MV Technology Showcase 2024 - Unmanned Airspace Panel

[Music] well it's quiet so I guess I better take advantage of that welcome everyone we're here to kick off the Ninth Annual technology showcase this is one of my personal favorite events that we put on um it's presented by the city of Mountain View together with the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce and I'm I'm the mayor my name is Pat shalter and what makes this evening so unique is exactly what makes Mountain View so unique we are the center of innovation for Silicon Valley and that really makes us have a very special place on the world stage very small stage tonight right but still World State and um we are one of the world's leading Tech hubs and we have a long history of world-renowned Corporations Innovation Pioneers startups tons of folks who love technology like me all engaging side by side Mountain View is the innovation of uh epicenter and it's amazing to discover the emerging technologies that are going on right underneath our noses is I hope you enjoy tonight's panel and please come back tomorrow to see some of the exhibits and talk more uh closely to the uh the scientists and now I'm going to hand this over to my friend and colleague um the chamber president and CEO Peter [Applause] Katz thank you Pat uh welcome everyone and um I would be remiss if I didn't ask for the next slide to be displayed because the Showcase would not be possible without the support of our sponsors so please join me in thanking our co-host the city of Mountain View our signature sponsor Google our partner sponsors Aurora gatic LinkedIn whmo the Mountain View voice and kmvt in the back there doing all the filming um this is being being streamed this is I mean sorry being recorded So that others will be able to watch it later and our supporting sponsors Archer Aviation Intuit Lockheed Martin space neuro and reliable robotics can I have a round of applause for our sponsors thank you as Pat said uh we encourage you to check out many of our sponsors displays as well as many others uh tomorrow right outside in in the plaza um really exciting things that are going to be shown if I could have the next slide please so to kick off tonight's event we're thrilled to dive into an area of Technology that's been going strong here for some time but many people are less familiar with unman airspace there are several businesses here who've been operating for decades and people will say wait a minute they're in Mountain View and then there's other technology that goes on people wait that's happening in Mountain View yes it is and so I really can't wait to hear what our what our panelists have to say about this our moderator tonight is Brian kazinski many of you may know him as the Director of leadership Mountain View where he led uh the program for three amazing years and Shameless plug we are still taking applicants for the upcoming class that's what the URL code is or the excuse me the QR code is up there in the corner so for those of you who've never been through leadership Mountain View it's the most incredible way to get to know what makes this city tick and to build the best connections possible we've had City Council Members we've had CEOs we've had storefronts all these people come to to lmv we invite you to as well Brian did not um I'd like to think that Brian's life started uh at lmv but it actually uh was many many decades before that he was an aerospace veteran with over 32 years of government and Commercial satellite experience including working on a National Asset spacecraft program while in the US Navy and serving as vice president of mission Assurance at Space Systems lural in Palo Alto did you know they were in Palo Alto okay Brian remains a consultant for the Aerospace industry so we should be in for a fabulous flight tonight and without further Ado let me welcome your pilot for the evening Brian [Applause] kazinski thank you Peter and welcome everybody uh might be a little bit formal for me wearing a tie tonight for a relaxed place like this but my wife bought me this Aerospace tie at the NASA uh Space Center and every time I get an opportunity to wear it like this gosh darn it I'm going to wear it with pride so Pat mentioned that right under our noses amazing things are happening in Mountain View tonight we're going to talk about amazing things happening above our noses in the sky so so let me start without further Ado I just want to introduce the four speakers and then give you a lay of land for the next hour and a half so Alex Norman is from matternet which does autonomous OnDemand package delivery Alex yay uh thank you pleasure to be here Jim Tai from whisk is the chief technology officer at uh at whisk which does autonomous electrical air taxis going to be an amazing presentation and I have to say right off the bat you win the W for the best company name because when I watched your video and I talk about whisk it was like yeah that that really makes sense our marketing people be please uh Robert Rose from reliable robotics which is automating all aircraft Control Systems so thank you very much Robert for joining us good to be here thank you and Dr Joey Rios from NASA uh is working on the air traffic control system of the future because right now we have controllers that control airplanes and what you're going to learn tonight there's going to be things flying at different levels they need to talk to each other and it was amazing for me to learn that NASA has been working on for a long time and putting some thought into this so that it will all operate safely so thank you all thanks for having me okay so each presenter is going to come to the podium and have 10 minutes to show some slides and I believe each one has a video to show some of their operations as well um after that I will get the creative juices going by asking some questions for the panel members probably about 20 minutes and then we'll open it up to everybody for about 30 minutes of uh Q&A from the audience after that they'll be networking uh in the lobby so with that uh I would like to bring Alex up and I'll just tell you a little bit about Alex's background uh Alex um actually brought to commercial Market the first drone autonomous package delivery to Switzerland in 2017 so I feel comfortable somebody doing something here that has already been done and proven out uh Alex has a master's degree in aerospace engineering and is at a Le an honored lecture at French n since I can't speak French I will not try to pronounce the the real name so Alex if you would come up we'll Advance the slides thank [Applause] you thank you very much um Brian and thank you uh everyone for the opportunity here to to speak and it's a great pleasure for me to be here and especially um to this audience because typically we're talking to uh you know people of the technical industry and and it's especially U and a special honor for me today to speak uh just for explaining what we're doing at matternet and and bringing it closer um to the community and and also giving you a little insight