Skydio HQ Tour: Skydio Commits $3.5 Billion to Expand U.S. Manufacturing

[00:00] So on average now, in public safety, our customers are flying once every 30 seconds. What? Yeah. So almost every minute now, there's some story like this where there's like a missing person or a stolen vehicle. And the drone getting there quickly just fundamentally changes outcomes. It's really life-saving technology. People don't really understand how deployed and impactful these things already are, so I'm excited to talk about that. Customers use the term force multiplier. [00:30] actions on your behalf. And this is where the AI and autonomy piece comes in. I think we're headed for a Jetsons-like future, where we just have drones doing all kinds of useful stuff. This campus is slowly evolving into drone mecha. Our goal is to just have this be the most exciting place in the world. [00:47] *outro music* [00:57] - So this is what the future of drone use looks like. So the old way of flying a drone was like, you hold a controller, you need to be a skilled pilot. If you know what you're doing, you can do useful stuff. [01:07] The new way is the drones live in these network connected charging base stations. We call them docks. Yeah. And they're just available to fly 24/7. So these things are flying themselves fully autonomously. [01:18] There's no person in the loop. [01:19] The dock keeps them charged, connected to the network. It'll heat them, it'll cool them, it'll do whatever it needs to do. [01:25] and it [01:27] basically turns them into flying robot infrastructure, where the person who uses them never has to touch them,

[01:32] Never asked to physically interact with the hardware. It's a little bit just like using a cloud server. [01:36] and it puts the drones in a position to just constantly do useful work for people. [01:41] in the background. [01:42] and it's a fully autonomous robotic system. - Are they going on a mission right now? What are they doing? [01:47] Uh, yeah, they're flying pre-programmed missions now. [01:50] So... [01:51] The number one feature for us is reliability, like making this stuff work end to end. [01:56] bulletproof day, night, wind, rain. [01:59] That's the hard part. And so these things are our testing rig. They're just continuously flying 24/7, [02:05] getting as many cycles as we can. [02:07] in every condition. [02:08] but it's mimicking of course what our customers do in their environments. So these things are deployed [02:13] at energy utilities, at construction companies, [02:16] for law enforcement and public safety. [02:18] for base security, [02:20] and our customers expect them to work all the time, and so that's what we're testing here. [02:25] When you decided to put these up here, why did you decide how many are up here? And are they all different in some capacity or they all do the same thing? Well, we really want as many as we can. We have drones doing different jobs up here, so we have [02:38] what we call our endurance rig, which is this line here. Yeah. So these ones are just constantly available for autonomous testing. [02:45] We have others over there that we're using to give customer demos. [02:48] So the best way for customers to understand what the product can do [02:52] is to fly it themselves and see different representative missions. And so our sales team, which is all over the country, all over the world, [02:59] they're constantly logging in and flying those docks over there.

[03:03] In software, there's this idea of continuous integration. [03:06] Like one of the big evolutions over the last decade in software engineering is just getting faster and faster feedback cycles. [03:11] when you write a piece of code, [03:13] you can deploy it and test it very quickly. [03:15] And I think this is one of the first examples of doing that [03:19] in real life with hardware. Because we have this fully autonomous device, [03:22] We don't need people to be in the loop [03:25] of testing. So you can sort of think of this as continuous integration [03:28] for our development process with real autonomous hardware in the loo. [03:33] Okay, so we are at the headquarters. [03:36] Yeah. How is the headquarters set up? We're going to go through a couple different things today. What's the flow? [03:42] Yeah, so I wanted to start here because this is the end result. Making all this stuff work the way that it is right now [03:48] is super hard and that's what the vast majority of the companies focus on is just making these things work [03:53] in a reliable way. [03:55] We will... [03:57] Uh... [03:57] give you a feel for what it's like to actually fly one of these things. [04:00] remotely [04:01] We'll look at some of the new vehicles we're developing, which I'm super excited about. [04:06] We'll show you kind of the like ultimate stress testing rigs. [04:09] that we use to put these things through the paces. [04:11] And then I'm excited to talk about the impact that this is already having today with customers. [04:17] Because the industries we serve are a little bit out of sight, people don't think a lot about [04:22] what is Caltrans doing to keep the road safe? [04:24] Or what is PG&E doing? [04:27] to inspect their infrastructure. [04:29] People don't really understand how deployed and impactful these things already are, so I'm excited to talk about that. Amazing.

