WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:04.775 --> 00:00:06.525 Hello and welcome to Outer Orbit. 00:00:06.525 --> 00:00:09.545 It's another one of our little bonus episodes that we continue 00:00:09.545 --> 00:00:13.205 from the conversation from our main episode featuring a particular 00:00:13.205 --> 00:00:15.275 topic or a particular point of view. 00:00:15.755 --> 00:00:19.235 Our main episode was all about autonomy and one of the topics 00:00:19.235 --> 00:00:22.385 that came up was drones, and we thought that was interesting. 00:00:22.385 --> 00:00:28.220 So we're going to talk all things Drone with Phil Coglan who works at 00:00:28.220 --> 00:00:30.800 the Drone Test and Development Center. 00:00:30.950 --> 00:00:33.710 In fact, you're the manager of the drone tests, not just works there. 00:00:33.710 --> 00:00:34.460 You're the manager. 00:00:34.655 --> 00:00:35.495 I'm the drone guy. 00:00:35.572 --> 00:00:39.637 So the Drone Test and Development Center sounds very, in fact, there's 00:00:39.637 --> 00:00:42.877 a picture of us of it behind us, which you can't see cause there's audio only. 00:00:43.117 --> 00:00:47.647 Kind of looks a bit like Area 51, but it kind of scaled down Area 51. 00:00:47.697 --> 00:00:49.377 Yeah, Area 50 and a half. 00:00:49.377 --> 00:00:50.427 I, I'd probably say. 00:00:50.472 --> 00:00:50.652 Yeah. 00:00:50.652 --> 00:00:51.402 What happens there? 00:00:51.747 --> 00:00:54.627 So it's a variety of things. 00:00:54.757 --> 00:00:59.167 The whole idea of the drone center is, it's a unique offer, so 00:00:59.167 --> 00:01:00.637 it's quite unique within the UK. 00:01:00.707 --> 00:01:04.497 There isn't the same capability, but there are similar. 00:01:04.587 --> 00:01:09.887 But what we do is we've actually created a one-stop shop for drone 00:01:09.887 --> 00:01:11.627 related tests and development. 00:01:11.957 --> 00:01:16.412 So it's a safe environment for you to develop drones or any 00:01:16.412 --> 00:01:18.572 component related to drones. 00:01:18.572 --> 00:01:18.862 Okay. 00:01:19.067 --> 00:01:20.837 Can I ask some really dumb questions? 00:01:20.837 --> 00:01:21.737 Ignorant questions? 00:01:21.917 --> 00:01:24.708 I think I get confused by what we mean by drones. 00:01:24.778 --> 00:01:27.253 Normally when people hear about drones, now we're suddenly whisked 00:01:27.253 --> 00:01:29.713 off to the frontline in Ukraine. 00:01:30.223 --> 00:01:32.503 And then people talk about drones when it comes to, oh, we're 00:01:32.503 --> 00:01:34.033 going to film it with a drone. 00:01:34.063 --> 00:01:36.691 They'll stick a camera on it and does the word cover just a wide 00:01:36.691 --> 00:01:39.391 variety of small flying things? 00:01:39.391 --> 00:01:40.076 Is that what we mean? 00:01:40.321 --> 00:01:41.161 It really does. 00:01:41.161 --> 00:01:46.772 So drone is a generic term that's kind of been adopted over the years. 00:01:47.084 --> 00:01:54.061 So a drone in essence is a remotely operated device. 00:01:54.331 --> 00:01:59.811 So it could be on the ground, it could be in the air, it could be on surface 00:01:59.811 --> 00:02:03.621 water, it could be underwater, it could be in space, it could be anywhere. 00:02:03.651 --> 00:02:08.631 The whole point is that no one has sat in it but is controlled from a distance. 00:02:09.111 --> 00:02:11.241 That's the best explanation of drone ever. 00:02:11.356 --> 00:02:13.156 So basically they cover a lot of bases. 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:16.790 We were talking the main episode about autonomy, so it's not just 00:02:16.820 --> 00:02:20.450 somebody, you know, in the 1980s you might have a remote control plane. 00:02:20.450 --> 00:02:21.260 That was a thing. 00:02:21.470 --> 00:02:25.100 So these days drones are going to be kind of doing their own thing? 