into what we're doing here maybe you know as Brian said also uh right under your noses in some some way so um uh next slide please [Music] so what you saw there is what we are developing which is a fully autonomous Transportation Network something um that you can rely on to send things back and forth both directions uh to and from these stations that you saw there but we really started a long time ago namely you know around 10 years ago um with a a problem that we uh discovered mainly in the global South so basically as you can imagine in the global South uh where infrastructure is not as built out as as here um we were looking for Solutions how to overcome you know the absence of roads and basically bring urgent especially medical Goods um to to communities out in places where they don't have access to to allseason roads especially and uh and with that essentially we we conducted several um tests and proof of Concepts in the different regions including Bhutan Malawi and papa guini um back in 2016 this image here was taken in malavi 2016 um and and from that place we basically um moved on and understood essentially we need to we need to develop our system to a point where we can go back to these places and provide a fully autonomous transportation system that is uh affordable and and can work um to essentially bring all these necessary Goods to people um next slide please so we we came back and realized basically that we have you know due to completely different reasons obviously but we have uh similar problems in terms of getting things moved back and forth in in and around our cities and um we we have seen that especially you know there's um studies around the fact that if we continue to you know um order more stuff on Amazon and uh you know get more stuff delivered we have to come up with smarter ways to move around our cities and uh the 2D space essentially is not U sufficient anymore and uh especially if you think about small packages um all of you I'm sure know when you order food for example and small items uh you basically you're moving a two ton uh vehicle through the streets um just to deliver a small package essentially so we think um that there is opportunity for us to make this um more efficient and also better for our planet ultimately next slide please um so we started in uh in 2017 to deploy this technology over cities in Switzerland we worked very closely there with the federal office for civil aviation in Switzerland um to get that technology out uh and we serve hospitals we transfer uh blood samples from uh emergency um rooms to the labs and like this enable a much faster turnaround and give doctors the opportunity to diagnose much more quickly uh than before and and are able to to ultimately improve p patient care in uh in cities and we have done this U what you know in the industry is called Beyond visal line of sight so that means there was no one involved that was looking at the airspace or looking at the aircraft um this was fully automated and the aircraft flew between those locations uh fully automatically next slide please um at matternet we don't just develop the aircraft itself we develop everything um that's needed around it so you saw the video the station um but then also um we developed a cloud platform that is enabling all of that and and kind of orchestrating that system to work um together seamlessly and we are also developing different methods to deliver um the package or the payload so you see here the Teta drop it's an ability for the aircraft to essentially hover at a certain altitude and then lower a package to any uh point in uh or any any place where you need a delivery um so with that Suite essentially we're able to to transport things and create this network of matter so really a transportation Network for goods next slide please um as in order to do this and in order to fly over cities and to fly in densely populated environments and also dense airspaces we need to ensure that it's safe and um here we work very closely with the FAA the Federal Aviation authority to um to really prove out the safety of our systems and we have uh now become the only company that has a delivery drone that is certified by the FAA as a type- certified aircraft um and that means essentially that it has uh gone through all that rigorous testing everything from like what you see here in the background the Rin testing to um vibration testing to endurance testing like there's a lot of testing that goes into proving out to um to the authorities that this aircraft is safe and it's safe to fly over over cities and and people and also in an airspace that is used um we are able to integrate U the air aircraft safely into the airspace and our colleagues here will I'm sure will talk more about that as well um next side please here you see as an example in the background an image um of an air uh in Zurich that is um taking off from a hospital there connecting it to another hospital and transporting uh urgent Goods especially uh blood samples um the way that we integrate uh aircraft into an already used airspace is also um by use of very strict procedures so it's not just the aircraft itself um that is certified but it's also the the way that we do things that is certified so the operation itself gets uh certified ultimately and um in Switzerland um and in Europe there's certain rules for that and also here in the US um there's very specific rules um that you might be hearing more about which is called part 107 and part 135 um rules that dictate how you can operate these type of devices so it's it's really more you can think of it more like an airline that's operating these devices rather than uh someone um that flying a a small drone from the backyard uh next slide please um you can imagine really uh that these for example stations may be deployed at different locations in the city or in front of restaurants um so people can access um or even send um goods and receive Goods uh next slide please or at a house um where you can um receive something uh let's say uh food items or urgent Goods that you need um for maybe something that you forgot and you need for your kids um so we can deliver basically safely to your home uh in a matter of minutes essentially next slide please um so all in all we we really striving to create this network that we can basically create a new layer of infrastructure in cities and communities that can rely on uh on basically this new fast way to deliver things both for healthcare that's where we come from where we really uh have gotten a lot of our experience in and also for other items imagine you need uh urgent prescription or something um or you know uh you go to a hospital and they need to analyze your blood um getting that analyzed very quickly um so all these different use cases to really um essentially raise up in a new layer of infrastructure next slide please and that's what we call the matternet it's the new layer of infrastructure as you might know the internet the network of information we believe that the matet will be the new network of matter