's a very good question, isn't it?
Mark Masterton (19:03)
Yeah. The million dollar question.
Doug Rodson (19:05)
yeah, that's a that's a you know, that's a tough one to answer because it's evolving so quickly. You know, with autonomous systems and AI, honestly the the sky's the limit. I think
Dustyn Brewer (19:17)
play
hand in hand again being the consummate optimist i think that anything that we can do to again increase efficiencies increase safety is good for everybody
Alvin Brunner (19:28)
They will certainly play a part. the catch twenty-two is that requires some caution, let's face it. You know, because why? Who invented AI? Us fallible humans. And I found as these technologies go, we're never really as smart as sometimes we think we are, you know, and we miss stuff. So we just gotta make sure it's run through the ringer and applied in the appropriate way. And I think we'll be well, well suited for that. but yes, AI autonomy is going to happen.
It's going to take some time and it's gonna probably come with some growing pains. We'll
Doug Rodson (20:02)
The autonomous drone operations where you could potentially just program it and the air and the aircraft can fly to where it's going, do its thing, and then come back. that's actually something here and now that can actually happen. Going back to the counter UAS piece, it's called a dark drone, emits nothing, so you can't see it. It can actually just be told to fly somewhere and it's not using GPS, it's not using anything, it just knows where to go and then come back. Very difficult to track that type of thing.
Again, for nefarious players, that's something that we need to consider. And then of course for advanced air mobility, so the EV tall air taxis, if you guys are familiar with those, those larger vehicles. there are some companies out there that are actually interested in having them be pilotless. None of these vehicles are certified yet, but that's a speculation here. I'm not sure what that looks like and and how that goes. but it would actually be a controller on the ground that would control multiple vehicles and folks would get in them and and fly to different places. So
that is something that is on the horizon. no vehicles are out there yet, but yeah, we'll have to see what that looks like moving forward.
Dustyn Brewer (21:08)
And that's something that we would like to help facilitate, especially in agriculture, which we're seeing as being one of our biggest sectors of growth. not just for things like crop spraying, but herd movements, the Bureau of Land Management. We're seeing a lot of really cool stuff where we're able to increase conservation efforts. And I think having AI where you're able to set up something where people can help to monitor and adapt and help, you know.
I I don't want to say like love the environment a little bit more, but I think that's a really big part of it. And I think AI is going to be huge in that regard. And to me, maybe offset a little bit of that uncomfortable feeling that some people have about AI is that we're going to be able to increase quality of life through these things like AI within especially the agriculture sector where it desperately needs it. So I I guess the the short answer is I think it's going to help build up both sides of the house.
That's what I want to see for. And I know that's what Zephyr wants to see for. We want to see we wanna see that that process and procedure benefit everybody and especially benefit the pilot. So if a pilot does need to be involved with it, like AIs can't exist without the personal element to it.
Mark Masterton (22:26)
Training.
Dustyn Brewer (22:26)
Exactly. So see it work hand in hand and just increase quality of life for everybody.
Mark Masterton (22:33)
In particular, AI and autonomy tends to apply to like swarm technologies with drones? Many drones in the sky at one time. Are you regulating
Alvin Brunner (22:39)
We've already
Mark Masterton (22:40)
that as well?
Alvin Brunner (22:41)
of course. Absolutely. I mean, for the one seven drones, you need to look no further than all the drone light shows, for example. Classic example. And we've already granted one to many on several part one hundred thirty five, which is the package delivery folks, for wing and so forth, that have one to many. And then also agriculture's getting into that. So one guy can go spray this field and go spray that field and
Do this and do that at the same time. So it allows a lot of flexibility and I should say economy of pilots or usage of operations. And certainly for the package delivery, it has a a great application.
Mark Masterton (23:22)
We all love sci-fi movies here at the podcast. and it seems like that world and real life drones are becoming closer and closer. What do you foresee in the future of drone tech? What's the weirdest and wildest thing you can imagine drones doing in the future?
Doug Rodson (23:36)
You know, I think that we could utilize drones and what we're trying to do at Skyway is a lot of the first responder piece in the state of Oklahoma. in certain times of year there's some natural disasters that happen, especially with the weather. I think that currently drones are used quite a bit, but moving ahead in the future, I think that for damage assessment, helping people, infrared technologies that could be mounted on drones to be able to search for people, search and rescue, that type of thing.