00:02:25.100 --> 00:02:26.480 Yeah, and all of the above. 00:02:26.547 --> 00:02:31.344 I guess at the very basic level a drone is controlled by as you would 00:02:31.344 --> 00:02:35.684 expect, a remote control receiver, and you've got someone with thumbs on 00:02:35.684 --> 00:02:37.311 sticks controlling it and driving it. 00:02:37.791 --> 00:02:42.301 From the other end you could have a fully autonomous or a semi-autonomous 00:02:42.301 --> 00:02:47.124 system where you essentially give it a command or you upload a mission 00:02:47.124 --> 00:02:48.624 to it and it goes off and does it. 00:02:48.711 --> 00:02:52.011 So again, the spectrum's really wide with that side of it. 00:02:52.201 --> 00:02:52.771 Okay, great. 00:02:53.041 --> 00:02:55.723 So it seems to be a fast growing technology. 00:02:55.723 --> 00:02:58.563 It's one of those we just hear about all the time. 00:02:58.990 --> 00:03:00.700 I suppose, what's exciting in that technology? 00:03:00.700 --> 00:03:01.660 Like what is new? 00:03:01.870 --> 00:03:02.860 Where's it going? 00:03:03.070 --> 00:03:06.700 And then maybe we could talk about why you guys have set up this. 00:03:06.881 --> 00:03:11.093 Drones as an industry or I guess autonomy as an industry is huge 00:03:11.183 --> 00:03:12.833 and it's growing exponentially. 00:03:13.163 --> 00:03:17.453 The best way I could probably categorize it is drones are doing 00:03:17.453 --> 00:03:21.053 for industry what the silicon chip did or the combustion engine. 00:03:21.113 --> 00:03:25.343 It is the new technology and it's just growing fast, almost 00:03:25.343 --> 00:03:26.663 faster than people can keep up. 00:03:26.827 --> 00:03:28.207 So revolutionary. 00:03:28.462 --> 00:03:29.242 Massively. 00:03:29.242 --> 00:03:31.702 In kind of steam engine level. 00:03:32.179 --> 00:03:33.129 Here's some examples. 00:03:33.159 --> 00:03:36.252 I mean, everyone focuses on what's in the news. 00:03:36.312 --> 00:03:41.232 So obviously Ukraine is a massive use case for different developments of 00:03:41.232 --> 00:03:42.747 technology and it's come on leaps. 00:03:42.747 --> 00:03:43.347 Because of that. 00:03:44.117 --> 00:03:46.188 But let's take it away from that perspective. 00:03:46.488 --> 00:03:48.228 Drones are used in construction. 00:03:48.558 --> 00:03:49.938 They're used in agriculture. 00:03:49.983 --> 00:03:50.928 How are they using construction? 00:03:51.198 --> 00:03:56.348 Anything from land survey, ground penetrating radar, multispectral 00:03:56.348 --> 00:03:58.678 sensors, delivery of cargo. 00:03:59.329 --> 00:04:02.564 You can have drones, or you'd recognize it more as a robot, 00:04:02.774 --> 00:04:04.754 could build a building for you. 00:04:05.064 --> 00:04:08.829 The innovations for this is huge and if you can think of use of it, then you 00:04:08.829 --> 00:04:10.119 could probably put a drone in there. 00:04:10.570 --> 00:04:18.356 They're ideal for putting a sensor or a capability in a place you don't 00:04:18.356 --> 00:04:19.916 want to put people in necessarily. 00:04:20.541 --> 00:04:21.411 It's so interesting. 00:04:21.411 --> 00:04:23.181 I've got so much I want to talk to you about, and I sort of brought 00:04:23.181 --> 00:04:26.155 this up in the main episode and I didn't really make myself very clear. 00:04:26.753 --> 00:04:32.009 Both China and America had released sort of six generation fighter jets. 00:04:32.189 --> 00:04:35.199 You know, these new fighter jets that are going to take over from the F35 00:04:35.219 --> 00:04:39.584 eventually, and then they were saying that actually, this is probably the 00:04:39.584 --> 00:04:43.144 last time we're ever going to stick human beings in a fighter jet because 00:04:43.474 --> 00:04:46.474 as they improve so much, there's only so much a human body can take. 00:04:46.474 --> 00:04:51.424 And actually, if you just use drones, then the kind of nine G limit of the 00:04:51.424 --> 00:04:53.254 human body is kind of becomes irrelevant. 