to really connect people and deliver things back and forth thank you so our next speaker is uh Jim Tai from whisk and uh Jim is the only person that I've ever heard of that is a winner of both the colier trophy which is the US National Aeronautics Association award for the greatest achievement in Aeronautics and also an X Prize winner um so pretty impressive he has uh CTO experience at Kittyhawk he worked for scaled electronics and was involved in both spaceship 1 and spaceship 2 project which is uh flying an aircraft drop from an aircraft into space and back so pretty impressive stuff and now he is the chief technology officer at whisk uh while at scale uh composits Jim received a design news engineer award and is an alumni from the University of Colorado so welcome Jim thank [Music] [Applause] you I'll do my best see let me see if I can adjust this just a little bit okay so everybody hear me okay awesome thank you so much um let me actually there we go still good okay uh thank you Peter uh thank you Brian thank you city of Mountain View uh thank you Alex that was amazing uh it's great to learn a little bit more about matet and the awesome things that they're doing and thank everybody here for coming out to to learn a little bit more about what we're doing hopefully it'll be a lot of fun um so I'm here to talk a little bit about whisk so at whisk we're really about uh providing a transportation system people so in the same way Alex is trying to move um uh things around an urban area we're trying to give uh our customers a service where they can get to from where they are to where they want to go perhaps a little bit easier and a little faster um so if you can go to the next slide or play this video so the aircraft behind me um we call Core it's our fifth generation aircraft we've been playing for some time and it's uh it's pretty fun for me because it's uh it's interesting to watch an airplane fly backwards and fly sideways and stop in the middle of the air and stop and turn around and it's it's it's not what you would expect um and it's it but on the other hand one of the greatest things about it is after you're watching it for a while it becomes normal almost not for me but maybe boring and that's that success right if you can picture something that can be you can Envision being part of your normal lives a way where you can get to where you are to wherever you want to be I think we're doing a great job uh so this airplane and airplanes like it have uh flown um mostly most of our flights have been in hster which is about an hour south of here we've also flown in New Zealand um and done about 1,700 flights and now we're working on our sixth generation airplane some of the flights we've done recently have included a flight demonstration at Oshkosh which is actually the world's biggest air show in Wisconsin it's going on right now uh if you ever get a chance to go I'd recommend it it's pretty awesome it's a lot of fun for airplane nerds like me um and uh you know it's you know the this well I'll talk a little bit about it soon um next slide please um so we really want to be the future of Mobility um so uh just as you know today you can take an Uber or a lift to the airport wouldn't it be great to be able to take an air taxi to the airport and instead of uh being stuck in traffic for an hour uh fly a 15-minute flight and go to the secure side of the terminal perhaps and walk right onto the jetway and get on your airplane how cool yeah I think that's kind of sells itself I hope or you know like you know my wife and I we live in San Jose and can you imagine being able to go up to San Francisco right and see a concert or a show and come back that night and save a little bit of money on the babysitter which probably might pay for the flight um uh next slide please so a little bit about us uh the company was founded back in 2010 uh by Larry paage she found it was one of the co-founders of Google of course and along Crow and you know they recognized uh way back you know 14 years ago um that the cell technology computer technology a Dynamics technology propulsion technology have all reached a point where air taxis are actually possible um and that great Insight really led to the foundation of the company you know since then uh We've grown so the company is about 800 people right now uh We've also now are a Boeing back company which is pretty exciting to be part of the Boeing family know has been around for over a 100 years and flies millions of people every day on the aircraft and has 10,000 aircraft and active service um you know they're really a natural partner to make this thing a reality uh because what we're trying to do is hard and really requires dedicated persistent effort to to make realize so that's that's that's great uh we're here in the Mountain View area so our headquarters are very close to here by Shoreline Park which is just an absolutely beautiful place to be and and uh we've been fortunate to be part of this sort of barrier Community but we're also a global company so we have offices in New Zealand Montreal and Atlanta um and other folks throughout the boing organization who are really supporting our efforts and trying to make them real um yeah so we have a a couple of patents and you know we've been lucky enough to do uh many flights over the year so you know the flight count right now is a little bit over 1,700 flights and and and growing a full size um aircraft of course we do many more flights with subscale aircraft and simulation uh next slide please so a little bit about our airplane family um so the air the company's kept a low profile so I joined the the company um back in 2014 and when I went to my interview I wasn't sure I was at the right place because there wasn't a sign out front um uh but since then um you know it's great to be able to share a little bit about what we've done over the past 14 years you know in you know way back um in uh you know 2014 we were flying you know airplanes full sales airplanes both here and at 's Air Force Base and you know and since then uh We've flown piloted aircraft in autonomous aircraft so most of our aircraft flights to date have been without a crew on board or a pilot on board which is you know a really exciting opportunity because it enables us to to provide a service at scale uh that's not um limited by the availability of commercial transportation pilots and also ultimately will enable safety which I'll talk about a little bit later next slide please so I think it's important to talk about people you know so you know we have uh this is just a small fraction of the people working on these projects but I've been fortunate enough to work on some pretty exciting projects and and you know like the projects I did at scel and now the projects I'm doing at whisk and really the reason for the success of those projects is the Great team of folks that we have uh so to make these things happen you need to have a talented team of of technicians of Engineers of Fabricators with business people and everybody working together really makes this