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00:00:07.087Well, hello and welcome to Visions, a machine vision and automation solutions podcast.
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00:00:11.307I'm your host, Jim Tatum, Senior Editor of Vision Systems Design,
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00:00:16.561and Visions is an Endeavor business media production from your friends at Vision Systems Design.
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00:00:21.637Here you'll find the latest on everything from end-user machine vision solutions
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00:00:26.673to trends, developments, and perspectives on all things machine vision and imaging.
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00:00:30.667Whether you've been working in the industry for a while, or you're just starting
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00:00:34.867to take a closer look at it, this podcast is designed to grow your knowledge
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00:00:38.962and bring greater focus to your understanding of the imaging and machine vision industry.
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00:00:41.226And now, onto our show.
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00:00:47.655Well, hi, everybody, and welcome to Visions. Today, we're going to take a deeper
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00:00:52.255dive into how advances in cameras, sensor fusion, edge computing,
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00:00:57.624and AI are making drone vision systems more capable across a wide range of applications.
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00:01:03.355In fact, recently, VSD's head of content, Sharon Spielman, had a terrific conversation
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00:01:06.474about some of these very issues with Arthur Erickson,
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00:01:12.365who's CEO and co-founder of Hylio, a Texas-based company that specializes in
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00:01:14.119drone technologies and applications.
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00:01:16.590Let's give a listen to what they had to say.
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00:01:22.025Welcome. Today we're looking at drone vision systems, an area where advances
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00:01:27.015in machine vision, sensor integration, and real-time image processing are changing
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00:01:31.725how drones serve the critical roles in a range of industries and applications,
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00:01:34.732including emergency response and security.
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00:01:39.555For our vision systems design audience, the challenges go beyond just adding
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00:01:44.720cameras, success hinges on optimizing sensor performance, flight stability,
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00:01:48.615and manufacturing precision to deliver real-time, actionable,
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00:01:50.890visual data in challenging environments.
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00:01:55.615As automation and AI-driven machine vision advance, these systems are becoming
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00:01:59.035more robust, adaptable, and capable of learning on the fly.
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00:02:04.341Joining us today is Arthur Erickson, CEO and co-founder at Hylio,
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00:02:08.195to share his insights on the technical evolution of drone vision,
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00:02:12.218from sensor technology and payload design to AI-driven processing,
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00:02:16.038and what it means for advancing situational awareness in the field.
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00:02:19.820Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me.
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00:02:23.335You bet. First, why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself,
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00:02:24.963your background in the drone market?
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00:02:29.860Sure. Well, it's nothing too exciting. I won't harp on too much about myself.
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00:02:35.274I went and studied aerospace engineering at UT Austin, so University of Texas in Austin.
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00:02:39.563And that's actually where I started the company with three other fellow UT alum.
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00:02:44.358So it's a Longhorn company, classic Longhorn startup dorm room type of story.
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00:02:48.230But yeah, it was through my curriculum as an aerospace engineer,
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00:02:51.010undergrad only, that I first got into drones.
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00:02:54.880And basically for our capstone project, for example, that entire year,
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00:02:56.800it was design a drone from scratch.
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00:03:00.536In this case, it was a fixed wing platform, so plane style design.
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00:03:04.600We were working with the Austin Fire Department to do a simulated mission in
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00:03:07.830which we'd locate a target and then drop an aid package, right?
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00:03:09.528A simulated aid package on that target.
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00:03:13.170And that was how we were graded. So it was kind of a combination of those technical
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00:03:16.340skills I picked up in school and then just entrepreneurial spirit.
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00:03:20.010And, of course, my great team put that all together. And then we started Hylio.
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00:03:24.240It'll be 12 years in January. So all the way back in 2015, again,
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00:03:25.622while I was still in school.
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00:03:30.170So that's where we come from. Since then, primarily, we have focused on the
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00:03:34.220agriculture industry. So meaning that we design and build and sell drones that
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00:03:37.769are more or less replacing traditional crop dusting methods.
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00:03:41.600That's airplanes and helicopters, but I should also mention that's applications
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00:03:45.660done by tractor or self-propelled ground rig as well. So we're offering a more
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00:03:47.633precise, environmentally friendly,
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00:03:51.157better for your wallet, better for the neighbor's wallet solution.