[04:35] Okay. Sweet. [04:42] Is this one of your first drones? Yeah. So this is an artifact from my arguably misspent childhood. [04:49] So I grew up flying radio-controlled airplanes and this is like [04:53] Oh, it has your name on it. Yeah, because I was a pilot. So this is like [04:57] An extreme-- - You fit in there? [04:58] No. Although you could put a small child in there. So this is like, most people don't even know this exists. [05:06] This is kind of a crazy hobby. And I was really lucky to be doing it because a lot of the things that I learned there, certainly about building these things, [05:12] It's a little bit like NASCAR where a big part of success in competition is like the engineering and design of the aircraft itself. And then the other half is how well you can fly it. So I learned a lot about... [05:22] building these things. Then I also learned a lot just at an intuitive level about aerodynamics and control systems [05:27] which is what got me interested in engineering. [05:30] this plane has been crashed. So there's a maneuver, people call it a torque roll, where you basically [05:36] they have such extreme thrust of weight that they can hover just on the propeller. So the plane comes in, it hovers on the propeller. [05:42] uh and i forgot to put gas in it so i was flying it like two feet off the ground [05:46] and I ran out of gas and so it came down [05:49] smash the tail and I had a major competition like three months later so we had to do some [05:53] emergency repairs. [05:55] And then the color scheme was just something that I came up with. I think it was actually from the Atlanta Thrashers ice hockey team. [06:00] They're not even around anymore, but I thought they had a cool color scheme.

[06:10] So have you ever flown a drone before? - I have not. - All right, you're gonna do a lot of drone flying today. - Oh boy. - So you saw the docks up on the rooftop, but most of the people, the whole point is that most of the people that are flying a dock drone never have to physically touch it, interact with it. [06:25] You don't even need to be in the same zip code or country. If you have an internet connection, you can fly it. [06:29] So this is a piece of software [06:31] we call DFR command. Drone is first responder command. So this is designed for [06:36] emergency response. [06:37] and this is the interface that most of our customers experience drones through now. [06:41] So you've got kind of the map of the world. This is our office park. [06:45] And then it's unfortunately a crime-ridden office park. Oh, no. Exactly. What kind of crime you got here? Well, we can click around and see. [06:54] Somebody improperly parked over in the field. [06:57] got a suspicious vehicle. [06:59] But in a real environment, these would be 911 calls that are coming in. So the incident 911 call happens, it'll appear on this map. [07:06] the operator would see a description of it, [07:07] and then it's at their discretion if they think drone could have an impact. So if I want to respond to, for example, this suspicious vehicle, [07:14] I'll just click over here, respond here. [07:17] select the drone that I want, [07:19] and [07:20] one of those docks on the rooftop is now opening up. Oh wow. [07:24] Yeah, you can see [07:26] the rooftop of the dock opening up, all the software's booting up, [07:30] and it's autonomously planning a path to figure out where it needs to go [07:34] So I just click Launch. [07:35] and that's it. [07:37] with one click now, [07:38] the drones taking off,

[07:40] It uses a wayfinding technology we've developed called Pathfinder, so it knows where buildings, terrain, everything [07:47] airspace regulations, [07:48] and it can autonomously [07:51] fly its way out there. We want this campus to be a little window into the future. But I think we're headed for a Jetsons-like future, where we just have drones continuously flying, doing all kinds of useful stuff for us. - When you got this building, did you have to [08:03] get certain [08:05] Uh, well we have to, we get permission from the FAA to do this. So there's this concept of flying beyond visual line of sight which basically means [08:15] that [08:16] Like the old way of flying a drone is you have somebody who's holding a controller looking at the drone and the regulations were originally written with that in mind. [08:23] For us and for all of our customers, we get what's called a beyond visual line of sight or BV loss. [08:27] waiver. [08:28] to do what we're doing here, where I can't see this drone, [08:31] but it's still safe and legal to fly it. [08:34] And we always make friends with our neighbors. Neighbors generally come to love the drones. So now that it's gotten to the incident, [08:41] I can take control and fly it around. [08:45] uh, [08:46] So here's the part where you fly. - Oh, interesting, okay. [08:49] Have you ever played a video game like Counter Strike or anything? Nope, not at all. [08:53] We're going to test the learning curve. So the first thing to do, if you just use the mouse, [08:57] You can look around. [09:01] So if you want to like, [09:03] Go down, you'll see the road. [09:05] And it just. [09:05] Wherever you point it. Wherever you point it goes. [09:08] When I was at Archer, I went to Archer and I did a helicopter simulator. Yeah. And then I did the Archer simulator. Yeah. I will never fly a helicopter. This does seem easier than a helicopter. I will give you that. Yeah.

