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Welcome to In-Orbit, the fortnightly podcast exploring how technology from space is empowering a better world.
[00:00:04] Dallas Campbell: Hello and welcome to Outer Orbit. It's another one of our little bonus episodes that we continue from the conversation from our main episode featuring a particular topic or a particular point of view. Our main episode was all about autonomy and one of the topics that came up was drones, and we thought that was interesting.
So we're going to talk all things Drone with Phil Coglan who works at the Drone Test and Development Center. In fact, you're the manager of the drone tests, not just works there. You're the manager.
[00:00:34] Phil Coglan: I'm the drone guy.
[00:00:35] Dallas Campbell: So the Drone Test and Development Center sounds very, in fact, there's a picture of us of it behind us, which you can't see cause there's audio only. Kind of looks a bit like Area 51, but it kind of scaled down Area 51.
[00:00:47] Phil Coglan: Yeah, Area 50 and a half. I, I'd probably say.
[00:00:50] Dallas Campbell: Yeah. What happens there?
[00:00:51] Phil Coglan: So it's a variety of things. The whole idea of the drone center is, it's a unique offer, so it's quite unique within the UK. There isn't the same capability, but there are similar. But what we do is we've actually created a one-stop shop for drone related tests and development. So it's a safe environment for you to develop drones or any component related to drones.
[00:01:18] Dallas Campbell: Okay.
Can I ask some really dumb questions? Ignorant questions? I think I get confused by what we mean by drones. Normally when people hear about drones, now we're suddenly whisked off to the frontline in Ukraine.
And then people talk about drones when it comes to, oh, we're going to film it with a drone. They'll stick a camera on it and does the word cover just a wide variety of small flying things? Is that what we mean?
[00:01:40] Phil Coglan: It really does. So drone is a generic term that's kind of been adopted over the years. So a drone in essence is a remotely operated device.
So it could be on the ground, it could be in the air, it could be on surface water, it could be underwater, it could be in space, it could be anywhere. The whole point is that no one has sat in it but is controlled from a distance.
[00:02:09] Dallas Campbell: That's the best explanation of drone ever. So basically they cover a lot of bases. We were talking the main episode about autonomy, so it's not just somebody, you know, in the 1980s you might have a remote control plane. That was a thing.
So these days drones are going to be kind of doing their own thing?
[00:02:25] Phil Coglan: Yeah, and all of the above. I guess at the very basic level a drone is controlled by as you would expect, a remote control receiver, and you've got someone with thumbs on sticks controlling it and driving it. From the other end you could have a fully autonomous or a semi-autonomous system where you essentially give it a command or you upload a mission to it and it goes off and does it.
So again, the spectrum's really wide with that side of it.
[00:02:52] Dallas Campbell: Okay, great.
So it seems to be a fast growing technology. It's one of those we just hear about all the time. I suppose, what's exciting in that technology? Like what is new? Where's it going? And then maybe we could talk about why you guys have set up this.
[00:03:06] Phil Coglan: Drones as an industry or I guess autonomy as an industry is huge and it's growing exponentially. The best way I could probably categorize it is drones are doing for industry what the silicon chip did or the combustion engine. It is the new technology and it's just growing fast, almost faster than people can keep up.
[00:03:26] Dallas Campbell: So revolutionary.
[00:03:28] Phil Coglan: Massively.
[00:03:29] Dallas Campbell: In kind of steam engine level.
[00:03:32] Phil Coglan: Here's some examples. I mean, everyone focuses on what's in the news. So obviously Ukraine is a massive use case for different developments of technology and it's come on leaps. Because of that. But let's take it away from that perspective.
Drones are used in construction. They're used in agriculture.
[00:03:49] Dallas Campbell: How are they using construction?
[00:03:51] Phil Coglan: Anything from land survey, ground penetrating radar, multispectral sensors, delivery of cargo. You can have drones, or you'd recognize it more as a robot, could build a building for you.