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00:03:55.806So that's typically what we do. But to swing back to this conversation a bit,
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00:03:59.910as a company's grown in size, we've become more successful, had more engineers
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00:04:03.544on staff, had more mature products that we could bring to bear.
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00:04:06.650We've branched out to other industries such as emergency response.
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00:04:10.910So a bit what we're talking about here with the wildfire detection and suppression
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00:04:13.190and other things along that vein as well.
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00:04:19.820Great. Yeah, so 12 years. So I imagine that you've seen quite a bit of change.
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00:04:24.760So from a machine vision integration perspective, what key advancements have
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00:04:26.919you seen in drone vision systems recently?
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00:04:33.460Probably one of the main it's not maybe super exciting but one of the main things
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00:04:37.437is just unit cost right so bringing the unit cost of relatively high resolution
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00:04:42.240cameras down and making them lightweight as the drone industry explodes making them,
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00:04:47.310cheaper it's just obviously going to be a force for more use out in the field
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00:04:53.830so i think personally a lot of that has come from the EV market right so basically all these cars now
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00:04:59.348obviously auto is a massive industry as they've integrated more digital vision systems.
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00:05:03.360We've, as a drone industry, reaped those benefits. Camera technology as well,
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00:05:07.240right? So every cell phone has a camera. So yeah, I think just price point is
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00:05:11.196a big one there. So just packing more punch in a smaller and cheaper package.
00:05:11.602 -->
00:05:16.044And then on the AI side or on the compute side, edge compute as a concept
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00:05:20.610and instantiated in more efficient, again, cheaper, but more efficient edge
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00:05:25.140processing power is key, of course, to actually having these practically come
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00:05:29.300into play in a scenario that's very time sensitive, such as emergency response, right?
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00:05:33.130So you can't be deeming stuff back to the cloud, waiting 24 hours to have some
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00:05:37.068server do it, and then acting on the information. It's got to be done right there in the field.
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00:05:43.140Right. So let's talk about the types of cameras and sensors that are incorporated
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00:05:48.120to optimize the image capture across those harsh operational environments that
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00:05:51.029you're talking about. Yeah, so it really depends.
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00:05:58.988If we're talking about something like identifying a fire in a wildfire scenario,
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00:06:05.138you don't actually need that much vision to, you don't need that much resolution, I should say.
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00:06:08.118It doesn't have to be like a high fidelity feed that you're reading because
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00:06:11.388a fire is pretty obvious, right? So especially if you have a thermal sensitive
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00:06:14.982sensor, a fire is pretty dang different than its surroundings.
00:06:15.301 -->
00:06:18.238So in a case like that, it's fairly black and white. You don't need a super
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00:06:21.868high-powered thermal sensor, or you probably don't even need thermal in general.
00:06:21.868 -->
00:06:23.129You could get away with RGB.
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00:06:28.548So that's pretty easy. But in a scenario like if you go to our traditional industry,
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00:06:31.552which is, again, precision agriculture, you,
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00:06:36.778again, depending on your context, might need some pretty high-resolution camera
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00:06:41.298work to be able to identify a somewhat different-looking green thing versus
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00:06:42.888another green thing, right?
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00:06:45.585So the plant you want to save versus the plant you want to kill, like a weed.
00:06:45.945 -->
00:06:51.018So typically, I mean, to ground it, most of our customers like on our sensing
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00:06:52.218platform we have, which we call
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00:06:57.142the Photon, a lot of the customers are going with a 4K on 20 megapixel
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00:07:01.726RGB sensor with optical zoom up to 5 to 7x.
00:07:02.022 -->
00:07:07.158And this is typically good enough for them to be pretty speedy with some crop
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00:07:12.148scans where you can fly at 300 to 400 feet above the crop and identify literal.
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00:07:16.108Individual weeds or individual leaves even on plants.
00:07:16.108 -->
00:07:21.208You could see stuff like fungal outbreaks, little white spots or black spots,
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00:07:24.968for example, on the leaves of corn or something to that nature.
00:07:24.968 -->
00:07:27.948So it really comes down to, again, your use case and like what you need your
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00:07:29.281ground sampling distance to be.
00:07:29.559 -->
00:07:34.808But people are operating anywhere from half a centimeter per pixel to two or
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00:07:37.936three centimeters per pixel based, again, on ultimate use case.