happen so I'm really proud of this team next slide so I'm also excited about the airplane um so right now we're working on a uh Gen 6 airplane so it's a bit bigger has a bit more payload cap capacity where people can fly in it as supposed to the other one was just a che Place uh it also has you know creature Comforts like air conditioning a place to put your bags and uh Automotive like interior so uh if you're if you like your Tesla or your modern car you think You' be very comfortable in our aircraft uh next uh so the key thing that you won't find in our aircraft is pilot controls um so I've given many presentations and tours of our facilities to various uh folks and at the end of it they always ask so where's the pilot going to sit well so the one of the key takeaways today is there is no pilot it's an autonomous aircraft so there's no pilot controls so every seat is a passenger seat so you can sit in the left seat um and uh and be very comfortable the way I like to explain the surfice we're trying to operate is it's like a gondola so a picture going to a ski Resort or a place where there's like an urban Gondola like in Portland and you get in the gondola and the gondola takes off and takes you where you want to go we're doing the same thing it's just with an airplane so it's uh it's exciting um next so a little bit about what we're doing today so right now we're in the middle of building our sixth generation aircraft and so there's it's actually a really rewarding time for me as an engineer because you get to see all these pieces that have been on a piece on a computer screen like come to reality which is super cool uh so this picture is actually taken in Philadelphia at a Boeing facility that's the Boeing uh vertical wind tunnel facility that's one of our propellers that's uh undergoing testing right now so uh part of making a safe vehicle is doing lots and lots and lots and lots of test you test at the component level like a propeller blade as an example you test at the assembly level like a a full rotor you test at a motor level which is the motor plus the rotor you test at the subassembly level so the rotor plus the boom and you test at the you know on and on and finally get to the wing test and and and that's how you're confident that it's going to work it comes down to a lot of hard work and a lot of testing and that's just a good example of it next slide so that's a picture of Daniel uh Daniel R uh with a he's he's a a great system Tess engineer and he's there with one of our booms so that's like what one of these you know flight structures look like so it comes together because a lot of tals people like Daniel think very hard about how what what the requirements are what the regulations are what the load cases are and build a structure and think about hard how to test it and make sure that it's it's successful and works every time um so just a cool piece of structure and you know if you keep an eye on our website west. Arrow you're going to see a lot of neat stuff in the next couple months uh next slide so um that's all I had today I know we'll talk a bit more in the panel about uh how autonomy works and how we're integrate into the Aerospace system but uh again really thankful that you guys are here and uh I I appreciate your attention so I'll turn it back to [Applause] Brian she's a little taller than I am sorry about that that's all right so it's rare in my experience to find an engineer with a sense of humor so I kind of chuckled when you said we have a few patents and it was 280 on the screen but maybe that wasn't a joke maybe it was just being humble I'm not sure which but uh thank you pretty pretty impressive stuff um next we have uh Robert Rose from reliable Robotics and Robert has a deep experience in a lot of Aerospace self-driving car and robotic spaces um so I have a question for the audience how many people have seen a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch where they not only launch but they Rel land the first stage pretty cool stuff so um Robert was in charge of the first 10 Falcon 9 rocket launchers um just amazing stuff another show of hands from the audience how many know that when we retired the space shuttle we were dependent on the Russians to Launch people and supplies to the space station right pretty embarrassing right well we were dependent on a commercial industry to solve that problem and Robert was in charge of the first five Dragon spacecraft that went to uh the space station so amazing stuff uh Robert is also a a fellow of the Royal Academy of Royal aeronautical Society he has multiple p he has a BS in computer science a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in electrical and computer engineering from Oregon State so please welcome Robert from reliable well thank you for the introduction I I had a small role in Falcon 9 and dragon uh just a little bit of the software uh but I appreciate it thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you for all everyone for coming out and I'm glad to hear from other colleagues local to Mountain VI and want to see what you guys are doing um so yeah my name is Robert Rose uh background in software engineering and safety critical systems development now for most of my career started this company uh here in Mountain View uh seven years ago this week uh it's our anniversary oh thank you yeah startup we we made it seven years hopefully we'll go another seven we started the company in my garage which is overrated don't do it um I thought it was going to make for a great story but um it's really working in a garage it's kind of like camping um we didn't have air conditioning um so when it's hot outside it's even hotter in the garage when it's cold outside it's even colder in the garage your kids are running in and out the dogs barking I mean it's nice that you're kind of working from home um but then all of your co-workers come to work from home with you so it was it was a good day when we found this spot in um in Mountain View off of ring storf um we're not quite by the shoreline not as glamorous but we we are closer to Costco uh which which has its pluses um can we run the video next here we go okay so we're about autonomous Aviation we're about retrofitting or excuse me upgrading existing aircraft with automation capabilities uh this video is from a flight test that we performed late last year with a uh in a caravan this is a aircraft that's capable of carrying about 12 people in the passenger configuration carries about 3,000 lb in a cargo configuration um after many many years of flight testing and development and uh getting approvals from the FAA we reached a point where we were comfortable taking the pilot out of the cockpit and then operating this aircraft remotely so this entire operation actually was flown from Mountain View even though the aircraft was down in Hollister uh we have a control center here right off a ring storf uh where the remote pilot was managing the operation they don't have a joystick there's there's no remote controlling I kind of I I react to calling