[09:20] So now you're looking around. If you want to fly around, you use these keys like arrow keys. [09:26] So you can put your left hand there. [09:29] And then W forward. [09:32] Hold W, you go forward. [09:33] What's the furthest we can go? [09:35] So we have a geofence here, this green line. So you can just keep holding forward, it'll keep you safe. The software's designed such that you really can't mess it up. Like it's got onboard collision avoidance, a bunch of AI and autonomy stuff that's keeping you safe. And it's really important for our customers because we want them thinking about the mission. We don't want them having to think about being like a skilled expert drone pilot. [09:55] So the other thing that can be fun to do if you hold space bar [09:59] You'll go up, so you can just hold it all the way. [10:03] uh [10:04] He has really powerful cameras on these things. So you can zoom in, read a license plate at 800 feet, [10:09] detect a person at a couple miles [10:11] But one of my favorite things to do is just [10:13] grab a car, so if you point down at the road here [10:17] I'm [10:18] really waving this mouse around. [10:21] Yeah, so now you're hands off. [10:24] So now this car is being tracked. So we see its location on the map. [10:28] uh [10:29] The drone is autonomously [10:31] uh... [10:33] following it. [10:33] without you having to do anything. [10:35] And this is one of these things, like the customers use the term force multiplier. But basically you can have the drones be doing [10:42] autonomous actions on your behalf. [10:44] without you having to be [10:46] doing low level control. And this is where the AI and autonomy piece comes in. Like our goal is to build the skills of an expert pilot into the drone. - And then it just traces the

[10:55] Exactly Geofans [10:57] Yep, so it'll follow the geofence, [11:00] It'll eventually run out of room here because we've got it [11:03] fenced in, it can't leave our corporate campus. [11:05] but this stuff is super powerful in the hands of [11:08] of [11:08] the critical industries that [11:11] depend on [11:12] on drones like this. [11:14] So... [11:15] In a use case scenario, we're on a high speed pursuit. Does this happen quite frequently? Yeah, yeah. So on average now in public safety, our customers are flying [11:25] once every 30 seconds. - What? - Yeah, I mean, this is across the nation 24/7. So almost every minute now there's some story like this where there's like a missing person or a stolen vehicle or a potentially armed suspect, and the drone getting there quickly and getting that real-time information [11:43] just fundamentally changes outcomes because officers on the ground know what they're heading into [11:47] They can get better information quickly, they can send the right [11:50] kind of response for whatever the situation demands. And it's really life-saving technology. It's like, this is the most meaningful, motivating stuff for us. Like every day now we hear some story [12:00] where there was somebody who had an overdose. There was an anonymous call. They had no idea where this person was. [12:05] They used the drone to find him in a couple minutes, got there, did CPR, saved his life, and without the drone, like, it probably would have taken him a couple hours to find this person. And that's just happening. Wow. [12:14] all the time. So right now we just flew one drone. [12:16] The other aspect of this, which is really important, is being able to fly [12:22] multiple drones at the same time.