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00:07:42.908Right. So how do the drone vision systems,
00:07:43.622 -->
00:07:48.743deal with the varying lighting conditions and the weather interference and the
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00:07:53.653motion blurring to maintain the image fidelity for the downstream processing?
00:07:54.563 -->
00:07:57.779How do you select, how do you specify that for your drones?
00:07:58.527 -->
00:08:02.237Again, this is like designing your system. Not to go on a tangent here,
00:08:02.237 -->
00:08:06.187but like our Photon, which I had just mentioned, is designed intentionally to
00:08:06.187 -->
00:08:08.937be very easy for you to swap payloads out, right?
00:08:08.937 -->
00:08:13.697So you can get really any third-party sensor, like a Sony ILX.
00:08:14.037 -->
00:08:17.217You know, it's basically like their DSLR, but shrunk a little bit.
00:08:17.217 -->
00:08:18.699And then you can stick it on for like a drone.
00:08:18.989 -->
00:08:23.099You could use like multi-spectral or hyper-spectral cameras, thermals.
00:08:23.413 -->
00:08:25.987You could put lidars on there which i know it's not a camera but or a vision
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00:08:29.087system but i mean you could put anything on there right because it's going to
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00:08:33.966change so like our typical camera that we would sell to an agricultural customer
00:08:34.390 -->
00:08:37.884would be somewhat of a one size fits all right so like,
00:08:38.534 -->
00:08:42.597decent at least like HD so 1080 you know video streaming capabilities but if
00:08:42.617 -->
00:08:44.397they're not using it for precise weed id,
00:08:44.908 -->
00:08:49.187just like a navigational tool that's all they need hdr right so it can actually
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00:08:53.207perform really well in low light settings but it's not true night vision right
00:08:53.207 -->
00:08:54.775so we do have some customers that actually,
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00:08:58.837strictly operate at night or need to operate at night for some application whether
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00:09:02.027that be ag or something else and in which case you know they would we'd have
00:09:02.027 -->
00:09:07.277a straight up thermal based system or infrared near infrared perhaps and we'd
00:09:07.277 -->
00:09:10.024have an illuminator coupled with the sensor so you're
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00:09:13.048illuminating it and then receiving that data back so it.
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00:09:17.557That sorry to give you a bad answer but just like it really we do all sorts
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00:09:19.617stuff based on the customer.
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00:09:23.387So we can integrate by design. It's a very extensible system.
00:09:23.387 -->
00:09:25.767So if they need night vision, we can do that. If they need thermal,
00:09:25.767 -->
00:09:28.476we can do that. If they need high resolution RGB, we could do that.
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00:09:37.857Okay. So in terms of the processing architecture, what onboard compute AI capabilities
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00:09:41.037enable real-time interpretation of visual data?
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00:09:46.579Is that that photon that you're talking about for obstacle detection and terrain mapping.
00:09:47.417 -->
00:09:51.837And then that also kind of makes me think about, I know you said you cover ag,
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00:09:57.148you cover emergency services, and I believe surveillance do cover,
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00:10:02.174aerospace and defense. I know you were starting out with agriculture,
00:10:02.174 -->
00:10:07.937but are you branching out into all of the industries or can we talk about that a little bit?
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00:10:11.017Yeah. So we are basically doing all of the above.
00:10:11.734 -->
00:10:15.914We view our drones as a platform technology. And so not to belabor it,
00:10:16.214 -->
00:10:20.724but what I was just getting at, we make it very easy for any third-party provider
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00:10:23.894or company to put sensors or modules onto it.
00:10:23.894 -->
00:10:28.254So ag is one thing, but yeah when you talk to the and i keep bringing up the
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00:10:31.094fire people but like it's just something that's top of mind because we're doing
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00:10:33.961that right now but fire suppression people or the police department,
00:10:34.448 -->
00:10:37.476right they're going to have like in the case of fire you might need to drop
00:10:37.761 -->
00:10:41.574a flaming tennis ball essentially and this is to do a controlled burn or you
00:10:41.574 -->
00:10:45.928might need to spray out a special compound that like literally like directly suppresses the fire
00:10:46.335 -->
00:10:50.184the police might have uh even something like a loudspeaker on the drill which
00:10:50.184 -->
00:10:51.224is just a different thing to
00:10:51.224 -->
00:10:54.363do crowd control right to speak to crowd like you know disperse disperse
00:10:54.589 -->
00:10:57.454perhaps like a tear gas canister right that's something we haven't done yet
00:10:57.454 -->
00:11:00.784but we're in conversations about so things of that nature i mean there's all
00:11:00.784 -->
00:11:02.374sorts of different things you can stick on these things.
