Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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)
We've done many adventures, is there anything that sticks in the mind?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (00:03)
some work that I've done up on Baffin Island monitoring narwhal behavior. Up until the availability of drones, all they could really do is perch this sea can on this cliff and then use binoculars to look at narwhal behavior. Here, check this out.
Mark Masterton (00:23)
Today on Drone is the Future, we're joined by Eric Satchuk. After falling in love with aviation aged just eight, Eric's career has taken him to the literal ends of the earth, deploying drones in the frozen extremes of both the Arctic and Antarctica. His expeditions earned him a seat in the elite explorers club and today he's mentoring the next generation of pilots as the head of the RPAS hub at BCIT.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (00:48)
We were doing climate change research back in like 1994 or 95, pretty cutting edge. Dr. Barrow was a Arctic scientist. He was like crazy, but in the best possible way, strapping multi spectral sensors onto his belly and then using a fan powered parasail to do like mapping. Yeah, I'm going to do this mapping by myself and fly this thing around.
Mark Masterton (01:08)
like the pomeglida thing.
The world was wacky before drones. Did that work for him?
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.com. listen to it every week and it gets better every time. Welcome to the show, Eric, the Indiana Jones of drones. Sorry, I had to. ⁓
all will be explained over the course of the podcast I'm sure. ⁓ But before we get into all that, ⁓ can we start off by talking about how you first got pulled into this world of aviation and drones? ⁓ It's a long story.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (02:06)
That old chestnut. Well, it really started off with my dad taking me to an air show when I was eight at Canadian Forces Base, Winnipeg. And at that time, this was 1982, if I remember correctly, and it was the era of the F-15 Streak Eagle.
people are interested in aviation, they can look that up. It's a stripped down version of the F-15 built specifically for time to height records and ⁓ specifically to beat the Soviets at their make 25 game. Okay. So I saw this thing launching up in full afterburner into the sky. I'm like, this is that's what I want to do. I want to be in that cockpit. And that fueled really the next geez, ⁓ least 10 years of my life. ⁓ School became kind of a secondary thing. just
inhaled aviation literature and any facts, any books. I'd spent all my money on that. And then went into the Canadian Air Force Reserves when I was 16. ⁓ So, and luckily there was an Air Force base in Winnipeg where I was living. So went into the ⁓ maintenance program, aviation maintenance program. ⁓ Spent a couple of years in the military doing my basic training, getting
was trained up on how to be an airframe technician and then ⁓ left, got an honorable discharge ⁓ when it came to a head whether I was going to finish my high school exams or continue on in the military because they really only needed me to have grade 10 at that point but personally I really wanted to finish high school as a starting point. ⁓ I didn't want to set myself up for failure that early. Didn't really have a plan B so I just, you know,
Mark Masterton (03:49)
Is that a good example? Yeah.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (03:58)
This is like May, which is a very late time in the year to be applying for university, but somehow got into University of Manitoba, went into the geophysics program and floundered for a good year and a half academic probation. I had no idea what I was doing. ⁓ In the summertime, I took some geography courses. course, in the meantime, I've been playing flight simulators. I've been doing mission planning. I've been doing IFR, all sorts of stuff that learning to be a pilot.
putting myself through ground school essentially, which the military did as well. So when they finally took some geography courses and they put some maps in front of me and some air photos, I'm like, okay, this looks a lot more familiar than differential calculus. So I boosted my marks, transferred into geography, went into the of the mapping sciences. And yeah, one thing led to another and things really started to come together.
got very comfortable with what I was doing and happy with my progress. So by the third year I was working, I had my GPA back up to where it's supposed to be and yeah, definitely. And just, yeah, kind of on a trajectory of looking at all of this geospatial type of analysis and data. And then went, met a couple of amazing
Mark Masterton (05:08)
Moment that we're proud, I'm sure.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (05:24)
mentors and advisors, Dr. Jim Gardner and David Barber, who, Dr. Barber was a, he's recently passed away, but he was a Arctic scientist. So we were doing climate change research, you know, back in like 1994, 95, which is seemed to me pretty cutting edge. And he was a, I don't want to say crazy, but in the best possible way.
strapping multi spectral sensors onto his belly and then using a fan powered ⁓ parasail to do like mapping.
Mark Masterton (06:03)
What like the paraglider things? Yeah. That you jump off from hills and go flying. Yeah. He had a sensor on.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (06:09)
Yeah, he's got sense of like, yeah, I'm going to do this mapping by myself and fly this thing around.
