Episodes
DroneBase is one of the world's largest, professional drone service provider networks. Think of it as "Uber for drone pilots". If you need a drone operator to come accomplish a mission for you, chances are, you can get one through DroneBase. Dan Burton is CEO of DroneBase and has been leading the charge at the Southern California-based company since its inception.
Published 07/19/18
The drone industry report for Q2 2018, brought to you by Commercial Drones FM. Get briefed on the most important and newsworthy happenings from the previous quarter in the drone industry—all in less than 20-minutes.
Covered topics include drone hardware, drone software, regulations, drone delivery, funding, mergers and acquisitions, and more.
Published 07/06/18
Drone-based inspections are rocketing in popularity. Businesses are employing drones en masse. As onboard sensors and hardware improve, the software that facilitates many of the actual visual inspection activities continues to advance.
Ken Falk, CEO of Scopito, speaks with Ian on why drone inspection software is critical, advancements in A.I. for automatically detecting anomalies in images, and much more.
Published 06/21/18
Hear host Ian Smith answer questions about drones on a podcast instead of always being the one asking them. This week's episode of CDFM is a syndication of Udacity's, The Drawing Board podcast, titled, "All About Drones." Ian is joined by Adam Bry, CEO of Skydio where the two talk... all about drones.
Published 06/07/18
Why is Ford, a legacy automobile company, building drones? Adi Singh, Principal Scientist for UAV Systems at Ford's Silicon Valley office, explains all the ways that Ford is researching and planning on using drones in their global business. And it's not just flying cars.
Published 05/24/18
Nightingale Security is a robotic aerial security company - not a traditional drone company. But they do make robotic aerial security platforms (drones) and fleet management software that their clients deploy to help protect their assets and integrate with their existing security teams.
Jack Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Nightingale Security.
Published 05/10/18
Adam Bry is CEO and co-founder of Skydio. He graduated from MIT, was one of the early team members of Google X's delivery drone initiative, Project Wing, and then started Skydio.
I sat down with Adam to learn about what's possible right now with the powerful onboard processors and AI that guides Skydio drones, unscathed, through crowded, obstacle-laden environments. We discuss the design inspiration behind R1, a future Skydio platform and SDK, and how commercial drones will continue to evolve.
Published 04/26/18
The drone industry report for Q1 2018, brought to you by Commercial Drones FM. Get briefed on the most important and newsworthy happenings from the previous quarter in the drone industry—all in less than 20-minutes.
Published 04/12/18
On this exclusive interview, you’ll hear directly from DJI and two of their sensor partners, FLIR and SLANTRANGE, who both have adopted DJI’s new Payload SDK and integrated their products with it.
Published 03/28/18
Michael Cohen is CEO of Industrial Skyworks, a Toronto-based drone inspection software and services company.
Michael teaches Ian about the "just drone" problem, where if you provide industrial inspection services (or nearly any remote sensing services) with *just* a drone and don't pay attention to how to actually deliver, present, and derive value from the data, the entire mission and final deliverables can essentially be rendered useless to the customer.
Published 03/15/18
Percepto is an Israeli company who manufacture a full drone-in-a-box system. Dor Abuhasira is the CEO of Percepto, an Israeli company.
Dor joins Ian to discuss the technology behind automating these types of drones and what the future holds for drones in a box.
Published 03/01/18
Commercial Drones FM podcast brings you Dave Henderson, Director of Sales, Geospatial Solutions, for Topcon Positioning systems. This episode covers drone solution selling and an overview of Topcon's drone hardware and software products.
Published 02/15/18
Brian Wynne is President and CEO of AUVSI, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the unmanned systems and robotics industry through communication, education, and leadership.
Brian and Ian discuss a plethora of topics from drone data security, the dichotomy between commercial and military drones, how blockchain technology can be used to help with drone integration and safety, and what AUVSI's role is as we move towards the future of the commercial drone...
Published 02/01/18
The drone industry report for Q4 2017, brought to you by Commercial Drones FM. Get briefed on the most important and newsworthy happenings from the previous quarter in the drone industry. Covered topics include drone hardware, drone software, regulations, drone delivery, funding, & more.
Published 01/18/18
Major General Marke "Hoot" Gibson was Senior Advisor, UAS Integration at the FAA during a critical, two-year period of explosive growth for the drone industry.
Hoot and Ian discuss the FAA's recent LAANC program and how it positively affects not only commercial drone operators, but the way that the FAA fundamentally does business. The two additionally explore plenty of other initialisms; UTM, UASIPP, cUAS, Remote ID, and more.
Published 01/04/18
DJI is, by far, the world's largest drone company. Recently, there have been a slew of controversial reports and conversations about the Chinese drone giant in the media, across social channels, and in boardrooms. From allegedly sharing data from U.S.-based drones with the Chinese government, to potential legal action against a security researcher who was part of their bug bounty program.
Published 12/21/17
2017 was a banner year for the drone industry. While the drone market as a whole grew, plenty of assumptions were proven false. Colin Snow, The Drone Analyst, is CEO of Skylogic Research, who recently released an 88-page report titled, "2017 Drone Market Sector Report".
Published 12/07/17
Sky-Futures, founded in 2009, is one of the oldest drone service businesses that exist. The company specializes in providing drone-based inspection services to global industrial enterprises.
James Harrison is Sky-Futures' CEO and has been with the company since the beginning. James and Ian speak about the demanding requirements of enterprise clients who request drone services, U.K. drone regulations, the drone hardware the company has used historically, and much more.
Published 11/25/17
Intel is a global, multi-billion dollar public company and they have their hands in all areas of technology. As a legacy Silicon Valley juggernaut, they've found that innovation is key to survival—and drones are becoming a key part of that.
Published 11/08/17
Airbus Aerial is a startup that, according to their website, leverages the most advanced aerospace technologies to collect and deliver only the data and services that matter most to your organization.
Our guest, Jesse Kallman, is the President of Airbus Aerial, leading the team to enable a future of digital services via satellites, high altitude, and small low altitude UAVs.
Published 10/27/17
All of the most important news from Q3 2017 in the commercial drone industry. Hardware, software, funding, shake-ups, and more in this drone podcast series.
Published 10/12/17
AeroMana is a startup that provides tethered drone solutions. A drone that is tethered means that it is attached by wire to the ground, presumably to an external power source, giving the drone potentially "unlimited" endurance.
Published 09/28/17
This episode of Commercial Drones FM focuses on aerial cinematography and the business behind it. Brian Streem is CEO of Aerobo, a nationwide drone service provider who claim to have shot more live telecasts than any other drone company in the world.
Aerobo operates drones internationally for their clients, working on the News, TV, Sports, Advertising, and Cinema segments of multimedia. They also provide inspection services.
Published 09/14/17
Drones are incredibly useful in the construction industry. Giving construction companies the power to get high-resolution, aerial views of their job sites every single day and the ability to increase safety has undeniable ROI.
Published 08/31/17
Biren and Ian discuss the future of connected drones and how these flying robots could, in the future, essentially be boiled down to IoT devices that are networked within a blockchain, becoming just some of the active cogs inside of a distributed fog computing machine. Yeah, pretty amazing.
Published 08/17/17