00:11:03.256 -->
00:11:04.725Bringing it back though it's just,
00:11:06.051 -->
00:11:11.324yeah can you build base that's like 80 there and just like the french fries
00:11:11.324 -->
00:11:13.525that go with the hamburger are like relatively easy
00:11:13.896 -->
00:11:17.304and maybe like you know a few weeks worth of integration work for our team and
00:11:17.304 -->
00:11:21.504then the customer's team to actually implement so that's kind of what we see
00:11:21.504 -->
00:11:25.957generally for a lot of these enterprise-level customer interactions right now is like a little bit,
00:11:26.439 -->
00:11:30.706mostly like the stock unit we sell, and then like a little bit of customization on top.
00:11:31.344 -->
00:11:34.414Okay. So why don't you talk a little bit about that?
00:11:34.414 -->
00:11:38.844So the payload design, the weight distribution, and the vibration damping,
00:11:39.233 -->
00:11:44.209how do all those impact the optical sensor performance and flight stability,
00:11:44.708 -->
00:11:45.874in the drones themselves?
00:11:45.874 -->
00:11:47.534I mean, because, you know, a
00:11:47.534 -->
00:11:51.561speaker as opposed to having to carry fire suppression are very different.
00:11:52.218 -->
00:11:54.163Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah.
00:11:55.092 -->
00:11:58.041Yeah, I should elaborate more on your last question about kind of how we do
00:11:58.041 -->
00:12:04.402some of the processing, but it's a very fair point that vibrations are the enemy of clear visual data.
00:12:04.831 -->
00:12:09.021You have to solve that first mechanically, of course. So we've designed a brushless
00:12:09.021 -->
00:12:13.761motor, actuated three-axis gimbals, and that's typically what our cameras are
00:12:13.761 -->
00:12:15.001mounted on our drone platform.
00:12:15.001 -->
00:12:18.380So that gives you control where the camera is pointing while you're flying,
00:12:18.682 -->
00:12:22.869but it is actively stabilizing the camera feed the entire time.
00:12:23.159 -->
00:12:26.741That to get a little bit even nittier, grittier about it, like you've got this
00:12:26.741 -->
00:12:31.239gimbal, but it itself is mounted on vibration dampening structures, right?
00:12:31.355 -->
00:12:35.241Rubber type structures that are placed in such a way through analysis we've
00:12:35.241 -->
00:12:38.438done and testing to really minimize that vibration even further,
00:12:38.821 -->
00:12:40.921even beyond that, you still have vibration.
00:12:40.921 -->
00:12:45.671So then you apply like a digital stabilization layer, which there's a fair amount
00:12:45.671 -->
00:12:49.211of open source tools out there that we play around with and stuff that we've
00:12:49.211 -->
00:12:50.419developed in-house as well.
00:12:50.750 -->
00:12:54.371So that's like edge detection. And, you know, we'll get into it.
00:12:54.371 -->
00:12:58.911But the basic things that camera companies are applying to stabilize moving
00:12:58.911 -->
00:13:03.081frames, we're not doing anything like we're not a camera company at the end
00:13:03.081 -->
00:13:06.320of the day. Right. So we're not doing anything bleeding edge or anything in that regard.
00:13:06.633 -->
00:13:10.331But really just trying to cross our T's and dot our I's and make sure that you
00:13:10.331 -->
00:13:12.822mechanically eliminate the vibrations as much as possible.
00:13:13.136 -->
00:13:16.881Do as little digital stabilization as you can, because ultimately,
00:13:16.881 -->
00:13:19.601obviously, that's going to lead to artifacts and stuff like that that you don't
00:13:19.601 -->
00:13:21.472want if you do too much digital correcting.
00:13:21.809 -->
00:13:24.827So we try to do it the right way mechanically.
00:13:25.598 -->
00:13:30.029What we employ, object recognition and whatnot, is a variety of things.
00:13:30.029 -->
00:13:33.708Again, a lot of it is leveraging open source stuff out there like YOLO,
00:13:34.033 -->
00:13:36.750machine learning, detection libraries.