[12:25] So, [12:27] If I... [12:29] uh... [12:30] say, want to do an inspection, [12:33] Um, [12:34] I have this, [12:35] This is like sort of another corner of application. [12:38] So I have this [12:38] pre-planned mission. [12:40] where we've got all these transmission towers on our [12:44] campus they're just distribution poles and customer site they can be transmission towers we know where they are [12:48] We pre-mapped them so we know the location of all the poles. [12:51] And then I've got this, we call it asset-centric inspection, but this mission that'll go off [12:56] and uh [12:58] do those inspections. So I just say, yep, this looks good. I want to run it. [13:02] I can see the mission there in 3D. [13:03] and I'm gonna kick off [13:06] a second drone now. [13:08] to go and do that flight. The first one is still in the air. [13:10] Um, [13:11] So it's a little bit just like playing a multiplayer video game or something. [13:14] where you have multiple agents out there [13:17] that are doing work on your behalf. [13:19] So we click launch and the second drone is now going to launch itself and go and execute [13:24] the inspection mission. And we actually see a lot of these things coming together with customers. So Site Security is our biggest, fastest growing application, where they do a combination of responding to incidents [13:34] But if you think about a data center, [13:36] where you'd be doing site security with one of these, you also have a ton of infrastructure that needs inspecting. Like it could be power infrastructure, could be cooling infrastructure. And so being able to use the same asset [13:47] to respond to incidents as well as [13:50] inspect stuff that would be much slower, more dangerous for people to do on the ground. [13:54] is very, very powerful.

[13:56] So this thing's out now, and it's basically just capturing a preprogrammed set of shots that we know we need. [14:02] to document. [14:04] So, [14:06] it's going after this [14:08] distribution poll here and it has a very precise set of motions that it needs to do to get all the data to know [14:14] if that thing is in a good healthy state. [14:17] Just to be clear... [14:19] These ones are not armed. I talk to a lot of defense companies. Yeah, yeah. [14:24] These are unarmed drones, yes. These are basically flying sensor platforms. And we sell very similar products to the military. [14:33] Um, [14:34] Our class of drone to the military is what they call ISR, intelligence surveillance reconnaissance. [14:38] So it's basically the same thing, it's a flying sensor platform. [14:42] I mean, I think there's a lot happening in the drone space. And the competition with China, the national security stakes, the military applications, I think, are super important. And we're involved in that stuff. We're proud to work with the military. [14:53] But I think there's this whole other [14:56] already large scale, massive impact set of applications. [15:00] that [15:01] are [15:02] really life-saving things that most people don't see and appreciate. [15:05] And for us it's pretty horizontal technology. I mean it's like building a computer or something. You can use it for all different kinds of things. It's really the software that defines [15:14] you know, how you interact with it and what the capabilities are. Probably the single biggest, I would say positive surprise that I've had over the last five years is the level of community acceptance and buy-in and really excitement for

[15:26] for the law enforcement application of these things. And I think the credit really goes to our customers, our law enforcement customers. There's just an extreme degree of transparency here. So when a new agency launches their drone program, [15:38] They're doing everything they can to be vocal and proactive about what they're doing. The chief will oftentimes hold a press conference. [15:44] They'll show the drones, they'll show examples of how they're using it. [15:47] And then we also have a product feature called the Transparency Portal where [15:51] they can publish the flying that they're doing for people in their community, anybody in their community to go and log in and see like where they flew and why they did it. [15:58] And I think when people see it, they get it. It's pretty hard to argue with. When you see videos of it like finding an injured person, or catching a suspect fleeing a scene, or finding out that the person was holding a broomstick, not a gun, [16:10] it's really life-saving stuff. And there are real concerns about privacy. [16:14] But I think the best answer to privacy is actually transparency as well for agencies to be accountable for the flying that they're doing and for the public to be able to see it to make sure that they're not spying on somebody in their backyard. [16:23] - When I was walking in here, and even in this room, [16:26] you definitely have some trophies and some other things that you'd like to show off. [16:30] Yeah. OK, so what is going on here? So there's a big challenger coin culture [16:36] with a lot of our customers. [16:39] Most agencies, most people don't know this, but police agencies, they call them challenger coins, but they're basically the logo, the brand, [16:45] of the agency [16:47] that's using it. Some of my favorites, we'll see if we have any in here, [16:50] Our drones are starting to show up on more and more of these challenger coins. Oh, no way. For the drone teams, which is a fun thing to see.