Mark Masterton (06:13)
The world was wacky before drones. Did that work for you?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (06:18)
To a certain degree, there's a lot of moving parts there. Right. Right. Hard to point the thing.
Mark Masterton (06:24)
You're buying the spirit and passion.
Put yourself on the line like that. How big was the thing he was strapping to himself? was like... Okay, know, not too big.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (06:29)
It's like a toaster, basically.
Yeah,
portable anyway, you know. Did you... I never got to the Arctic. In the Arctic, yeah.
Mark Masterton (06:36)
Go out there after him.
He was doing that in the Arctic.
my God, I'm thinking like a hill in Burnaby.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (06:46)
No sir, no he was... He got to the point where he got enough money to lease an icebreaker from the Canadian Coast Guard.
Mark Masterton (06:57)
Sorry, what's an icebreaker? OK.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (06:58)
ice-breaking ship that
can get into these like really harsh environments, and then he froze it there over winter ⁓ in the ice just so he could study what's happening in the ice over winter. Because how else would you really kind of get into the... So an inspiring individual to say the least. And then ⁓ Jim Gardner, he was a mountaineering ⁓
Mark Masterton (07:17)
Yeah, of course. How else would you?
Very much so.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (07:28)
aficionados, so he has like first ascents in the Himalaya. He took me into the Rockies and introduced me to his research program in Banff, Jasper, Yoho National Parks. So I essentially took over his research doing debris flow stuff, natural hazard type work. And just fell in love with the mountains. And I thought, you know, living in Manitoba wasn't really my thing. But if I can get out to the mountains for the better part of the summer, that would be great. So
All these pieces kind of came together. So I went on to do my masters, which I never thought I would do. And I was really happy with it. had my own company doing GIS work and things like that. ⁓ And then an opportunity came to go to India to do some more remote sensing work. So this is like satellite remote sensing type stuff. Not drones yet. OK.
Mark Masterton (08:17)
with drones. Sorry,
we will get there.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (08:23)
1999. ⁓ Anyway, so the trip was had a PhD attached to it. It was for my doctorate, which wasn't initially clear to me. I thought I was just going there to do some research. And then, you know, the PhD was kind of tagged on at the end. All right, so launched into that. And then came to Vancouver in 2000. And started looking for work here, got into BCIT.
started working in the photogrammetric field. So it kind of went from satellite remote sensing to aerial remote sensing with just with photogrammetry and aerial mapping. Okay. And just sort of got into the principles of that. And then one of my colleagues, would say probably in 2013, maybe 2014, brought in this weird looking contraption that he called the drone. And I said, can we put a camera on it? Can we do some mapping with it? He said, yeah, probably.
Mark Masterton (09:19)
Was this one that they built themselves? DIY. DIY, yeah. Wow, wow.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (09:20)
Yeah, it's like a D. ⁓
Yeah, so obviously didn't fly very well, wasn't very well stabilized, didn't have all the the gimbals and things that were taken for granted these days. But it certainly piqued my interest. And then a couple of students of mine in the geomatics department where I was teaching, bought one of the Phantom IIs, the white, you super ubiquitous thing that you would see every
Mark Masterton (09:44)
Okay. Yep.
They
didn't have cameras attached to them back in the day. I'm not sure they did.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (09:52)
Yeah, initially it was just a GoPro. And then eventually they had a gimbaled payload on it. ⁓ And so was my students that brought it to my office and said, we bought a drone. Do you want to go fly it in field? So I said, absolutely. Let's see what this thing's all about. And I knew, like, this is crazy. That's what opened up the door. Long story long.
Mark Masterton (10:12)
So that opened up the door. ⁓
It's fascinating. How did you go from ⁓ some of your students bringing a drone to you at school to running a department on RPAS? I didn't know what RPAS was going on. I'll be totally honest, can you remind people? No worries. Just being honest. Minor things. Also, you don't like to call them drones, is that right?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (10:32)
for a drone company.
Mark Masterton (10:42)
I to call them UAS. ⁓
Dr. Eric Saczuk (10:43)
I
call them drones because it's just the most familiar term. I'm not going to be hardline about that. But drones do have a certain connotation with them historically. And when I talk to students about drones, when I introduce drones to them, I said, know, the first drone flew in like 1916. was a...
Mark Masterton (11:07)
⁓ Tell us about that.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (11:13)
propelled aircraft that had no pilot on board. was radio controlled. So the military was already on this technology over 100 years ago.