The innovations for this is huge and if you can think of use of it, then you could probably put a drone in there. They're ideal for putting a sensor or a capability in a place you don't want to put people in necessarily.
[00:04:20] Dallas Campbell: It's so interesting. I've got so much I want to talk to you about, and I sort of brought this up in the main episode and I didn't really make myself very clear.
Both China and America had released sort of six generation fighter jets. You know, these new fighter jets that are going to take over from the F35 eventually, and then they were saying that actually, this is probably the last time we're ever going to stick human beings in a fighter jet because as they improve so much, there's only so much a human body can take. And actually, if you just use drones, then the kind of nine G limit of the human body is kind of becomes irrelevant.
Suddenly you can exponentially fly as fast as you want. They're going to just become redundant.
[00:04:58] Phil Coglan: It's quite possible. For all those reasons that you've just mentioned. If you have aF35 for example, you are looking at a multi billion dollar project where you have a highly skilled and expensive to train and valuable pilot and you're sending them into a high risk area.
Well, if you have a drone that's significantly cheaper and you take out the risk of losing that person. Yeah.
Let's look at something else withthe Mars Rover and Ingenuity for example. The difficulty of putting a human on Mars is obvious.
You know, it takes a long time to get there. You require a whole load of life support systems, so food, fuel, oxygen, et cetera, et cetera, and then you have to get them back. So that's very, very dangerous and it's very, very complicated and it's very, very expensive.
Or you could develop a rover which you can send. It doesn't require any of the life support systems. So then that can go into other things like fuel and sensors and test equipment, et cetera. It lands on Mars and you can explore a totally excuse the pun, alien environment and you're not risking anyone. And you don't mind if it doesn't come back?
[00:06:11] Dallas Campbell: No, okay.
It does seem like we're just having, we're having a lot of tech revolutions all at once, so we're going to have a drone revolution, we're going to have a robotics revolution plus an AI revolution, and why not have a quantum computing revolution all at once?
It just seems that we're going to see this kind of convergence.
[00:06:26] Phil Coglan: And that's exactly it. If you take the drone out of the equation, because a lot of people will, when you talk about drones, they focus on the thing with the flashing lights and the spinning propellers and the robot arms and et cetera, et cetera. If you take that out of it, what is the actual point of the drone?
The drone is there to put a sensor in a place or to gather data from an area, whatever that is. That could be thermal imaging, it could be gathering soil samples, whatever you want, or it's to transport something small and precious from A to B quickly. Now, if you look at it from that perspective, actually all those technological revolutions, which we're discussing. They all form together to actually make one kind of greater tech evolution. But all these form to build one bigger picture and actually they're all complimentary and they all build to one central thing.
[00:07:19] Dallas Campbell: So let's move on to your facility here. So we've got this radical new technology that's exponentially getting better and more important to us and we're going to become more and more reliant on it. What do you do here? Is it testing kit, is it training drone pilots?
[00:07:34] Phil Coglan: All of the above. So it's kind of a mixture of a nerds playground and a industrial park. Yes, there's testing and development of various sensors, flight control systems, things like detect and avoid technology, which is essential to drones being released into the wild for want of a better word.
[00:07:57] Dallas Campbell: Avoidance technology, so not bumping into power lines, people, dogs...
[00:08:01] Phil Coglan: Exactly. There's also tests and development, which is where drone is used as a tool to deliver an effect. So, one company used the drone to simulate the flight path of a satellite.
[00:08:13] Dallas Campbell: How does it do that? Cause it's flying in the air?
[00:08:16] Phil Coglan: So essentially what they did was they planned aflight path over a ground sensor and that replicated the arc that a satellite would pass over above it, and so, although it was significantly closer to the ground. But in this particular case, for the particular satellite that was passing over they could replicate it with a drone. And so that way they managed to track. I'm doing air quote satellite across the sky, and that gave them the data that they needed. So there's other uses around testing.