[16:57] So these are some of the agencies that we work with. [17:00] like. [17:01] What's your favorite? [17:02] I can't name a favorite. I mean, that one's pretty intense. [17:06] The one that's a drone itself? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. We like that one. [17:11] sorcery is brought to you by brex the financial stack trusted by more than 30 000 companies including one in three venture-backed startups in the u.s nearly 40 percent of startups fail because they run out of cash brex is literally built to help founders avoid that unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle chipping away at it with fees brex is designed to help you spend smarter and move faster their all-in-one solution combines checking treasury and fdic [17:41] into one powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same day and even same hour liquidity, access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, Service Titan, HIMSS, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid trust and use Brex. [18:11] TX.com slash sorcery. In today's high-speed business world, staying ahead means using the smartest tools possible, including the powerful capabilities of artificial intelligence. Meet Turing Intelligence. Turing builds customizable AI systems designed to solve your mission-critical challenges, no matter your industry. From expert guidance to tailored projects, Turing helps top companies realize AI that's more capable, more adaptable, and more effective.

[18:41] To learn more, visit turing.com slash sorcery, spelt S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. That's turing.com slash sorcery. [18:50] *music* [19:10] . [19:24] . [19:28] Thank you. [19:31] This beast we call the windwall. This is a fully autonomous testing rig. So this is again just running [19:36] unattended, [19:37] 24/7. [19:38] So it's a bunch of drone propellers that generate 30, 35 miles an hour wind. [19:43] and then we've got a docks sitting in front of it. So we can create all kinds of extreme wind conditions here, [19:48] We can put the dock in different orientations. [19:50] We've even built variations of this. [19:52] where we can rain on it. [20:06] . [20:07] you [20:07] Bye. [20:08] *music*

[20:19] That's a good way to start the morning. So this building is the domain of R10, which is a new drone for us, and it's specifically designed for [20:49] indoor operation. So a lot of the most dangerous work [20:52] in public safety, [20:53] and in critical infrastructure inspection happens indoors in very confined spaces. And it's actually kind of natural habitat for us because our drones have computer vision AI, they can map the environment, they can fly in challenging spaces. [21:06] But [21:07] we didn't have a drone form factor [21:10] that was exactly right for that. [21:12] So over the last year, [21:14] We've run a super fast, awesome program [21:17] to build our first specially designed [21:19] indoor drone. [21:21] So, [21:22] It looks like Ben's got some math up there. Can we look at some of the design of R10, maybe? Yeah. Ben's an OG. He's been with us. [21:28] 11 years? Yeah. He was in the... Since almost the beginning, yeah. Since the semi-legal house in Atherton that was our first office. In Atherton. And actually when the owner found out what we were doing, he wondered if we would pay the rent in equity. [21:40] Oh. Which luckily we did not do. [21:43] He would have been happy about it. So Ben's played a major role in designing every drone we've

[21:50] we've ever made. I don't know, you want to take us for a spin on what we're looking at here? Yeah, I guess you haven't flown this yet, but you're gonna find it a bit. Nice to meet you. And basically, we wanted to build something that is small as we could possibly make a drone for indoor flying that has a couple of the features that customers really want. Like it's got headlights, you can see in the darkness, the speaker, microphone, super robust, easy to fly, portable, kind of checks all the boxes for indoor tactical sort of scenarios. So this is what that looks like. So our computer system is [22:20] in the middle. We have cameras along the front for the user to see what they're looking at, but also for the obstacle avoidance system to work. It has a bunch of lights, like these are diodes here that'll illuminate a really dark space really nicely. Microphones, it's got a speaker on the back. [22:37] The thing that I think is, we're talking about how hard it is to make these things, like drones can be [22:42] They can fool people because it's like, oh, it's small. It's kind of like a piece of electronics or something. But designing these things is really [22:47] akin designing like a rocket ship [22:50] or an aircraft because there's just so much physical constraint, vibrations, thermals, [22:54] aerodynamics [22:55] and [22:56] because it's small, it's actually harder. Like most of the ways that you solve problems in engineering is you add weight, like, oh, [23:02] we have a thermal problem. The way we'll fix that is we'll just like add a giant heat sink on it. [23:06] You can't do that on a drone, or if you do it, you're gonna pay a cost in terms of flight time and performance. [23:10] And so it's this awesome game of just [23:13] making every gram and every part [23:16] count as much as it can and [23:18] Basically, if you do it well, you're up against the laws of physics in every dimension. These things just operate right at the edge of what's physically possible to get as much capability as you can into a small,