it TAA operation it's really more like Remote programming of the aircraft um you're providing a flight plan and then uploading it to the aircraft over a satellite Communications link um Aviation today is also largely driven through radio commun Communications and Pilots talking to other pilots and Pilots talking to air traffic control and we have the ability through the satellite Communications link for the remote pilot to hear all of the same things and they can push a button and record a message that's then streamed out to the aircraft so really surrounding aircraft have no idea that they're um talking to somebody that's um in a control station many many miles away you guys also operate out a Hollister too and it's fun when people get on the radio and they go hey am I talking to a real person are you robot no no it's a real person um this is not an AI voice I'm I'm a human being I'm just not in the plane um and I think this speaks a lot to our vision for how to integrate aircraft uh we started the company because we saw an opportunity as as an incremental step to bring the world closer to autonomy by um adding automation technology into the aircraft but still keeping a human being involved um they're very much a pilot they're certificated with all of the same approvals that are required to be a pilot in the aircraft you're just not in the aircraft a little bit of company history I mentioned we started in 2017 that actually was not our first um uh remotely piloted operation we we started out on a Cessna 172 which is a four passenger aircraft we flew that with nobody on board back in 2019 again that was under FAA approval um what else to mention um we're now working on certifying this technology well we've been working on certifying this technology for seven years um most significantly earlier this year uh we got the FAA to approve to all of the low-level certification plans involved with uh the first stage of our program and this technology will enable um an aircraft operate without a pilot ever touching the controls um key components of this there's a there's a navigation system that we've developed that's very new uh that's higher Precision higher Integrity than what goes into aircraft today so for for an example um you all have a GPS localization system inside your phone um I wouldn't trust my life to your phone uh but if you take many different phones as well as other sensors and you fuse them together then you can start to build a system that you can trust to localize your position and we've got algorithms that we've developed and uh have identified with the fa a path to get this technology certified um we've also worked with the FAA on how to automatically land aircraft at airports that do not have instrument land Landing system so if you're a pilot you may have heard of ILS we can land without ILS it's pretty cool um we can also do automated takeoff which is something that hasn't been certified before and we can also do automated taxiing which has not been certified before I why don't we go to the next slide uh this is more company history we can keep going next slide um so how how does a technology work there there's really three main components to this um like to joke that to have an autonomous to fly an auton aircraft the first thing you need is an autonomous aircraft uh and so for that you need all of the technologies that I mentioned previously and that's a key part of our certification activity with the fa right now the second thing you need is you need to integrate this aircraft into the airspace um you're going to talk about the future of the airspace but the reality of today is it's people talking to people and so you need the communication system you also need a detect and a void system which is the industry jargon for basically uh replacing human eyes is looking out the windows and not hitting anything uh we developed an in-house radar system I'm actually really excited to show this to you um yeah uh it's pretty cool uh that looks out and scans uh around across the Horizon um can detect other aircraft Intruders and then um come up with a collision resolution um path for the aircraft um and then the third thing that you need is you need operational approval so you know if you're a private Pilot Flying for yourself and you're not getting paid it's relatively relatively straightforward to get in a plane and go fly but once you're flying for Revenue the fa takes a completely different view on regulations as you know you mentioned part 135 the technical term for the uh federal regulations that control how um Revenue operations are operated operations are operated something like that so we we have an airline that uh is running out of albu tur New Mexico today it's actually running routes on a regular basis for FedEx and the third part of this third leg of this stool if you will is um getting the operational approval which includes all of the maintenance procedures and inspection plans so that we can operate the equipment at scale okay next slide um I think I already talked through this so we can go to the next slide I want to talk to briefly about the future of Aviation although we have this uh incremental path we do see a path to get eventually to a place where you don't need a human involved and I want to be clear that I think this is far out in the future but it will happen eventually and we should be planning for it and I'm really excited by the work that NASA and others are uh contributing to this effort you know our first step is to still have a pilot but to have the pilot in a control center The Next Step would be to have a pilot managing multiple aircraft simultaneously much like air traffic control does today and it's actually not one person managing multiple aircraft it's really it's a team of people managing a larger collection of aircraft and to do that we need to redesign the airspace and so that's my my setup for you uh for your talk um and then eventually once we have large sections of the airspace um operating under these new rules then I think we can start to expand that and then finally enforce it through regulation and congressional action uh to say that if you want to operate an aircraft in the skies of the United States you have to be using uh these new digital communication systems and only when that occurs will we have truly fully fully fully legit autonomous aircraft operating um but I think it is a really exciting future it's going to happen uh and if you if you write your Congressman or woman uh Anna isue well who's whoever's going to be the new one um let them know that they should be allocating funding towards this activity because I think it's important the United States lead in this effort okay thank you very much for the opportunity I look forward to the Q&A thank you very much fascinating stuff uh congratulations for Having the courage to offer your garage to such great great work our next speaker is uh Dr Joey Rios uh Dr Rios is the chief technology officer or chief technologist for the aviation system division at Nasa ases there's some really