[00:08:52] Dallas Campbell: Give us a bit sense of the geography of the place as well. There was a picture behind us and there's, there's kind of, hangers that look quite exciting and area 51 ish. Is it just a kind of a big space where you just, where you are constantly flying things around or?
[00:09:03] Phil Coglan: As you mentioned, yes, we have hangers. Companies will use those hangers for various things. Some companies are based there, kind of semi permanently, and they'll do their own development and their own training, et cetera, and those hangers back onto a large field with a runway. So essentially they roll the shutter doors up. Go outside and there they are ready to fly.
We treat the site like an airport, so there's a air side and the ground side. So it is very, very much revolves around that aviation culture and safe flying environment and safe testing. There's a large field and there's a runway, which is about 270 meters long. I've been told reliably that you could probably land something, which you'd sit in on there, but I personally wouldn't try it.
I wouldn't want to try it. But, maybe a ultralight or something and if you're feeling lucky, but I wouldn't go that far.
[00:09:54] Dallas Campbell: Is it all in line of sight? When you are, when you're flying?
[00:09:56] Phil Coglan: Yeah, so that main test area is all line of sight. There are other areas within at the Venture Park, which are much larger.
[00:10:04] Dallas Campbell: Do you call it the Adventure Park?
[00:10:05] Phil Coglan: The Venture Park.
[00:10:06] Dallas Campbell: Oh Venture, I thought you
[00:10:07] Phil Coglan: said Adventure.
Yeah. No, it, well, it is a bit.
[00:10:08] Dallas Campbell: Kind like, yeah. You should change it it to Adventure.
[00:10:10] Phil Coglan: I think we've, I think we've got a new, rebranding coming up from that one. There are some large areas which are essentially open areas of land, big fields, and that's where beyond line of sight can happen. All this is done within CAA regulation, so we're always on the right side of the regulator.
[00:10:27] Dallas Campbell: It feels, or it sounds like it's, you know, you're dealing with real cutting edge and I mean cutting edge as opposed to leading edge. This is like brand new stuff. For you, is there anything that you are particularly thinking, oh my God, this is wild.
[00:10:44] Phil Coglan: It happens on a daily basis actually. Some stuff is pretty left field and it's just the nature of that kind of research and development environment and some of it just seems like common sense, right? You kind of see someone's proposal of what they want to do and you kind of wonder why we haven't been doing this all the time?
I got into the industry in 2008 and from probably eight to, I'd say probably about 15, not a whole lot changed.
[00:11:12] Dallas Campbell: No, I was going to say, I remember 2008 I was doing a show called The Gadget Show, and I remember doing pieces on autonomy, self-driving cars, drones, but all with sort of military implications. But it was all pretty tame stuff, there was nothing really, like you say, nothing really happened and then just suddenly the last 3, 4, 5 years, things have really started
[00:11:34] Phil Coglan: Yeah, it's very much like someone flicked a switch and everything just went mad within the industry. It's gone from a steady crawl and yeah, very much drones were something you would buy from Amazon for a couple of quid or there'd be some large gray aircraft, which was probably flying over Afghanistan and that's pretty much all there was really. Then all of a sudden the market just went. Bang. And there's thousands and hundreds of thousands of drones in the air. So I think it's predicted by 2030, the latest stats I saw, there's some expected to be around 900,000 drones over the UK.
[00:12:18] Dallas Campbell: Wow, and television as well in that time. You can see what's happened when we were making TV, if you wanted a drone shot, you have to hire a helicopter and then suddenly, I remember doing a TV show where someone had a, it was a kind of an eight armed, rotary kind of octocopter we called it. And we thought this was the best thing ever. And suddenly every Tv show now will have a obligatory drone shot because they're just cheap to do.
[00:12:38] Phil Coglan: And now you can have a drone which will fit in the palm of your hand, and you can fly for a building or you can fly first person view, so FPV, and you can fly it as if you were sat in it.