[23:28] easy form factor. [23:30] So we should... [23:31] We fly it. [23:32] Yep. [23:33] Here's the real thing. [23:34] Oh my god! [23:37] It's real. It's real. [23:40] - Oh. [23:41] You're going to fly. [23:43] Well, no. No way. Absolutely. No, I'm going to crash it. Oh, all right. Thank you. Okay. All right. Just get straight at it. [23:51] All you need to do is you need to slide that little slider over to launch the aircraft. [23:57] It's going to take off on sound. You can fly through that doorway. Don't crash it. I'm going to. You can't crash it. That's the whole point. Are you sure about that? Yep. Pretty sure. So if you now use the left stick again to maybe yaw to your right. [24:15] Oh, what is going on in here? You go enter this house. Looks like a crime scene. [24:20] Yeah, so this would be like, [24:21] you know, real life situation, you could have an armed suspect in there, [24:24] And rather than sending a cop in who's [24:27] either gonna get shot at, [24:29] and maybe have to shoot back. [24:31] you send the drone in so they just know exactly what they're heading into. So just push forward. [24:34] We got a fan, there's some wind in here. [24:37] How do I go higher? Yeah, that stick up, like away from you a little bit. Like this? And then climb. [24:43] - Okay. - So this is like world class drone piloting stuff, right? You're flying in a super confined space. [24:49] a couple feet around you, [24:51] flying through very narrow passageways. [24:53] - Really difficult. - You got it, just push forward. [24:55] Wow. Does the return feature work? [24:58] Uh, probably.

[25:00] Should we try it? [25:01] We should try it. Nothing like doing it live. [25:03] Yeah, try it. What do I do? So we would just hit this button and we say return to launch. [25:08] and what it's going to do is retrace it [25:10] steps. [25:11] in an effort to come back [25:14] started. [25:14] So intense. Alright, we gotta get a high five. Alright, here we go. No, on camera. That was awesome. So yeah, you've made it back and all we need to do to land the drone is we would push and hold the button. [25:40] - And your flight's complete. - Amazing. And... - - The police are here. - Attention! [25:47] Attention! [25:48] Please exit the area immediately. [25:50] I repeat, please exit the area immediately. So it's, I mean, this is a real thing, because you can fly into any... [25:57] confined space. [25:58] If you have a barricaded suspect or something, you can land this perch for hours and establish two-way communication without ever [26:04] putting a person in harm's way. Another life-saving peace attack. [26:07] Absolutely. [26:09] Sweet. [26:10] Quick note before we keep going. I've been investing on public for a while now, and it's a really solid platform that combines stocks, bonds, options and crypto with incredible AI tools that let you do things like build a completely custom investable index from a prompt. Right now, public will give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your portfolio. Check it out at public.com slash sorcery public investing for those who take it seriously paid for by public investing. Full disclosures in the description.

[26:37] VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View the portfolio at GetVCX.com. That's GetVCX.com. Founders ship faster on deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere. Get visas handled fast and get back to building. [27:07] C-E-R-Y. [27:08] Enterprise AI runs on Merge, the AI infra platform for integrations, agent tooling, and model orchestration, so your teams ship product, not plumbing. [27:18] Mistral, Dropbox, and Drada already trust Merge and production. [27:22] Start building at merge.dev. [27:29] So that was indoor tactical drone R10. The other new program that we're working on that we're super and that thing's about to ship that is already in customers hands. [27:40] and will be generally available in the next few weeks. So we're ramping up production [27:45] of that in Hayward. [27:46] So that's indoors. The other big need that our customers have [27:49] is covering much [27:51] larger areas at higher speed. So if you have a high-speed vehicle pursuit, [27:55] Quadcopters are great, they're super versatile, [27:57] but they can't go 100 miles an hour, at least not ones that are carrying the sensor packages that we have. [28:03] we have started work [28:05] We want to do as much as we can to get fast feedback cycles and