really cool stuff going on at NASA ases uh we we just have so many gems in Mountain View and NASA as is certainly one of them so I appreciate you coming today um Dr Rose has uh been working on the um uas traffic management system which is I think I could say the um control of the future for for what you've been seeing in the last three presentations um he led a team that won the software the Year award for NASA for this work and NASA is a really really big place so to win the software of the Year award is I imagine a pretty big deal so if those of you in the audience that say I'd like to be a panel member next year um you need if you haven't won an award already you have to go out and win an award because seems like everybody here has won a couple Awards so um uh Joey has a PHD in computer engineering from Santa Cruz and undergraduate degrees uh in computer science from uh state so welcome and thank you very much for [Applause] coming all right well hello everybody uh thanks for having me uh really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the things we're doing at Nasa and I really appreciate uh you putting me last um because we got to see different operators different vehicles and all of their thoughts about how they're going to be using the airspace now and in the near future and in the far future so I'm going to talk a little bit about what we're doing to try and enable that we had kind of a saying that was uh coined by by one of our key researchers at Nasa PK um and he said that we want to make sure that the airspace is ready when the vehicles already so you see these folks building these these amazing machines um they have very specific use cases very specific things they want to do to impact Our Lives um we don't want to have them get all the way down the line and then not being able to access the airspace and effectively and perform those use cases so what we're really trying to do is make sure that we're ready for that and it's been hinted at a couple times but if you think about how air traffic works today which a lot of us do up there we spend all day thinking about that you don't you don't have to but uh thinking about how we control traffic today it is you know folks you you see them in the movies right sitting at a a a control station they got their little screen in front of them they're seeing the things move they're talking to Pilots via voice letting them know where to go and how to separate um if you think about the scale that whis wants to do you think about the automation that reliable robotics wants to have you think about the different operating procedures for a small uas at low altitude that um matet is talking about that Paradigm doesn't work we can't hire that many more controllers to watch every little drone in the sky right everyone realizes there's a scaling problem in terms of air traffic control so as these vehicles and these operations move towards more highly automated systems the air traffic control systems needs to move towards more highly High automation um one of the things things that people wonder about is you know why is NASA doing this right what is it when I tell people I work for NASA you know usually the first question oh cool you build Rockets right you get a build a cool Rover on Mars it's like no no we we you know that that a in the middle of NASA there is for Aeronautics right we focus on Aeronautics and then the next question was oh cool you're building like cool Jets like neat engines well no it's it's more like managing the traffic and at that point that's when they usually walk away disappointed but uh it's important work right because again we want to enable this this kind of stuff um I am not going to focus so much on the air taxis and the uh uh the the the operations that reliable a Robotics are targeting right now um I'm going to focus on the small uas and enabling those operations and the reason being um they're happening at scale sooner and the way in which we manage the traffic trff for these small little drones that are going to deliver packages they're going to help uh perform Public Safety operations the way we manage them and recognize how they access the airspace is going to lay the groundwork for how we automate the airspace for the larger aircraft so we really want to solve that problem as best we can doesn't mean we're not working on all those problems it just means that I'm going to talk right now about how we're doing it for small uas when I say us it's a drone um a UA U um so with that I have a little video that was put together just a minute and a half to kind of give an idea so can we just roll that video and then I'll I'll talk again after that [Music] [Music] all right pretty good stuff um so see we're very focused on on those issues in order to open up the skies like we're talking about there and something I didn't mention is that we don't do this in a vacuum we actively collaborate with industry and the FAA and uh local municipalities and and everyone that may be having a stake in what we're doing um so we we have agreements and Partnerships with with lots of folks like the ones you see up here uh on the panel with us we work on things like you know specific technology for the vehicles or we work on things like airspace access or uh concept of operations or flight testing collaboratively with other partners we try and enable and and facilitate that again to move the ball forward is really what we're doing this is actually my last slide um it is a recent image from the past month and I'd like to take a minute and and kind of have you look at it and see what you notice right and I'll point out a few things that I think are are cool and how it uh provides a good picture for us to talk to so first of all let's see how many drones do we see we got two of them right um they're actually not that far apart so you'll see one in the foreground on the pad getting ready to take off that's owned by Mana uh Mna they're actually an Irish company that's beginning operations in the US they have tens of thousands of deliveries to homes in Dublin Ireland right so they're actively this is technology they've proved elsewhere and the dream of a lot of these companies is to unlock the operations on the US right they they see this as the the cash cow right there's a lot of places to deliver a lot of use cases um a lot of people ready to benefit from uh what they want to offer now the other drone if you didn't notice it is in the back uh up in the sky okay and it's it's heading in for a landing this one's getting ready to take off that one's Landing they're from two separate companies they're about 30 ft or 30 yards apart let's say the most 20 yards um that one back there is from wing wing is uh one of those spin-offs from uh Google Google's parent parent they have the same company parent company as Google from alphabet right so Wing lives underneath them um and Wing is doing deliveries for example for Walmart right now they're doing a lot of that in Texas currently as well as other locations this photo is taken in Texas there's a lot