I think would really be something that could be utilized immensely that way. So really that's a big piece is be able to to to use these. Yeah, there's commercial drone operations, but actually for first responders and how that can help, you know, the local communities would be huge. So
Alvin Brunner (24:19)
boy. it's tough to say. You know, where it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be more and more commonplace. certainly EV tolls are gonna be something that, yeah, when it's gonna be that time that I'm just gonna hop in a an air taxi or an airplane and it's gonna take off and do its thing and there's no real pilot on board, perhaps. You know, is that possible? Absolutely it's possible. I mean, we have the technology, but is the technology fully developed yet? Is it fully certified, et cetera, et cetera.
And so before grandma gets on the plane, we're gonna make sure that all of those kinds of questions are are answered in the f very positive, affirmative certainty, hopefully.
Dustyn Brewer (24:57)
If I had that magic eight ball, I would have already won the lottery. That's true. Because I make this joke. I think I said it before. every week I do a a live stream with my my partner Bo. He's my marketing guy. And it seems like every time that we do a news recap, it comes up. I feel like we're strapped to the front of a bullet train, just hauling ass, just going 300 miles an hour into the future and just hoping upon hope.
That we have enough like-minded people in the space moving with us to want the best for the industry. So I think not to be too punny or too cliche, but the sky's the limit. The sky is honestly the limit. There is, I think, absolutely no limit to what when we put our minds to it, and especially necessity being the mother of invention, that like we flew a drone on Mars. Like
Whenever that was attached to the to one of the rovers that we sent up, it actually flew, I think 30 feet, landed, collected a sample, brought it back. So I there there is no limit to what could happen, like how it will better people's lives as long as we accept the responsibility that that entails. And that's scary for a lot of people. just like flying a drone. Like you don't go into it with the right mindset, you can cause a lot of damage. So accepting that responsibility, doing what it takes to become better within this industry is
what's going to be the linchpin. But I I think you name it, whether it's for one of the really cool ones I just saw was for organ transplant. one of the companies that's I think based out of Virginia, if I'm not mistaken, they are finding a lot of use case in this corridor between a few major cities. I know New York being the end hub about getting life saving organs and tissue to those people that need them from the donor far faster.
by using payload systems within drones. That's that's where we need to keep our headspace. Because I think lives that's saving lives. That's that's huge. So I'm I'm really excited to see some of these developments with within that as well.
Mark Masterton (27:08)
Amazing. I wish there was a tech like Zephyr many years ago when I first started flying drones. I would have saved me a lot of money, saved me a lot of shards of plastic flying around on the floor. And yeah. But thank you for introducing everything Zephyr and being our guest. It's been spectacular. Here's to many more success stories through your software.
Dustyn Brewer (27:28)
I sure hope so. I'm always happy to share And I that's that's what I get to do for a living. And I just I couldn't be happier doing that with the team at Zephyr and our parent company Little Arms Studios. So it's really cool to see it come from such humble beginnings in a dorm room with three dudes to now being at the largest drone and robotics show in the world.
Mark Masterton (27:48)
Amazing. And where can we catch the Twitch stream?
Dustyn Brewer (27:51)
So we're not up on Twitch just yet. No, no, you're fine. we we do stream some on Twitch, mostly for extra life to raise money for children's hospitals. We do that every year in November. It's really cool. But YouTube. we live stream on YouTube, on Zephyr Sim, on our page at one PM Eastern Time, every Thursday. You can find myself and Bo. He's the other magnificent bearded fellow. Amazing. Hard to miss us.
Mark Masterton (28:20)
We'll be tuning in. Is is there anything you'd like to add?
Alvin Brunner (28:22)
I will say this in closing is that certainly the the regulators, and we've had this stance for a long time, is the regulators do work in partnership with industry. Okay. If it wasn't for industry, we would not be doing because we're in response to the citiz citizenship of the United States and their interests. And so we want to work together and we need to work together specifically. And I don't think that there has been a more cooperative relationship between industry and the FAA than this one.
So and I I think that is having an effect across the FAA and hopefully the whole aerospace system. so it's been a great partnership, but we're gonna continue to work on that.
Mark Masterton (29:01)
Everybody working together for a brighter drone.
Alvin Brunner (29:03)
Well that's the idea.
Mark Masterton (29:05)
Exactly. Well, thank you for joining us, Al.
Alvin Brunner (29:07)
My pleasure, sir. Take care.
Mark Masterton (29:09)
Thank you for looking off into the future and for explaining why Tulsa's a big place for drone development in the future.
Doug Rodson (29:16)
Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Mark Masterton (29:17)
Now, back to Zephyr. Can you tell us a particular success story of of using using your product where someone's come in like kind of fresh meat, hasn't flown many drones before and then they've come out after using the simulator and never
Dustyn Brewer (29:30)
Touched a controller before, never turned on a drone before. So, one of my first experiences in going to a show similar to this is in Framingham, Massachusetts, which is not far from where I currently live. And this was a leader, the Law Enforcement Drone Association. Again, we work with a lot of public safety, and it's a really cool sector of the industry to be involved in because again, we're hopefully helping to save some lives by increasing pilot training.