[28:08] do the jobs that our customers are actually doing with our products. [28:11] So this is something like you'd find [28:13] at an oil and gas facility that you might need to inspect. [28:17] So, [28:19] This is basically a test rig for us. [28:21] to inspect ourselves. So those docked drones on the rooftop [28:24] one of the automated missions that I could run [28:26] would be to come over and inspect this thing. [28:29] and it would fly in, it would read the gauges. Believe it or not, you can actually use an autonomous drone to fly in and read a steam gauge. Wow. And that's a real need that people have. But you could also [28:38] We have a leak. [28:39] Exactly, yeah. You could see the leak, you could look for corrosion. [28:43] And doing that with a drone saves a person from having to go in. It saves them time. [28:47] and it also keeps them safer. [28:50] So we've got this. [28:51] We've got a bunch of substation equipment. [28:53] on the other side of the parking lot. [28:55] And we're using these things for testing and development, we're also using them [28:59] to show customers. So, you know, if the customer [29:02] is evaluating purchasing the product, they could log into one of those docs [29:05] fly out, do the inspection and get a real feel [29:08] for what would this do for me? [29:10] in my operating environment and the things that I care about. You guys have like the most insane obstacle courses everywhere. Yeah. So you flew the R-10. The R-10 is about super confined spaces, super short distances, [29:25] very dangerous situation. The other need that our customers have are high speed, long range. [29:30] So, [29:31] We sell to County Sheriff's Office that covered thousands of square miles, [29:34] We sell the energy utilities with tens of thousands of miles of lines that need to be inspected. And the answer to that is a fixed lane. Like if you want to go fast, if you want to go far,

[29:45] you need a wing, it's just a much more efficient way to generate lift. [29:48] The challenge with a fixed wing is how do you dock it? We really want these things to [29:52] dock and remote operation capable. [29:54] And the answer to that [29:56] Seems a little crazy. [29:57] The answer to that [29:58] is a robotic arm. [30:00] Okay. [30:01] I'm going to go. [30:01] uh [30:02] This is our prototype fixed-wing vehicle. So this is called F-10. It's reusing a lot of the same core technology blocks from X-10 and R-10, but it's in a fixed-wing form factor that can fly 100 miles an hour in a couple hours of flight time, and it is launched and caught by a robotic arm. So this robotic arm picks it up out of its charging station, puts it into the air, lets it go, basically throws it. It goes off and flies the mission, and then it comes back, gets caught, and gets stowed away to try it. [30:32] - Wow. - Yeah. [30:40] - This campus is slowly evolving into drone mecca. Like our goal is to just have this be like the most exciting place in the world. [30:47] where all the cool drone stuff is happening. When we start a new program, like a new drone that we're building, we'll typically take a small cross-functional team [30:55] and give them their own space so that they can just get [30:58] hyper-focused. So this is the X10, same drone that we flew out of the dock. You can also fly it the old-school way with a controller, and there's still plenty of great work to be done with that. [31:07] So the main point of the drone is the sensor package. This thing that's carried at the front, this gimbal, says three axis stabilized,

[31:15] Bunch of great sensors, lets us zoom in. [31:17] Incredible detail at long ranges. [31:19] But [31:20] Sometimes you want to do other things. So you can put a spotlight on this, you've got these attachment ports, you can put a speaker on it. [31:26] one of the most common requests we got [31:28] from public safety, [31:29] was helping people in the water. [31:32] in trouble. There's a lot of coastline work here, so this originally [31:36] came up with NYPD, the beaches around New York. [31:38] So this thing is called a rest tube. [31:41] It's an auto-inflating life preserver. [31:44] - This is our dropper. - Wow. Okay. [31:47] and it's all carried by X10 and we're going to put it to the test. Okay. [31:51] This is the flight interface. [31:53] I'll swipe up to take off. [31:59] Do you want to do the drop or do you want me to... No, you got it. Yeah, you got it. [32:02] *laughs* We should head over here. [32:07] *Sigh* [32:09] There's the water button. Oh my god. [32:11] You could fall in and drown if you want. Oh, that's too funny. [32:16] How did that get here? [32:19] So, [32:21] I just open up proper, I say look down, [32:23] I get nice little target crosshairs there. [32:27] Do some wind corrections. Wind correction, yeah. Fancy map. Yeah. You seem scared. I just, I don't know. It's going to be great. Don't worry about it. [32:38] That's impressive. Over time, you're going to see more and more of this of like drones doing things to interact with people on the ground and provide help.

[32:47] So... [32:48] When we're done, [32:49] I just hold the land. [32:53] you [32:55] - Yeah. [32:59] Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished. Wow. Yeah. [33:02] Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, Sorcery.bc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email, and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.