of operators converging right now in that Dallas area to prove out these Concepts and actually they don't like us to say that they're not proving out the concepts they're doing an operational evaluation of things we've tested over the past decade um and like we mentioned before you can't manage these one by one right and and how do you have multiple operators wanting to fly this close to each other and drop packages to neighbors right simultaneously and while they're doing that what happens if and when a police department has an operation they want to perform in that same neighborhood uh right now there would be probably a lot of phone calls right like hey you know I'm going to fly over here are you flying over there be aware I'm going to do this that's not scalable and they all recognize that so what they do and what you don't see in this picture is how they're doing that coordination it's a digital system in the back end um so this operator Mano they will share their intent they're going to share what they're going to do in the airspace with that vehicle and that digital exchange of information again it's not people calling each other it's not voices over the radio these are digital pieces of information sent over the Internet to the other company Wing which would receive that intent from mana and know what mana's going to be doing these automated systems can then say hey it looks like at least at a strategic level we know where we're each going to be we're going to keep apart from each other that's a good layer of safety for us so this is being proved out in Dallas um currently with uh four five six seven companies depending on how fast they mature um but these are real operations real deliveries to backyards right now um and you saw Alex talking about matter earlier um it's it's it's something that uh a lot of folks are working towards and they need to unlock the airspace owner to do it and and NASA we're trying to facilitate that uh one thing I want to emphasize again something else you don't see here is the work we're doing to engage Public Safety operators um they're the most active users of the airspace right now that we're we're pointing at right these are actually the new entrance in that airspace whereas police departments have been using that airspace for a long time right they'll send up a drone to OverWatch a fire or to help support folks in a search and rescue um they'll be using the airspace quite a bit so making sure they're integrated their use cases are part of this how do they exchange data can they participate these are all important questions that we're helping trying to facilitate with us the FAA industry all at the table um so again I pointed out that this is laying the groundwork for how we access the airspace in the future uh you saw Robert's kind of timeline for you know we don't need to change the airspace yet yet yet but at this point you know if we want to get to the scale we want the airspace needs to change and that's going to be through services that are not human-based right it's going to be through uh procedures that are automated uh data exchanges that are automated and we're laying that groundwork here with the small uas these small drones right now and I think that's the big message be looking forward to some questions and conversation but uh appreciate the opportunity to to talk about this thank you very much okay so I would like to start with a couple of questions and then we'll turn it over to the audience for harder questions perhaps I don't know um so some of your companies are have been started in Mountain View some have their headquarters in Mountain View some are global companies but I'd like um anybody who wants to to volunteer why Mountain View uh what is it about Mountain View that has you sitting here and being invited to do this talk any popcorn method want to go first well I can jump in um this was definitely a question for where to start this company when we got together uh my co-founder jur was based in LA and decided to move up here to do it here um I think there's very few places in the world where you have aerospace engineering talent to to have a company like ours um most of them are in California to be honest uh you've got a big concentration in Los Angeles San Diego and here um I think many people underestimate the the power of the Bay Area for Aerospace and Aeronautics engineering um a lot of it actually began Around the World War II area here um and when I say I mean not just like Computer Engineering and computer science and mechanical and Aeros structures but also um the the technical knowhow and the technician base to be able to build these types of compon ab important uh requires an attention to detail that you don't find really in that many places in the world um but we were also a little biased by the weather um I like trees and uh it rains up here if you've been to La it doesn't rain in La it's a little weird um and I like that it it rains here but not too much awesome thank you anybody else want to tle them yeah that that with the weather is kind of a two-edged sword because first time we had a drone in Switzerland we had to learn that uh the weather isn't so good everywhere in the world yeah and then I think it's it's really like what's what's very interesting about this type of Aerospace now like the the age we're coming into is is really this intersection of of you know Computer Engineering and and software uh and and the really old school Hardware side of things a little bit and and I think you know this place here the heart of silic Valley really that Mountain View is is um is a great place for this type of talent like really mixing these two I've been reminded by the experts in the control room that everybody could speak into their mic that would be helpful um anybody else want to tackle that one or should I move to the next question good okay the next one is um and I I'd actually like all four of you to answer this particular question some of them we don't need all four but this one is I would like to know although Joey I'm not sure on your side but the question is what kinds of jobs will your technology introduce into Mountain View a lot of people get scared that when you automate an aircraft then you know you're putting a pilot out of a job but what they don't understand probably is that that's creating other jobs so um not only the the technicians and the software and that kind of the stuff but what is the spectrum of jobs that open up because of the ground breaking technology ology that you're working on yeah um well so I mean you know the the beauty of this is really that it's not just developing the systems and maintaining the systems um but also operating them and like really bringing them out in the field is like a whole end to endend um and it opens up all sorts of um of places for talent really um and if we talk about specifically you know automating Transportation it's not so much um you know taking away jobs it's more like making people more effective in what uh what you can do like now one person can