00:04:53.434 --> 00:04:56.494 Suddenly you can exponentially fly as fast as you want. 00:04:56.637 --> 00:04:58.107 They're going to just become redundant. 00:04:58.217 --> 00:04:59.177 It's quite possible. 00:04:59.227 --> 00:05:01.297 For all those reasons that you've just mentioned. 00:05:01.400 --> 00:05:07.825 If you have a F35 for example, you are looking at a multi billion dollar project 00:05:07.855 --> 00:05:13.405 where you have a highly skilled and expensive to train and valuable pilot and 00:05:13.405 --> 00:05:15.115 you're sending them into a high risk area. 00:05:15.535 --> 00:05:19.225 Well, if you have a drone that's significantly cheaper and you take 00:05:19.225 --> 00:05:21.425 out the risk of losing that person. 00:05:21.815 --> 00:05:21.875 Yeah. 00:05:21.945 --> 00:05:27.240 Let's look at something else with the Mars Rover and Ingenuity for example. 00:05:27.580 --> 00:05:32.170 The difficulty of putting a human on Mars is obvious. 00:05:32.170 --> 00:05:33.750 You know, it takes a long time to get there. 00:05:33.750 --> 00:05:39.880 You require a whole load of life support systems, so food, fuel, 00:05:39.910 --> 00:05:42.700 oxygen, et cetera, et cetera, and then you have to get them back. 00:05:43.150 --> 00:05:46.780 So that's very, very dangerous and it's very, very complicated 00:05:46.780 --> 00:05:47.890 and it's very, very expensive. 00:05:48.520 --> 00:05:51.430 Or you could develop a rover which you can send. 00:05:51.600 --> 00:05:53.790 It doesn't require any of the life support systems. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:58.500 So then that can go into other things like fuel and sensors 00:05:58.500 --> 00:05:59.970 and test equipment, et cetera. 00:06:00.210 --> 00:06:05.950 It lands on Mars and you can explore a totally excuse the pun, alien 00:06:05.970 --> 00:06:09.060 environment and you're not risking anyone. 00:06:09.150 --> 00:06:11.430 And you don't mind if it doesn't come back? 00:06:11.465 --> 00:06:11.997 No, okay. 00:06:12.177 --> 00:06:15.083 It does seem like we're just having, we're having a lot of tech revolutions 00:06:15.083 --> 00:06:18.633 all at once, so we're going to have a drone revolution, we're going to 00:06:18.653 --> 00:06:22.163 have a robotics revolution plus an AI revolution, and why not have a quantum 00:06:22.163 --> 00:06:23.573 computing revolution all at once? 00:06:23.843 --> 00:06:26.033 It just seems that we're going to see this kind of convergence. 00:06:26.083 --> 00:06:27.103 And that's exactly it. 00:06:27.139 --> 00:06:30.649 If you take the drone out of the equation, because a lot of people will, 00:06:30.649 --> 00:06:34.169 when you talk about drones, they focus on the thing with the flashing lights 00:06:34.169 --> 00:06:37.529 and the spinning propellers and the robot arms and et cetera, et cetera. 00:06:37.799 --> 00:06:40.979 If you take that out of it, what is the actual point of the drone? 00:06:41.609 --> 00:06:46.871 The drone is there to put a sensor in a place or to gather data 00:06:46.961 --> 00:06:48.491 from an area, whatever that is. 00:06:48.491 --> 00:06:53.704 That could be thermal imaging, it could be gathering soil samples, whatever you 00:06:53.704 --> 00:06:59.124 want, or it's to transport something small and precious from A to B quickly. 00:07:00.264 --> 00:07:03.814 Now, if you look at it from that perspective, actually all 00:07:03.814 --> 00:07:06.674 those technological revolutions, which we're discussing. 00:07:07.101 --> 00:07:13.648 They all form together to actually make one kind of greater tech evolution. 