Mark Masterton (11:24)
Why's it taking us so long to get here?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (11:28)
That's a good question. think there's a lot of pieces to that puzzle. ⁓
Mark Masterton (11:33)
Yeah, how did you go from that drone being brought into your office to running a whole program at BCIT?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (11:38)
Yeah, it really, at BCIT, ⁓ the true pioneers of the drone program are Tim Horsfall and Chris Cambon. A couple of faculty members ⁓ work in the media department and IT services. They had the vision, thinking this was 2015, probably 2014, 2015, to put on a drone symposium at BCIT and just invite anybody who was into that.
sort of fledgling field at that time to present what they were doing. They had insurance companies that would, you that you could talk to if you wanted to do drone work and you needed insurance, providers, ⁓ people who would do all the data analysis. So a huge turnout and just enthusiasts, right? People just curious about what the heck this thing is. People bringing in their, you know, 10 year old kids and saying, check this out, you know, getting fired up. ⁓
Mark Masterton (12:37)
kind
of new and far-flung ⁓ technology back then wasn't it but it's come a long way from then to now.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (12:43)
Huge massive massive. I mean now everybody knows what a drone is and you know for for whether for good or for bad Right, but back then it was very very novel
Mark Masterton (12:55)
Do you recall any memorable moments from those early days when you were first trying out drones for the first time in the field? Any instances you care to share? Good and bad.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (13:07)
One comes
to mind, was super excited to get my hands on this technology and just be able to fly them, right? Just figure out how they work. So I remember driving out to... I'm trying to remember the name of the park in West Van. This is where all the divers go. It's right by... No, the other way, Horseshoe Bay. Oh, okay.
Yep, Whitecliff Park? a park out there where I went with my wife and ⁓ she was just, you know, we're having a picnic. We went there for a picnic. Blanket out, we had, you know, little snacks and things like that. And then I busted out the drone. ⁓ I started buzzing this thing around her head. They were big. They were fairly big. we're not. Yeah, just so I brought this along.
Mark Masterton (13:55)
Of course you did.
You snuck that in the picnic box.
We're hoping to impress.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (14:08)
⁓ Yes, which was, it sounds silly when I say it now, but I think it's like, check out what I can do. She's like, get this thing away from my hand. Disturbing the piece.
Mark Masterton (14:18)
The of the mission on that first flight. ⁓ Sounds like you succeeded.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (14:21)
to annoy my wife.
very much so. I also filmed our wedding. So I flew, flew, was the photographer, the videographer and the drone pilot at my own wedding. Yes. Wow. I should show you the video. It's, pretty cool.
Mark Masterton (14:37)
That's a way to save costs, isn't it?
I'm amazed you were able to focus on that when you would probably had so many other things to do on your on your wedding day. Just gotta I do okay pass me my remote. I'm gonna go get this shot
Dr. Eric Saczuk (14:48)
I do the rest of it.
Look, time's taking, I'm losing the light here.
Mark Masterton (14:58)
Priorities. love it. I it. I want to talk a little bit about your journey to Canada as well if we can because it's a very interesting one From where you started off you were born in Poland. Yes, right and you grew up there initially and then what brought you to Canada
Dr. Eric Saczuk (15:16)
Well, my parents.
Mark Masterton (15:18)
So that would offer us a holiday,
Dr. Eric Saczuk (15:20)
It was where this elderly lady kind of took us in for the night, let us stay there. then she said, you know, keep going to Austria. There's a church there that accepts refugees, political refugees. And so we went there. And at that point, when we got to Austria, my dad turned around and said, guys, we're never going back.
My were writing letters to the governments, Canada, Australia, US, to see if any of them would take us in as refugees. And then by November, ⁓ Canada had responded, and so we packed up our stuff and flew to, ⁓ through Toronto, ended up in Winnipeg.
Mark Masterton (16:06)
And then not long after that, you saw the F-15 streak eagle. And then rest is history from there. Wow. Your drone pilot tree and geomatics have taken you all around the world. You've gone to both poles at this point. Is that too much of a stretch? Sorry. Okay. You do work in geography.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (16:26)
I wouldn't say I've been to both... Yeah, I wanna be, I wanna be.
into the Arctic and the Antarctic, but getting to the poles is a whole different level.
Mark Masterton (16:38)
Okay.