00:13:37.098 -->
00:13:42.160So it's like basic stuff like, can you identify a human versus a cow versus a car?
00:13:42.467 -->
00:13:45.890There's a lot of stuff out there that's available to everybody already for that.
00:13:46.320 -->
00:13:49.949But it really comes down to using the right tools or algorithms for the right
00:13:49.949 -->
00:13:53.599problem and designing the software in the interface in such a way where the
00:13:53.599 -->
00:13:57.319customer or the operator could switch between the stuff when needed, right?
00:13:57.319 -->
00:14:00.979So, yeah, you might use a different model when you're doing detection of a car
00:14:00.979 -->
00:14:05.239or a person, you know, maybe in a law enforcement sense versus the model you
00:14:05.239 -->
00:14:09.439use, of course, for identifying what we call volunteer cotton in a cornfield
00:14:09.439 -->
00:14:11.967or vice versa or Johnson grass in a cornfield.
00:14:12.251 -->
00:14:16.989So it's more of like an interface thing. These tools all exist under the hood,
00:14:16.989 -->
00:14:22.039of course, but can you seamlessly switch between them and give like the customer
00:14:22.039 -->
00:14:25.869that power without overcomplicating it to use the right model at the right time?
00:14:26.681 -->
00:14:32.772So how do you go about when you're sitting down with your customers?
00:14:33.248 -->
00:14:40.245Are you selecting off the shelf? Are you using customized components?
00:14:40.524 -->
00:14:45.528How does that work? And I'm speaking specifically for the vision systems on the drone.
00:14:46.401 -->
00:14:51.781I don't know how. I guess I'm kind of looking when you're doing your drones,
00:14:51.781 -->
00:14:54.004when you're making them, i would imagine,
00:14:54.696 -->
00:14:59.611you have your own components that you're putting together for the drone itself
00:14:59.611 -->
00:15:03.241but then you're going to a third party for the vision systems
00:15:03.566 -->
00:15:07.731is that yeah that's that's usually right at least for now we are actually developing
00:15:07.731 -->
00:15:11.241like from the board level up like our own camera but even then i mean of course
00:15:11.241 -->
00:15:15.246you're still buying the sensor from Sony or whomever so like usually,
00:15:15.849 -->
00:15:18.701like right there's a company we utilize called e-con Systems they're actually
00:15:18.701 -->
00:15:21.941based in India Yeah, but they make great products. A lot of them are designed for drones.
00:15:22.711 -->
00:15:25.861To our points earlier, they're cheap, they're lightweight, good stabilization, etc.
00:15:26.716 -->
00:15:32.220So we use their cameras, but we build a gimbal around it. And then we have an onboard compute.
00:15:32.661 -->
00:15:36.684Typically, we're using like Jetson or in Nanos right now. So little computer,
00:15:37.206 -->
00:15:38.601NVIDIA powered, of course.
00:15:38.601 -->
00:15:42.831And this is doing a lot of this post-processing we're talking about in real time.
00:15:42.831 -->
00:15:46.711So segmentation or just a obstacle detection or object detection,
00:15:46.711 -->
00:15:50.871target detection, and then spitting whatever's needed into the flight controls,
00:15:50.871 -->
00:15:54.003which are they going to turn that into like an actionable maneuverer?
00:15:54.823 -->
00:15:58.509And you're providing the hardware and the software to your customers?
00:15:58.956 -->
00:16:04.270Yes, that's correct. So we are full stack in that sense, which not a lot of
00:16:04.270 -->
00:16:06.810people do what we do, I should say. There's a lot of companies out there that
00:16:06.810 -->
00:16:09.750outsource the software or vice versa, outsource the hardware.
00:16:10.052 -->
00:16:14.458Drones, it's an orchestra, right? It's all these things working in perfect harmony.
00:16:14.800 -->
00:16:18.210And we've just found, because we've done a mix of both, right?
00:16:18.210 -->
00:16:21.203When we were a younger company, just four kids out of UT Austin,
00:16:21.667 -->
00:16:23.350there was a lot of system integrating we had to do.
00:16:23.350 -->
00:16:27.680Where we were going out and buying hardware that we didn't design, trying to make it work.
00:16:27.680 -->
00:16:31.130But ultimately, there's a lot of limitations there, especially at the edges.