00:07:13.811 --> 00:07:17.201 But all these form to build one bigger picture and actually 00:07:17.201 --> 00:07:19.694 they're all complimentary and they all build to one central thing. 00:07:20.137 --> 00:07:22.112 So let's move on to your facility here. 00:07:22.142 --> 00:07:25.969 So we've got this radical new technology that's exponentially getting better and 00:07:25.969 --> 00:07:29.394 more important to us and we're going to become more and more reliant on it. 00:07:29.664 --> 00:07:30.514 What do you do here? 00:07:30.584 --> 00:07:34.494 Is it testing kit, is it training drone pilots? 00:07:34.756 --> 00:07:35.866 All of the above. 00:07:35.866 --> 00:07:42.576 So it's kind of a mixture of a nerds playground and a industrial park. 00:07:42.906 --> 00:07:49.463 Yes, there's testing and development of various sensors, flight control 00:07:49.463 --> 00:07:53.849 systems, things like detect and avoid technology, which is essential 00:07:53.849 --> 00:07:57.239 to drones being released into the wild for want of a better word. 00:07:57.239 --> 00:08:01.879 Avoidance technology, so not bumping into power lines, people, dogs... 00:08:01.909 --> 00:08:02.479 Exactly. 00:08:02.534 --> 00:08:06.933 There's also tests and development, which is where drone is used 00:08:06.933 --> 00:08:08.953 as a tool to deliver an effect. 00:08:08.973 --> 00:08:13.766 So, one company used the drone to simulate the flight path of a satellite. 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:14.870 How does it do that? 00:08:14.900 --> 00:08:16.730 Cause it's flying in the air? 00:08:16.730 --> 00:08:23.327 So essentially what they did was they planned a flight path over a ground 00:08:23.987 --> 00:08:29.039 sensor and that replicated the arc that a satellite would pass over 00:08:29.069 --> 00:08:34.949 above it, and so, although it was significantly closer to the ground. 00:08:35.379 --> 00:08:39.279 But in this particular case, for the particular satellite that was passing 00:08:39.279 --> 00:08:41.359 over they could replicate it with a drone. 00:08:41.599 --> 00:08:44.029 And so that way they managed to track. 00:08:44.281 --> 00:08:47.547 I'm doing air quote satellite across the sky, and that gave 00:08:47.547 --> 00:08:48.657 them the data that they needed. 00:08:49.119 --> 00:08:51.859 So there's other uses around testing. 00:08:52.189 --> 00:08:54.229 Give us a bit sense of the geography of the place as well. 00:08:54.229 --> 00:08:56.949 There was a picture behind us and there's, there's kind of, hangers that 00:08:56.949 --> 00:08:59.273 look quite exciting and area 51 ish. 00:08:59.523 --> 00:09:01.783 Is it just a kind of a big space where you just, where you are 00:09:01.783 --> 00:09:03.413 constantly flying things around or? 00:09:03.920 --> 00:09:05.720 As you mentioned, yes, we have hangers. 00:09:05.820 --> 00:09:10.080 Companies will use those hangers for various things. 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:13.385 Some companies are based there, kind of semi permanently, and they'll do 00:09:13.385 --> 00:09:17.645 their own development and their own training, et cetera, and those hangers 00:09:17.645 --> 00:09:19.745 back onto a large field with a runway. 00:09:19.985 --> 00:09:22.415 So essentially they roll the shutter doors up. 00:09:22.695 --> 00:09:24.825 Go outside and there they are ready to fly. 00:09:25.015 --> 00:09:29.345 We treat the site like an airport, so there's a air side and the ground side. 00:09:29.345 --> 00:09:34.042 So it is very, very much revolves around that aviation culture and safe 00:09:34.042 --> 00:09:35.782 flying environment and safe testing. 