But I bring up these adventures and these polls because ⁓ it's got you a very exclusive invite to a very amazing club, the Explorers Club. did that come about becoming part of that club, is started in 1904, home to the people who first polled the North Pole, first visited the moon. And now you're part of that club. Have you been to the clubhouse in New York? Wow. What is that like Neil Armstrong?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (17:04)
I have.
I met Buzz Aldrin.
Mark Masterton (17:14)
How does it work? you get like an invite in the mail? How does it work?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (17:18)
have to be invited. So you've got to have a few people that are willing to say that, yeah, this individual warrants a consideration. But you still have to then apply. It's not just on their word. You have to put together a resume. Fellow internationally,
Mark Masterton (17:39)
fellow, you've been invited.
⁓ Wow. So what adventures were people reporting about you that led to your invite in particular?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (17:52)
Yeah, basically it boils down to this fellow by the name of Mike Chow and his wife Chantel. He's part of the Explorers Club, which I didn't even know that he was when I first met him. ⁓ But through his efforts and organization of expeditions onto which I was invited, I was able to participate in these...
I'm personally going to call them epic adventures. Maybe not on the grand scale of things, but for me they were incredible opportunities to go out into a previously closed valley of Nepal that hadn't seen any tourists for a long, long time. It was closed by the King of Nepal and then they decided to open it up and we were the first second group into that area. So was very, very untouched. And the purpose of that was to just
capture it in all of our different formats and mediums. So I was the photographer, we had a painter, we had a musician, had ⁓ Mike was the writer and Chantel did some videography and things like that. So we kind of put it all together and just made this little film about it. And then Mike published a book about it. And what's the day the 17th? I think he's actually coming back from that area in Nepal pretty much any day now.
⁓ So there's a lot that happened since then. ⁓ But it's not that he's been since then. He's been back and forth. He's sponsored kids to come here and get an education ⁓ from there. So that was one of the expeditions that I went on. Second one I went on with him was a trek through the spectrum range up in Taltan territory, up to and through Mount Azziza, which is a volcanic complex. So we did a 10-day
Mark Masterton (19:21)
Yeah, he's been there a while.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (19:48)
unsupported track from dropped off by a full plane and said we'll pick you up at the other end in 10 days. hopefully you make it.
Mark Masterton (19:57)
See
ya. Best of luck.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (19:59)
Yeah, so a few of these plus plus the work that I've been travels that I've done to like Indonesia and The the Arctic regions through through work and school
Mark Masterton (20:11)
Yeah, speaking of ⁓ your adventures and work in the Arctic region, can you talk to me about those? ⁓ You went to test drone technology and see how it performed in these like really harsh conditions, is that right? ⁓ How did that come about and what did you find? A lot of penguins?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (20:25)
Yeah.
Lots of penguins. Yeah, lots of noisy stinky penguins. Cute though, adorable. The whole thing started off with me trying to go to, ⁓ no, can't even say that I was trying to go. ⁓ It was a conversation that I overheard at our coffee shop, two people talking about going to Africa and filming this movie. And I literally just walked into their conversation and said, do you need a drone pilot? And they said, yes. I'm like, sweet, I'm your guy, let's do this. So here I am.
thinking I'm going to Kenya. And then I, because at that time I was trying to do things legitimately because I was already involved in the drone program at BCIT. you know, play by the rules, figure out what the rules are in Kenya about flying drones and like absolutely not. No go. Yeah, at that time there was a complete moratorium on any foreigner bringing any drone gear.
Mark Masterton (21:20)
Really? No go?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (21:27)
whatsoever into that country. Poaching and stuff like that was really an issue. that shut that dream down pretty hard. But I remember ⁓ going to sleep one night and I had a map of the world right beside my bed and telling my wife that it's not going to work out for me to go to Kenya. She's like, well, why don't you just go to Antarctica? I'm like...
Mark Masterton (21:51)
She sounds great.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (21:53)
I'm like,
where did that come from? She's like, well, you always said you wanted to go into these interesting places. I said, fair point. So yeah, I guess I just pivoted to Antarctica and sort of figure out how I could get myself there and why.
Mark Masterton (22:09)
And then you in Antarctica and what you doing there ⁓ with drones.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (22:13)
Yeah, just really just seeing if that technology works down there for a number of reasons. Obviously, temperature, know, precipitation, winds, but also things like just access to GNSS connectivity, satellites are much less visible in those polar regions. ⁓ Does it even make sense to use drones for anything down there? And so that was just a very basic broad question, nothing fancy in terms of research.