And that deployability to help people, you know, in whatever the situation demands. At this, people would run through the NIST course, the National Institute of Science and Technology. It's part of the certification program to become a certified drone pilot. And we have that within our simulator where you can go and train on the course true to life. And work up those skills and then go take your tests.
Mark Masterton (30:23)
Amazing. So
Dustyn Brewer (30:25)
there talking to a lot of different police departments, a lot of really cool people involved with it. have this guy come in, he sets his drone down, he walks over and picks up a controller, and he looks at me, he goes, Now what? I said, Where are you from? He's like, I'm from the middle of nowhere in Maine. It's a small police department. And my captain handed me that drone and said, Go get certified. And he said, I didn't know what to do next. And
I said, well, then you're in the right place. I said, who have you talked to so far? He's like, well, I went outside and I asked them to help me turn my drone on. They asked me if I'd ever flown before. And I said no. So he's like, why don't you go inside and see the guys from Zephyr? And you're gonna feel a lot better. So that right there was just, made my heart sing. So he comes in, we get him set up on the controller. He's like, Well, what do I do now? I was like, just take it up as high as it'll go and then put it right back in the ground.
Just as hard as you can. He's like, Why? I was like, because you'll feel better. So he does. He he crashed the drone. He goes, that's it. I was like, that's it on the simulator. On the simulator.
Mark Masterton (31:31)
I was just like let's get that clear.
Dustyn Brewer (31:33)
Right. On the simulator. That's the worst that's gonna happen. So now from here, you have a baseline. Now it's time to grow. So set him up on some free flight, got him comfortable with the controls. He starts flying around a little bit, feels good about getting it to take off, getting it to land, working the gimbal.
And I was like, you want to look at the course? The same one that's set up outside. He's like, You have that? We absolutely have that. Set him up on the NIST course. He flew that for two hours. He didn't move. I didn't. I told him it's like, don't move from this spot. You fly this as much as you want to. If you feel like you're done, you need a break, whatever. You come back, I'll set you up again. He's like, that's that's really nice. I appreciate that. So he flew it for two hours solid. Sets the controls down. He looks at me, he goes, I think I'm ready. It's like okay, good luck. if you
run into any kind of snags or if you want to do this thing again, let me know. So okay. He goes outside. He runs into a little bit of a technical issue and fails his first.
He sets it back up again, passed it with flying colors.
Mark Masterton (32:33)
No way.
Dustyn Brewer (32:34)
After two hours on our simulator, flying the NIST course, having never touched a controller before, he flew our sim, he went outside, he got certified with flying colors. And these proctors do not mess around. They are super, super strict. So I can't think of a better testimonial than watching this person develop as a pilot, understand the usability, the work case for it.
And then put it to action in real life. And now knowing that he's offering a service for not just his precinct, but his community, that he can actually help affect change and help people is every single thing that we stand for. And another little note on that too, because a lot of these precincts will have several pilots and they'll want to monitor that pilot progress. Within our simulator, we have a learning management system that aggregates that data.
So you go through, you fly, it checks for crashes, line of sight errors, altitude errors, whatever. And then you can watch that pilot progress. And what's really cool is now we have a partnership through our friends with air data that will also aggregate real flight data along with your SIM data. So you're tracking your progress, whether you're outside flying in perfect conditions or on our SIM flying in terrible conditions like wind or rain or whatever you know, obstacles you decide to put in your way.
Mark Masterton (33:55)
You can train yourself up for the worst case scenario before you even encounter it. Amazing. I mean, from suitcase down on the floor to train pilot within hours is spectacular. I
Dustyn Brewer (34:04)
There there may be some who say, I don't believe him. maybe walk around Maine and ask for like at every police department. Jimmy, are you this guy? And he'll probably say yes. He was very brutally honest. So it's it's a really cool thing to see pilot development happen in real time. And for it being one of my early experiences with the company, it just meant the world to me. It made me feel like I was at home. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate it, man.
Mark Masterton (34:41)
This has been the Drone as the Future Podcast. Today's episode has been produced by Ryan Witten, coordinated by Samantha Holomay, filmed by John Rawlinson, and features original intro music by Josh Santos. Thank you very much for tuning in, and if you'd like to follow along our journey, fly over to that subscribe button wherever you're listening so you can be updated to hear what flies ahead.