00:16:31.130 -->
00:16:35.150But eventually for the entire system, like you're looking at some pretty serious
00:16:35.150 -->
00:16:40.200inefficiencies or sometimes a downright inability to do a desired outcome because
00:16:40.200 -->
00:16:43.490you ultimately didn't control that supply chain, that, you know,
00:16:43.490 -->
00:16:44.650the entire design of the system.
00:16:44.650 -->
00:16:48.690So again, with the orchestra that is a drone, we think it's imperative that
00:16:48.690 -->
00:16:51.083you do both the hardware and the software for ultimate outcomes.
00:16:52.058 -->
00:16:56.100So, speaking of the orchestra, then the listener of the orchestra,
00:16:56.100 -->
00:17:00.950which would be the people who buy the drones, are there any vetting processes?
00:17:00.950 -->
00:17:06.470Okay, so can you talk a little bit about sensor fusion and how it is evolving
00:17:06.470 -->
00:17:11.754in these systems to improve the situational intelligence accuracy and the robustness?
00:17:12.409 -->
00:17:15.480Yeah, that's pretty important. When the drone is flying, I mean,
00:17:15.480 -->
00:17:19.090this is especially important for obstacle detection and avoidance.
00:17:19.462 -->
00:17:24.763These drones, like in the agriculture context, are often flying quite fast, 40 miles per hour.
00:17:25.216 -->
00:17:30.370They're flying low. So yes, they're flying over depopulated cornfields.
00:17:30.370 -->
00:17:33.930So it's not really a risk to humans, but the drone is at risk because it's flying
00:17:33.930 -->
00:17:36.960low, fast, and there's trees and there's guide wires and whatnot.
00:17:36.960 -->
00:17:41.706So you need a pretty robust vision system. So it's got to be able to actually see everything.
00:17:41.909 -->
00:17:45.230And it's quite a noisy environment in terms of obstacles that these systems
00:17:45.230 -->
00:17:47.401are detecting, right? Because you have all this vegetation.
00:17:47.761 -->
00:17:52.150Again, you have all these trees, power lines, whatever. You need to identify
00:17:52.150 -->
00:17:54.442everything, even as small as a half-inch power line.
00:17:54.901 -->
00:17:58.280You need to identify everything, but then you need to compute on board to say,
00:17:58.280 -->
00:18:01.060is that actually something I need to worry about, right? And throw away the
00:18:01.060 -->
00:18:03.770stuff that is just noise, like actual noise.
00:18:04.240 -->
00:18:08.321Also ignore the stuff that is a real obstacle but is it in your path for example
00:18:08.582 -->
00:18:12.410so you're doing all this like calculation on board in real time what's the heading
00:18:12.410 -->
00:18:17.745of the drone what's the speed where are these obstacles in you know proportion to my heading or.
00:18:18.320 -->
00:18:22.630In relation to my heading i should say and so it takes a lot and like to bring
00:18:22.630 -->
00:18:23.956it back to your point about sensor fusion,
00:18:24.467 -->
00:18:29.740like there's no single sensor that does everything perfectly right and so for
00:18:29.740 -->
00:18:33.633example i'll ground it again we use radars a lot for obstacle detection,
00:18:34.150 -->
00:18:39.390because they're a pretty good overall fit because in the ag drone world you're
00:18:39.390 -->
00:18:43.150spraying products so there's a lot of moisture in the air like mist and fog
00:18:43.150 -->
00:18:47.820and there's sunlight reflecting off this moisture there's dust that you're kicking up
00:18:48.226 -->
00:18:51.770so all these things radar can relatively easily penetrate through and give you
00:18:51.770 -->
00:18:55.640still a pretty good picture of what's on the other side but versus like a camera
00:18:55.640 -->
00:18:57.320which might be obscured by dust or,
00:18:57.780 -->
00:19:01.665or liquid or a lidar system which would just bounce off the first thing it sees.