Mark Masterton (22:42)
did you find?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (22:45)
found out it was hard to find flat takeoff spots. It's a pretty vertical, very dynamic place. ⁓ Things just kind of seem to come out of the water quite dramatically. So that was one of the challenges, is to find a proper takeoff spot wherever it is that we went. And then I had to really be careful about staying away from the, I want to say tourists, who had paid a lot of money ⁓ to be there.
probably paid a lot of money to be away from the kind of things that I was doing. So, you know, I had to find my own spot. And so I took ⁓ color, like RGB sensor, took a multispectral and thermal. So I would, I could only put one of them on at a time on the drone. So I'd basically try to do three flights in each of the places where I could get to land. So we'd sort of park the ship, get on the zodiacs.
ferry over to wherever we could safely disembark and find a spot. And so I was interested in mapping areas that had been maybe recently deglaciated to see if potentially, know, like the whole concept of the greening of Antarctica. And I was thinking from the perspective of these ships go there very regularly. So it would be, it made sense to me to...
maybe to establish some sort of program where these kinds of data points can be collected regularly in an environment that is experiencing an exacerbated change in temperatures and increase in temperatures.
Mark Masterton (24:24)
Has your research led to more drones being used in that way? In those harsher conditions parts of the world? Can you see that in the future?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (24:32)
definitely. Yeah. I don't know if my research has contributed that materially. I'd like to think that it has.
Mark Masterton (24:41)
Possibly in the future you think that could be a way of combating ⁓ tackling environmental problems that we have
Dr. Eric Saczuk (24:48)
Yeah, I think it is a useful tool at a certain scale. Drones don't cover a lot of area at a time and Antarctica is a massive place. So we're only really talking about those kind of fringe edge areas that are accessible by these ships. We're not talking about the continent itself. That's a whole different scale and there's Antarctica and then there's Antarctica.
So that that Northwestern Peninsula is a gateway to it, but it certainly doesn't necessarily represent the whole continent.
Mark Masterton (25:27)
So that was Antarctica and where in relation is that to Svalbard? The opposite end of the world. What were you doing on the opposite end of the world?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (25:33)
the opposite end of
So, Sinova Sorby, who is a... ⁓ I was actually privileged to be her sponsor into the Explorers Club. ⁓ So, Sinova was the global marketing director ⁓ for Polar Latitudes, the company that got me a berth on the ship to go to Antarctica. A year later, she called me up and said, my friend and I...
⁓ Hilda are going to do some overwintering at this uninsulated, unsupported trappers hut up at 78 degrees north in Svalbard. ⁓ Would you be able to do some drone training for us and maybe provide us with a thermal drone? I said, sounds great. You help me out in Antarctica, happy to help you out. So that's how that came about. And those ladies went up there. We took them up there.
Mark Masterton (26:28)
Wow.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (26:36)
and they were going to hold themselves up in this little cabin which is, again let's take this room as a reference, smaller than this room.
Mark Masterton (26:45)
For how long?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (26:46)
They were gonna do it for eight months or nine months, eight or nine months.
Mark Masterton (26:50)
⁓
I'm sure if I could handle that
Dr. Eric Saczuk (26:53)
This is August, September of 2019. We were supposed to pick them up in May of 2020. So we went there, we dropped them off. They had like skidoos and all their food and I taught them how to fly the drone, made some automated mission plans for them. Waved goodbye and we'll see you in May. And then I planned to go and take my stepdaughter to go pick them up. We had this like.
crazy adventure planned to go and do this. And then what happened in March? COVID hit.
Mark Masterton (27:28)
Speaking of cabin fever.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (27:30)
Yeah, wow. They had their sat phone in there and they're ⁓ they're calling and it's like, what's going on down there, right? Everything's shutting down. Like it's complete chaos here, right?
Mark Masterton (27:44)
They were probably in one of the nicer parts of the world. ⁓
Dr. Eric Saczuk (27:47)
It's
like they didn't feel any difference, right? But they're like, are you guys coming to pick us up in May? I said, I don't think so. Well, of course they, right, so this whole thing, ⁓ getting resupplied, they spent, I think, two weeks in Longyearbyen. They spent 19 months in that cabin. Wow. Doing all sorts of citizen science, climate change work for...
Mark Masterton (27:55)
Did they have enough food?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (28:16)
Scripps Institution of Oceanography for NASA, for the Polar ⁓ Institute.