00:09:36.298 --> 00:09:41.112 There's a large field and there's a runway, which is about 270 meters long. 00:09:41.442 --> 00:09:45.582 I've been told reliably that you could probably land something, 00:09:45.642 --> 00:09:48.632 which you'd sit in on there, but I personally wouldn't try it. 00:09:48.872 --> 00:09:50.082 I wouldn't want to try it. 00:09:50.092 --> 00:09:52.602 But, maybe a ultralight or something and if you're feeling 00:09:52.602 --> 00:09:54.012 lucky, but I wouldn't go that far. 00:09:54.012 --> 00:09:55.422 Is it all in line of sight? 00:09:55.662 --> 00:09:56.592 When you are, when you're flying? 00:09:56.592 --> 00:09:59.727 Yeah, so that main test area is all line of sight. 00:10:00.037 --> 00:10:04.287 There are other areas within at the Venture Park, which are much larger. 00:10:04.287 --> 00:10:05.402 Do you call it the Adventure Park? 00:10:05.402 --> 00:10:06.432 The Venture Park. 00:10:06.432 --> 00:10:07.092 Oh Venture, I thought you 00:10:07.132 --> 00:10:07.682 said Adventure. 00:10:07.682 --> 00:10:07.742 Yeah. 00:10:07.742 --> 00:10:08.719 No, it, well, it is a bit. 00:10:08.719 --> 00:10:09.399 Kind like, yeah. 00:10:09.414 --> 00:10:10.684 You should change it it to Adventure. 00:10:10.684 --> 00:10:13.779 I think we've, I think we've got a new, rebranding coming up from that one. 00:10:13.928 --> 00:10:18.103 There are some large areas which are essentially open areas of 00:10:18.103 --> 00:10:22.003 land, big fields, and that's where beyond line of sight can happen. 00:10:22.303 --> 00:10:25.693 All this is done within CAA regulation, so we're always on 00:10:25.693 --> 00:10:27.453 the right side of the regulator. 00:10:27.718 --> 00:10:31.438 It feels, or it sounds like it's, you know, you're dealing with real 00:10:32.083 --> 00:10:34.873 cutting edge and I mean cutting edge as opposed to leading edge. 00:10:34.933 --> 00:10:37.303 This is like brand new stuff. 00:10:37.766 --> 00:10:40.886 For you, is there anything that you are particularly thinking, 00:10:41.336 --> 00:10:43.436 oh my God, this is wild. 00:10:44.171 --> 00:10:46.811 It happens on a daily basis actually. 00:10:46.861 --> 00:10:51.839 Some stuff is pretty left field and it's just the nature of that kind of research 00:10:51.839 --> 00:10:55.988 and development environment and some of it just seems like common sense, right? 00:10:56.018 --> 00:11:00.578 You kind of see someone's proposal of what they want to do and you kind of wonder why 00:11:00.668 --> 00:11:02.198 we haven't been doing this all the time? 00:11:02.541 --> 00:11:10.059 I got into the industry in 2008 and from probably eight to, I'd say probably 00:11:10.059 --> 00:11:12.609 about 15, not a whole lot changed. 00:11:12.624 --> 00:11:15.524 No, I was going to say, I remember 2008 I was doing a show called The Gadget 00:11:15.524 --> 00:11:21.164 Show, and I remember doing pieces on autonomy, self-driving cars, drones, but 00:11:21.164 --> 00:11:23.644 all with sort of military implications. 00:11:23.884 --> 00:11:27.694 But it was all pretty tame stuff, there was nothing really, like you 00:11:27.694 --> 00:11:31.894 say, nothing really happened and then just suddenly the last 3, 4, 00:11:31.894 --> 00:11:33.874 5 years, things have really started 00:11:34.094 --> 00:11:37.764 Yeah, it's very much like someone flicked a switch and everything 00:11:37.784 --> 00:11:40.424 just went mad within the industry. 00:11:40.424 --> 00:11:47.206 It's gone from a steady crawl and yeah, very much drones were something you would 00:11:47.386 --> 00:11:54.311 buy from Amazon for a couple of quid or there'd be some large gray aircraft, which 00:11:54.311 --> 00:11:58.639 was probably flying over Afghanistan and that's pretty much all there was really. 