[00:12:50] Dallas Campbell: Or those kind of drones you see where they make sort of pictures in the,
[00:12:53] Phil Coglan: Yep.
[00:12:53] Dallas Campbell: When I first saw that, I thought this is the CGI or something. This isn't real.
[00:12:56] Phil Coglan: That's drone swarming. That's another leap that's happened within the drone industry, and that's multiple drone systems all working together, all pre-programmed or doing a task in parallel. That's been a massive game changer.
[00:13:12] Dallas Campbell: Oh, you wake up every day and you're, and it's game changing.
Obviously it's an expanding technology. Are you expanding do companies come to you with ideas? So you have to, adapt
[00:13:20] Phil Coglan: Yeah, so we engage with industry a lot because at the end of the day they're at the coalface, they're the ones that are really driving this technology forwards. But research and development, trials, testing and evaluation, is expensive and it's risky. So this is where we come in.
So essentially industry tells us what they want, and what they need, and what their pinch points are, and then we basically help with that. Here's an example.
we've just completed building a massive drone cage. The best way to describe, it's like a giant batting net. But really robust, really upscaled. It was quite a surprise when you actually saw the physical end product.
[00:14:04] Dallas Campbell: What does it look like? I mean, I can't imagine in my so drone cage, so like a square box?
[00:14:09] Phil Coglan: It's a bit monolithic actually. It's a 10 by 10 meter box, which is made out ofsteel. So it can take up to about three tons of impact. Because of the nature of what we do, we don't know what people are going to test, necessarily.
So we've really scaled it beyond what we'd actually expect to it to accommodate. It's then got a Kevlar mesh all over it so you can see through it. But the whole point of that is when you are developing these new systems, when you first fly it, you have a good idea, but you don't necessarily know what it's going to do. There's the whole point of regulation as well. So, as part of the regulation, you have to prove that your system, your equipment is safe, and the way you do that is by building up flying hours.
So I've flown this drone for a million hours and it hasn't fallen out of the sky and it's not hurt anyone. But if you've just developed that system, you can't get those hours. So it's a bit of a Catch 22. What the cage does, it allows you to fly and get that technical and historic data so you can say, okay, we've flown this for 100 hours, we're in a confined space and it hasn't become self-aware and tried to go over the horizon. If the worst happens, it's all in a safe place and it doesn't form a risk to anyone.
Industry asked us for that and pushed that quite a lot over a period of time, and so we built it. But to do this, it costs money and it's very risky, especially for a startup or an SME, and so we de-risk that by having a facility that they can use.
[00:15:42] Dallas Campbell: And just quickly how's the Catapult helped?
[00:15:44] Phil Coglan: That particular facility came from our Core Grant, so we paid for it. There's other avenues for further development, which we're doing. We're looking at building a facility where you can test, fly or drive, whatever you want to do for your drone, and it has various sensors inside. So high speed cameras, acoustic sensors, and you can do all that in a a lab, I guess.
[00:16:06] Dallas Campbell: I know what to call it. Phil's Drone Adventure lab.
[00:16:10] Phil Coglan: Phil's Drone Adventure Lab. I've kind of described it a little bit like a drone soft play area, a little bit.
[00:16:15] Dallas Campbell: So,
[00:16:16] Phil Coglan: yeah.
[00:16:16] Dallas Campbell: Phil's Drone Soft Play Area. Can I come and play?
[00:16:18] Phil Coglan: You certainly can.
[00:16:19] Dallas Campbell: Phil, thank you so much for coming in. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. all I can think about is the various sci-fi movies that are now going to be drone based that, are going off in my head.
Thank you.
To hear future episodes of In Orbit, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and head over to YouTube to watch the video versions of all of our discussions. And if you'd like to find out more about how Space is empowering your industry, visit the Catapult website or join them on social media.