00:19:02.112 -->
00:19:04.084So you have to play this,
00:19:05.089 -->
00:19:09.593compromise game with what's the best fit for most of the situations or,
00:19:10.247 -->
00:19:13.202what you can do is what we're starting to do now which is like it's going to
00:19:13.202 -->
00:19:15.681increase the cost a bit but add more
00:19:15.959 -->
00:19:19.032more different sensors and fuse them together so then you are actually truly
00:19:19.032 -->
00:19:22.632covering like all the bases right so i i think the big push for us right now
00:19:22.632 -->
00:19:25.944is okay we have radars which i just mentioned we're trying to incorporate,
00:19:26.536 -->
00:19:28.837binocular vision not as,
00:19:29.476 -->
00:19:33.042you know replacement to the radars in conjunction again along the theme of fusing
00:19:33.042 -->
00:19:37.975it because what the binocular vision could do better than a radar is make let's say.
00:19:39.135 -->
00:19:44.202More practical planned decisions or help you make more practical plan decisions
00:19:44.202 -->
00:19:45.863with how to go around an obstacle
00:19:46.205 -->
00:19:50.572so proactively avoiding like a tree line or something versus a radar which just
00:19:50.572 -->
00:19:55.946sees it and then you're you're reacting to it and and kind of losing a lot of energy there right and,
00:19:56.631 -->
00:20:00.172you know seeing the tree line stopping and then doing a bit of a Roomba approach
00:20:00.172 -->
00:20:03.292and getting around it, right, versus where you could see it like a human would
00:20:03.292 -->
00:20:09.002with binocular vision, say, okay, I can kind of see the way around it and then start getting that way.
00:20:09.002 -->
00:20:12.742Yeah, that's where it gives you more benefit. But yeah, sorry,
00:20:12.742 -->
00:20:16.153that was kind of a meandering answer. No, that was good.
00:20:16.728 -->
00:20:20.332Maybe you could talk about some of the system integration challenges that you
00:20:20.332 -->
00:20:25.072face when combining the cutting-edge vision hardware with the drone flight control
00:20:25.072 -->
00:20:26.756and communication modules?
00:20:27.395 -->
00:20:31.875Yeah, I think this is like a mostly a compute challenge, as in you only have so much compute.
00:20:32.072 -->
00:20:35.262So a lot of these sensors are more than enough in terms of data.
00:20:35.262 -->
00:20:41.103Like, you know, you could be pulling gigabytes basically off these things per flight, if not more.
00:20:41.963 -->
00:20:46.605So, yeah, you're getting plenty of information. The challenge is for the engineering
00:20:46.605 -->
00:20:50.825team is, yeah, to what we were discussing earlier, what do you throw away?
00:20:50.825 -->
00:20:54.525Like, what do you use that limited compute for that drone every cramp counts,
00:20:54.525 -->
00:20:58.095right? So you can't just have a giant server rack of processing power on this
00:20:58.095 -->
00:21:02.544thing. You have to have, you know, tiny little jets in, which is good, but it's small.
00:21:02.881 -->
00:21:06.115So just deciding, doing the triage of deciding what's the right information
00:21:06.115 -->
00:21:11.021to actually store and compute is the challenge there. It's like a budgetary problem almost.
00:21:11.793 -->
00:21:15.755So do you have, does the software that you provide the customers,
00:21:15.755 -->
00:21:18.635does it have, say, selection boxes.
00:21:19.670 -->
00:21:26.261Of what is needed for each particular application so that they cannot be wasting,
00:21:26.783 -->
00:21:30.922data collection because it's not going to do anything with that data anyway?
00:21:31.224 -->
00:21:33.314So how does that selection happen?
00:21:33.720 -->
00:21:39.231You know, we don't really have a lot of that yet, but that is in the works. You would have,
00:21:40.076 -->
00:21:43.763Like I dropped that menu in our software to your point and it would be,
00:21:44.239 -->
00:21:47.646okay, here's the model that's best for identifying humans. Here's the one for
00:21:47.646 -->
00:21:49.742they use for plants, et cetera, et cetera.
00:21:50.044 -->
00:21:52.526Of course, we'd want to also expose camera settings to people.
00:21:52.526 -->
00:21:54.521So like, you know, what is your, your data rate?
00:21:54.684 -->
00:21:58.416You know, are you limiting the resolution or whatever, if it's a software defined camera system.
00:21:58.782 -->
00:22:03.296So I just try to give the customer more customization without overwhelming them.
00:22:03.296 -->
00:22:07.216Right. Cause most of these operators aren't like these camera vision nerds.
00:22:07.216 -->
00:22:13.596Right. So they need to be explained to things in outcome type of language,
00:22:13.596 -->
00:22:17.656like see human, see plant, see whatever. That's what I was just going to say.