00:11:58.991 --> 00:12:01.481 Then all of a sudden the market just went. 00:12:01.866 --> 00:12:02.286 Bang. 00:12:02.646 --> 00:12:08.706 And there's thousands and hundreds of thousands of drones in the air. 00:12:08.761 --> 00:12:15.691 So I think it's predicted by 2030, the latest stats I saw, there's some expected 00:12:15.691 --> 00:12:18.781 to be around 900,000 drones over the UK. 00:12:18.811 --> 00:12:21.107 Wow, and television as well in that time. 00:12:21.107 --> 00:12:24.442 You can see what's happened when we were making TV, if you wanted a drone 00:12:24.442 --> 00:12:27.442 shot, you have to hire a helicopter and then suddenly, I remember doing 00:12:27.442 --> 00:12:31.137 a TV show where someone had a, it was a kind of an eight armed, rotary 00:12:31.137 --> 00:12:32.477 kind of octocopter we called it. 00:12:32.477 --> 00:12:34.007 And we thought this was the best thing ever. 00:12:34.247 --> 00:12:37.583 And suddenly every Tv show now will have a obligatory drone shot 00:12:37.583 --> 00:12:38.683 because they're just cheap to do. 00:12:38.733 --> 00:12:42.683 And now you can have a drone which will fit in the palm of your hand, and 00:12:42.683 --> 00:12:48.263 you can fly for a building or you can fly first person view, so FPV, and you 00:12:48.263 --> 00:12:50.033 can fly it as if you were sat in it. 00:12:50.103 --> 00:12:52.963 Or those kind of drones you see where they make sort of pictures in the, 00:12:53.130 --> 00:12:53.490 Yep. 00:12:53.580 --> 00:12:56.100 When I first saw that, I thought this is the CGI or something. 00:12:56.100 --> 00:12:56.760 This isn't real. 00:12:56.790 --> 00:12:58.240 That's drone swarming. 00:12:58.240 --> 00:13:02.595 That's another leap that's happened within the drone industry, and 00:13:02.595 --> 00:13:07.209 that's multiple drone systems all working together, all pre-programmed 00:13:07.604 --> 00:13:09.733 or doing a task in parallel. 00:13:09.766 --> 00:13:11.026 That's been a massive game changer. 00:13:12.046 --> 00:13:14.836 Oh, you wake up every day and you're, and it's game changing. 00:13:15.333 --> 00:13:16.773 Obviously it's an expanding technology. 00:13:16.773 --> 00:13:19.893 Are you expanding do companies come to you with ideas? 00:13:19.893 --> 00:13:20.968 So you have to, adapt 00:13:20.983 --> 00:13:26.147 Yeah, so we engage with industry a lot because at the end of the day they're at 00:13:26.147 --> 00:13:29.687 the coalface, they're the ones that are really driving this technology forwards. 00:13:30.467 --> 00:13:35.567 But research and development, trials, testing and evaluation, 00:13:35.597 --> 00:13:37.037 is expensive and it's risky. 00:13:37.607 --> 00:13:39.257 So this is where we come in. 00:13:39.257 --> 00:13:44.222 So essentially industry tells us what they want, and what they need, 00:13:44.282 --> 00:13:48.302 and what their pinch points are, and then we basically help with that. 00:13:48.339 --> 00:13:49.119 Here's an example. 00:13:49.119 --> 00:13:53.424 we've just completed building a massive drone cage. 00:13:53.901 --> 00:13:56.997 The best way to describe, it's like a giant batting net. 00:13:57.201 --> 00:14:00.041 But really robust, really upscaled. 00:14:00.341 --> 00:14:04.308 It was quite a surprise when you actually saw the physical end product. 00:14:04.408 --> 00:14:05.188 What does it look like? 00:14:05.193 --> 00:14:09.173 I mean, I can't imagine in my so drone cage, so like a square box? 00:14:09.223 --> 00:14:10.848 It's a bit monolithic actually. 00:14:10.848 --> 00:14:15.830 It's a 10 by 10 meter box, which is made out of steel. 00:14:16.220 --> 00:14:20.780 So it can take up to about three tons of impact. 00:14:21.090 --> 00:14:24.080 Because of the nature of what we do, we don't know what people 00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:25.550 are going to test, necessarily. 00:14:25.790 --> 00:14:30.062 So we've really scaled it beyond what we'd actually expect to it to accommodate. 