Mark Masterton (28:21)
And those automated missions and the initial training that you did with with drones, what was the aim of that to get?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (28:30)
It was to collect sort of regular data on trying to get a sense of maybe snow depth, trying to look at some of the activity that's happening out in the ocean when it was not frozen, because they were doing phytoplankton research, but also just to have like a thermal set of eyes when it's polar night for four months, like the sun does not get above the horizon, right? It's dark.
Mark Masterton (28:56)
That now must have been a rough 19 months.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (28:59)
Yeah, and there's polar bears and Arctic fox and everywhere. Like they had bears trying to knock down the door of their cabin.
Mark Masterton (29:12)
Speaking of interactions and stuff in the polls, ⁓ just before we get back to your teaching at BCIT, were there any particularly ⁓ memorable moments from your trips to both extreme ends of the planet? You were there on Drone Research, but did you come across something? You talk about stinky penguins. there anything, what are the biggest challenges that you faced and interesting wildlife that you met?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (29:38)
So one thing is I didn't realize how rich the wildlife is in Antarctica. You think it's kind of a desolate frozen place, it is the opposite. It is teeming with life, at least in the places that I went to that I experienced. mean, the amount of marine wildlife, like the birds and the whales that you would see every day, the seals and ⁓ the penguins, the first island that we landed on.
think that there was like 12 to 15 thousand penguins, right? Wow. So it's a cacophony of noise, right? It's not this silent place that you necessarily think it would be. Certainly that was an eye-opening element for me. And Smellie, because of the time we're here, yeah, we went towards the end of their summer.
Mark Masterton (30:27)
and smelly.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (30:35)
So the penguins are already sort of molting and ⁓ not a lot of snow to cover up.
Mark Masterton (30:57)
How have you managed to incorporate your explorers club work with drones?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (31:06)
Yeah, that's something that's been on my mind. ⁓ I can't say that I've got that figured out, but my idea that I had was to ⁓ access the archives of the Explorers Club and see what projects ⁓ previously have used drone technology and to what extent. What was the purpose of it? ⁓ To create a bit of a
database maybe of who's used them for what, when, what was the result, just to kind of have a bit of an overview of that technology. And it's certainly been when I go to these places, like on Monday, I'm going to go track moose with drone that have been GPS collared. Right. And so that definitely lends itself into a bit of an adventure.
a bit of data collection. ⁓ So there must have been numerous projects, numerous expeditions that have used drones. I'm interested to know to what extent and how maybe as part of the Explorers Club, I could help facilitate that to sort of encourage others to be able to use this technology or introduce it to them so that they could use it in their own research and expeditions.
Mark Masterton (32:31)
Okay. overall throughout your career of working with drones, is there a favourite moment? Something that you've captured, something that you've interacted with? ⁓ Is there a particular memory that stands out over that? You've done many adventures. Is there anything that sticks in the mind?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (32:48)
You mean apart from filming my own wedding? Well, the Narwhal element was definitely very much up there. To be able to thermally map a glacier and reconstruct it in 3D, was one of, like it was a very eye-opening experience for me and opened up a whole bunch of avenues for
Mark Masterton (32:53)
the picnic.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (33:18)
for the use of thermal drones, ⁓ for sure. ⁓ So those are the couple. And just being able to count, have my GIS count penguins automatically, I thought was pretty neat. ⁓ Being able to see through water. So when we were near the Ukrainian research station in Antarctica, there was a very sort of shallow channel. ⁓
of water and so when I was mapping the glacier, was obviously flying over the water and I could, when I processed the data, I'm like, wow, you can actually see bathymetry. You can see the bottom of the ocean, right? It was shallow from the sky, from the drone with calm water, shallow, clear, like, huh, you could do bathymetric mapping to a certain degree, which was, didn't know that before. Yeah.
Mark Masterton (34:00)
the sky.
very high.
So you're tracking Moose, anything else coming up in the near future? What have you got going on?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (34:17)
Well, I think some of the most exciting things that are happening is the drone ⁓ technology initiative with partnership. in addition to BCIT, I'm the flight operations lead and chief pilot for Indro Robotics. We're partnered with UBC, with a medical doctor there, who's really forward thinking and wants to get this whole medical delivery.
concept going in First Nations communities throughout BC. So those underserved areas where people don't have access to medical supplies to use fixed wing, either electric, hybrid, or even hydrogen powered drones to deliver and pick up stuff within a 200, 300, 400 kilometer radius of Prince George.