deliver so much more in uh in a given time period so essentially if you have if you equip one person with a drone uh they now can you know deliver so many more blood samples than they used to be able to stuck in on the 101 trying to get from um you know one lab to back to the back to the hospital so it's really just changing everything and giving us um better um ultimately you know better outcome for for people better outcome for patient care and and ultimately um you know just changing the whole um job situation yeah I guess I I mean there are a couple different levels on the the job side I mean pragmatically in the near term um I think collectively we we all uh need need a lot of different skill sets so um we have a lot of software Engineers who develop the autonomy systems and the flight control systems and the motor control systems um and the ground support systems uh we have a lot of uh Engineers electrical engineers uh mechanical engineers Structural Engineers aerodynamicists controls Engineers systems Engineers um that are all required to design develop test and and prove that the systems meet the challenging requirements and our safety requirements to to show that the vehicle meets its performance and safety goals and the system meets his performance and safety goals on top of that of course we have a a great business team uh some great interns um and uh and and really um you know we're ultimately running a business and so we have to be able to communicate our ideas to the public and our customers and our supporters and make make sure that we're doing doing the right things and and if you look a little bit further down the line I think we're a lot like um you know the industry that Alex and Robert are are are creating and that really um not focus on displacing existing jobs but creating a new Transportation Paradigm which will actually create more jobs um so even though we don't have crew on board the aircraft we do very much like uh the operations at reliable robotics have a ground support team that are monitoring multiple aircraft we have a a manance team has to ensure the the aircraft are in airworthy shape and so it's a it's I think an exciting opportunity in that there's lots of careers and and it's an exciting industry and and hopefully you'll find our products around the world what they said I actually I you hit on all my talking points I I really don't know what I would add thanks thanks Jim um now we in addition to all of the uh technician and engineering jobs that we're adding here uh to Mountain View and the the local area um when the product goes into service um you know it's going to fly itself but the operations are not going to run themselves and it's going to require a lot of people to um maintain them aircraft need to be regularly inspected and maintained um the operations as I mentioned you know there's there's still a human being involved and this needs to be a highly trained certificated person uh and that's that's going to be a non-trivial amount of of employment to be able to run all of these systems thank you add something from a different angle I guess right being a government agency see it's not like we're expanding business per se um but I can't talk about the changing Workforce needs that we've had because of this kind of research uh you know we've always had a lot of great Aero Engineers great physicists a lot of folks helping us do the aeronautical work um but we have seen a need for onboarding more civil servant software Engineers civil servant computer Engineers more than we've had in the past because of this move towards automation uh a service-based system um so that that's just one change we've kind of recog recognized in the past decade that you know we've had a need to to catch up and how valuable it is for NASA to have a presence in Silicon Valley for the same reasons that they're talking about this is where the companies are this is where the Innovation is and the fact that we have a presence here we we've been here a very very long time just down the road um but uh just just keeping up with those changes is important awesome thank you all um next question and um just again popcorn method if somebody wants to tackle this one uh what are your biggest challenges and when I say that you know we can so easily focus on the technology because you're talking about some really cool but but technology that is um growing in Leaps and Bounds of complexity of what we've dealt with in the past perhaps but are your Tech are your T are your challenges really technical maybe they are but maybe they're more of the regulatory challenges or maybe they're Staffing because you know finding the right types of people to do this type of work so just wondering what your challenges are and and how you overcome them and the reason I asked that is coming from the spacecraft world you know we focused on the technology but you got to be thinking ahead of what the challenges are to prevent problems from happening and bringing you down to stop work yeah maybe I'll I'll start and um so what we're trying to do is is ambitious and hard so there are challenges everywhere um you know it's difficult to make uh an aircraft that can fly just on electricity I mean it's it's hard to make it light enough it's hard to make the batteries energy dense enough um and so there there are challenges in every field that we're trying to do but you know it it is doable um there are also challenges in the regulatory space and designing uh a vehicle that can meet regulatory requirements working with our partners at the fa and NASA to um help Define how you do this safely and reliably and and effectively and that's that that that is a big Challenge and I'm really so grateful to see people like Joey and to know that my colleagues um at reliable and matet are are really working the Aerospace integration issues so being able to operate these airplanes safely in today's airspace um is is a challenge but it's an exciting one I mean I I think if there weren't challenges um it wouldn't be as interesting of a job so I'm in many ways grateful for them um yeah similarly you know we're we're trying to automate existing aircraft and integrate them into the um into the air system that we have today um the military obviously has been flying autonomous aircraft for decades that we know of unclassified I think it probably goes back further um but we were trying to do this at scale in a civilian context where regular people can use autonomous aircraft and that means you need to operate within the rules-based system that the FAA and Congress and others have created um and so you know the biggest challenge for us has been since the beginning um mapping what we're doing into the existing regulatory framework so what does that mean Congress passes laws that creates the FAA and gives the FAA power to establish regulations which are kind of Quasi laws and then the fa publishes regulations and there's tens of thousands of pages of regulations that they'

2024-08-09 01:26

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