00:14:30.452 --> 00:14:35.882 It's then got a Kevlar mesh all over it so you can see through it. 00:14:36.178 --> 00:14:39.550 But the whole point of that is when you are developing these new 00:14:39.550 --> 00:14:43.190 systems, when you first fly it, you have a good idea, but you don't 00:14:43.190 --> 00:14:44.235 necessarily know what it's going to do. 00:14:44.475 --> 00:14:46.605 There's the whole point of regulation as well. 00:14:46.665 --> 00:14:52.345 So, as part of the regulation, you have to prove that your system, your 00:14:52.345 --> 00:14:56.545 equipment is safe, and the way you do that is by building up flying hours. 00:14:56.605 --> 00:15:00.395 So I've flown this drone for a million hours and it hasn't fallen out of 00:15:00.395 --> 00:15:01.675 the sky and it's not hurt anyone. 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:05.150 But if you've just developed that system, you can't get those hours. 00:15:05.180 --> 00:15:06.440 So it's a bit of a Catch 22. 00:15:06.627 --> 00:15:11.667 What the cage does, it allows you to fly and get that technical and historic 00:15:11.667 --> 00:15:16.107 data so you can say, okay, we've flown this for 100 hours, we're in a confined 00:15:16.107 --> 00:15:20.817 space and it hasn't become self-aware and tried to go over the horizon. 00:15:20.872 --> 00:15:24.292 If the worst happens, it's all in a safe place and it 00:15:24.292 --> 00:15:25.792 doesn't form a risk to anyone. 00:15:26.305 --> 00:15:30.413 Industry asked us for that and pushed that quite a lot over a 00:15:30.413 --> 00:15:31.793 period of time, and so we built it. 00:15:32.413 --> 00:15:37.033 But to do this, it costs money and it's very risky, especially for a startup 00:15:37.033 --> 00:15:42.133 or an SME, and so we de-risk that by having a facility that they can use. 00:15:42.518 --> 00:15:44.472 And just quickly how's the Catapult helped? 00:15:44.792 --> 00:15:49.320 That particular facility came from our Core Grant, so we paid for it. 00:15:49.400 --> 00:15:51.993 There's other avenues for further development, which we're doing. 00:15:52.243 --> 00:15:58.283 We're looking at building a facility where you can test, fly or drive, 00:15:58.283 --> 00:16:02.115 whatever you want to do for your drone, and it has various sensors inside. 00:16:02.115 --> 00:16:04.785 So high speed cameras, acoustic sensors, and you can do all 00:16:04.785 --> 00:16:06.624 that in a a lab, I guess. 00:16:06.674 --> 00:16:07.579 I know what to call it. 00:16:07.948 --> 00:16:09.718 Phil's Drone Adventure lab. 00:16:10.058 --> 00:16:11.353 Phil's Drone Adventure Lab. 00:16:11.603 --> 00:16:15.576 I've kind of described it a little bit like a drone soft play area, a little bit. 00:16:15.576 --> 00:16:15.966 So, 00:16:16.186 --> 00:16:16.346 yeah. 00:16:16.371 --> 00:16:17.801 Phil's Drone Soft Play Area. 00:16:17.851 --> 00:16:18.931 Can I come and play? 00:16:18.981 --> 00:16:19.831 You certainly can. 00:16:19.941 --> 00:16:21.381 Phil, thank you so much for coming in. 00:16:21.401 --> 00:16:22.121 Fascinating. 00:16:22.151 --> 00:16:23.231 Absolutely fascinating. 00:16:23.231 --> 00:16:26.022 all I can think about is the various sci-fi movies that are 00:16:26.481 --> 00:16:29.911 now going to be drone based that, are going off in my head. 00:16:30.391 --> 00:16:30.811 Thank you. 00:16:31.258 --> 00:16:36.088 To hear future episodes of In Orbit, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast 00:16:36.088 --> 00:16:40.708 app and head over to YouTube to watch the video versions of all of our discussions. 00:16:40.798 --> 00:16:44.458 And if you'd like to find out more about how Space is empowering your 00:16:44.458 --> 00:16:49.558 industry, visit the Catapult website or join them on social media.