Mark Masterton (35:14)
Amazing. ⁓
Dr. Eric Saczuk (35:14)
Yeah,
so we're working on this amazing team of people. We've had meetings with the Canadian Blood Services. How do we deliver blood to trauma patients, for example, in a fraction of the time that it would take to drive? So what technologies needed to get that going? How do you fly 300 kilometers from Prince George to Burns Lake safely? The regulations say you can.
Mark Masterton (35:41)
Yeah.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (35:45)
Low-risk beef loss, here we go. And then they're like, whoa, wait a minute. What's your detect and avoid system? How do you factor in weather? And what if there's another aircraft? if all of these, the devil's in the details, But a project like this really helped to move the needle and maybe even establish some set of protocols that could then be scaled up, replicated.
Okay, this is how it works, this is how we can implement it there. So we are working with NAV Canada, Prince George Airport, Transport Canada, to really create these kinds of next steps in the drone world.
Mark Masterton (36:30)
Back to your teaching at BCIT, ⁓ it must be strange teaching about drones and regulation because it's changing every single year and it's such a rapidly changing world. How do you pass that on to the next generation of people looking to get into drones?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (36:49)
You know, you just build it in because it is the reality. You know that as this technology evolves and everything, ⁓ you build that into the curriculum and you say, know, here's a section that ⁓ we either know things are coming down or we think that this is where it's going to go. This is where things are now. I remember distinctly, I was on the ship in Antarctica when I got the email.
this is in 2018, that I got my Canada-wide SFOC, my special flight operation certificate, to be able to fly drones all across Canada anytime, anywhere. That's how things were back then. So initially we had to put this 30 page document to Transport Canada just to fly the drone anywhere. If I wanted to do some training for my students,
30 page SFOC, which would take two, three, four weeks to process. I got to go up north and train some First Nation communities up there. SFOC, I'm like, this is insane. How is this going to work? How am I going to make this? But what I realized after the third one, Transport Canada came back to us and said, look, are you going to be flying these drones a lot? I said, yes. All across Canada? Yep. OK.
So then they just gave me a blanket SFOC to fly my drones anywhere, anytime in Canada. I'm like, so it went from super arduous to you're good to go. And I remember getting that email on the ship and I'm like, yeah. That lasted a year because in 2019 all the rules changed. SFOC went out the window.
Mark Masterton (38:27)
Freedom. ⁓
my god.
Did you enjoy it when it lasted?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (38:38)
I did, yes, we got so much work done with that ability.
Mark Masterton (38:45)
And where are we at now in 2026?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (38:48)
pretty good spot actually right now as far as I think if we look globally at where Canada is, we are pretty much near the top of accessibility in terms of the regulations and the mechanisms that we have in place to be able to carry out drone operations.
Mark Masterton (39:10)
And what sort of people are you seeing coming to take your course in RPAS at BCIT nowadays? Are they wanting to be pilots or are they coming from a data analytics point?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (39:26)
All over the place. they will... The youngest student I think I had was 17 in one of my micro-credentials, still in high school, still kind of really interested in drones and just wanted to know everything about it, right? So they can make decisions about their path towards the future. And then we have individuals who maybe are changing careers, right? Maybe things weren't working out or they got laid off and they want to pivot and retrain, upskill.
So we've got people who are working in the geomatics world, whether a survey company or maybe an environmental company, and they just need drones, drone technology as ⁓ a tool. So they want to learn how to use it and apply it to what they're already doing, which I think is a great way to go, because it just becomes that tool. ⁓ And of course, then we have people who are just interested in starting their own drone business. I've had students go and do that.
be pretty successful at it.
Mark Masterton (40:29)
a new course that you're opening up soon? it a full-time course? Where do you take people from start to finish with that?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (40:37)
Yeah, so it's the professional RPAS course, so professional RPAS operator, ⁓ 17 weeks full-time slated to start ⁓ in May of next year, so about a year from now. We're just putting all the pieces into place. And so it'll walk them through all the regulations, ⁓ all of the mission planning, site survey, being able to program a drone to collect data, so talk them about the different types of
data that you can collect. Certainly we'll cover all of it because as we sit here, probably a new application has just popped up about 10 minutes ago with a new sensor and things are really moving fast. But the basics and how to process that data into products and then how to maintain the drone. And we'll get them their advanced Transport Canada certification through it. And so that kind of gets them.
We also talk about beef loss and we use both multi-rotor and fixed-wing in the course. They get the build-a-drone, so try to cover that.