00:22:18.436 -->
00:22:21.636That's honestly what I was just going to say. If you ask somebody what data
00:22:21.636 -->
00:22:26.466rate do you need, do you also tell them if you're looking for a plant, you'll need this?
00:22:26.466 -->
00:22:29.586If you're looking for a human, you'll need this. If you're looking for a fire,
00:22:29.586 -->
00:22:33.476you'll need this. Exactly. I mean, we're going to hide that behind these buttons
00:22:33.916 -->
00:22:35.865that are doing that crunching on the back end.
00:22:36.068 -->
00:22:38.626I mean, there's going to be like a pro selection menu where it's like,
00:22:38.626 -->
00:22:42.413okay, like you can tweak anything you want. We don't guarantee functionality, right?
00:22:42.709 -->
00:22:45.856So that for the power users. But generally for most users, it's going to be,
00:22:45.856 -->
00:22:51.608again, driven by function. And so we'll do all the setting tweaking under the hood. Gotcha. Okay.
00:22:52.113 -->
00:22:57.916So looking ahead, how do you see advances in AI image processing algorithms
00:22:57.916 -->
00:22:59.596and new sensor modalities
00:23:00.008 -->
00:23:05.776influencing the next generation of drone vision systems for OEMs and integrators
00:23:05.776 -->
00:23:07.944and machine vision industries.
00:23:08.309 -->
00:23:12.524I'm just thinking of your 12 years that you have in this industry,
00:23:12.814 -->
00:23:15.589maybe looking at crystal ball for the next 12.
00:23:16.267 -->
00:23:21.816But yeah, so I guess I'll leave with a bit of a hot take. I think AI is,
00:23:21.816 -->
00:23:24.816of course, being overused. I think that's obvious to everybody for a lot of
00:23:24.816 -->
00:23:26.193things that it doesn't need to be used for.
00:23:27.081 -->
00:23:30.888It's not going to change in the drone world either. So you've already seen this
00:23:30.888 -->
00:23:34.685over the years, but even more so now, you're going to see companies trying to apply AI
00:23:35.074 -->
00:23:40.228and relatively expensive in terms of compute models and whatnot to do very mundane
00:23:40.228 -->
00:23:44.958tasks that could be solved with simple linear regression data analysis principles, right?
00:23:44.958 -->
00:23:49.238So not AI at all, but just basically input-output, you know, formulaic stuff.
00:23:49.720 -->
00:23:53.288So I think you're going to see a lot of overuse of AI, which is going to be
00:23:53.288 -->
00:23:55.926really computationally expensive and inefficient.
00:23:56.204 -->
00:23:59.608And therefore the ultimate product that these various companies hypothetically
00:23:59.608 -->
00:24:03.118are selling is not going to work that well because, again, it's a budget.
00:24:03.118 -->
00:24:08.175It's a triage problem. If you're not blowing all of your compute on like relatively
00:24:08.395 -->
00:24:11.348dumb use of AI, you're not going to have anything left over and you're not going
00:24:11.348 -->
00:24:15.148to be a very effective product. So you're going to see this big boom of these
00:24:15.148 -->
00:24:17.688companies promising the world with AI models on their drones.
00:24:17.708 -->
00:24:20.878They're not going to do that much. Then there's going to be some sort of contraction
00:24:20.878 -->
00:24:24.908or consolidation or whatever you want to call it about how they use AI are going
00:24:24.908 -->
00:24:28.728to rise to the top. And hopefully we're the latter, but like we're humble.
00:24:28.728 -->
00:24:31.168And of course, we're learning stuff every day. So we'll try to be better,
00:24:31.168 -->
00:24:32.277just introspect on that.
00:24:32.910 -->
00:24:36.578Terrific. Well, I can't thank you enough for spending a little bit of time with
00:24:36.578 -->
00:24:38.512us today, Arthur. Thanks again.
00:24:38.866 -->
00:24:43.431Until next time, this is Sharon Spielman with Vision Systems Designed. Stay curious.
00:24:44.795 -->
00:24:48.868Well, that's a wrap for this episode of Visions, produced by Endeavor Business
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00:24:51.028Media, a division of Endeavor BTV.
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00:24:54.898Thanks very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's show,
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00:25:15.306Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay focused on your visions.