Mark Masterton (41:45)
PV loss is a pretty big development as of this year. What kind of new ⁓ industries do you see drones moving into on the back of that?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (41:55)
Well, I see is a lot of things now being flown legally that have already been out there. But obviously things like pipeline inspections, a lot of the resource type of monitoring, whether it's forestry or mining or even river resources and environments, all of those kinds of flights that I've been doing a lot of.
Really now the beef loss certification opens up the door to that quite a bit so that we can now use the full range and extent of the drone rather than trying to keep it within a kilometer or two of us. So delivery is a huge one. ⁓ Wildfire monitoring is another one. There's a lot of things that it opens up the door to.
Mark Masterton (42:52)
⁓ Drones have opened up the whole world to you in terms of like adventuring and going all over the globe trotting. there are someone, if there's people out there, young, looking to get into this industry, looking to maybe become the next Indiana Jones of drones, what would you say to them? Yeah, what would be a bit of guidance, your little nugget of knowledge as a teacher?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (43:19)
So what I would say is take what you're passionate about, what your interests are, and then see if drones are a fit to it, rather than the other way around. So what I would suggest is, for example, somebody who loves videography or photography is passionate about that artistic. See how a drone would add to
⁓ give you more capability or give you an advantage and edge over others that others don't have. ⁓ Same thing with like when I work with fisheries commissions. So through my project that I just wrapped up with Pacific Salmon Foundation, we have all of these wildlife biologists. Some work that I've done ⁓ up on Baffin Island.
with ⁓ mapping and monitoring narwhal behavior. Right? So up until the availability of drones, all they could really do is perch this sea can on this cliff and then use binoculars to look at and try and assess narwhal behavior. I'm like, here, check this out.
Mark Masterton (44:40)
Hold my beer.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (44:43)
We had a SFOC for above 400 feet beyond visual line of sight. We got this drone three, five kilometers out there with an 8K sensor hovering 20 meters above this melee of narwhal. And the wildlife biologists are losing their minds. They're like, we've never seen this behavior. We've never even had the opportunity to observe. You can't do it with a helicopter. You can't do it with an aircraft.
this is the only thing that's going to get you this kind of data, right? So we just flew all day long for, I think, three weeks. And so it's that sort of thing, to get back to your question, like, what is it that you already do? And how can a drone help you do it better or in a way that you couldn't before? That's really the key. This is not about, ⁓ I'm a drone pilot.
for you. Yeah, it's like I have my driver's license. Right. Cool. What are you gonna do with it?
Mark Masterton (45:41)
Eight. Yeah,
that's a great analogy. Where are you going to let it take you? Yeah. It's a very nice way to finish, I think. If you're out there and you have a passion for something, let's see how drones can help. Let's see what flies ahead in the next episode of Drone is the Future. Thanks for coming on, Eric.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (45:49)
Yeah.
My pleasure, thank you for having me.
Mark Masterton (46:08)
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.com
Dr. Eric Saczuk (46:33)
Hey drone, as the future. Long time listener. First time calling in to the Time Portal. Big Mark Stan myself. Curious to know what you think might be the most exciting piece of drone technology that could be improved upon in your future. Catch you in the skies.
⁓ it's a good voice. Do I still hold this up?
Well, there's, I've already just, I think I've mentioned them a little bit here. It's, it's about energy density, right? I was going to say batteries, but let's, let's say, you know, how do we keep these aircraft flying a lot longer than they can today? What, what it's going to unlock that. ⁓ And the other one is how do we really safely integrate ⁓ our pass into
How do we sort that mix out in a safe way so that we can reliably have these kinds of missions that we're talking about and ⁓ be confident that we're not going to get in a way of crude aviation and that we can still get our thing done? That's what I would say.
Mark Masterton (47:55)
You have any questions for him while you're online?
Dr. Eric Saczuk (47:59)
Yeah, so I think what I would ask you is where do you see the whole concept of ⁓ urban air mobility going? Are we going to be able to get into a flying Uber and take it to the airport in a couple of years? What do think?
Mark Masterton (48:04)
is.
When he gets back to you, it'll probably be voicemail and I'll send it on.
Dr. Eric Saczuk (48:25)
All right, sounds good. Cool phone.
Mark Masterton (48:27)
Yeah
Yeah. Thank you.
This has been the Drone as the Future podcast. Today's episode has been produced by Ryan Whitten, coordinated by Samantha Hollomay, 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.