Making a difference in the world of commercial drones

There are people in the drone/UAV industry making a difference with education and safety at the top of their list. Meet Marc Langley, CEO of Airborne Works and speaker at Interdrone. With an electricians background and specializing in Refrigeration, cryogenics, incubators and more, he entered into the world of drones and image mapping. In a mere 4 years he is truly a leader and evangelist of drone technology! A non-profit arm of his company will even donate a drone for a good cause!

Marc led an amazing eye opening breakout session on photogrammetry (the 2D capturing of landscapes and 3D rendering) for the EPA that also included infrared maps to trace water temperatures that would reveal areas of nitrate concentration, an indicator of harmful contaminants enetering a waterway through a cranberry farm. It was a perfect example that set the tone of his lecture. I for one walked away excited about this field and instead of being fearful to get out there and do it I became enthusiastic! Just another benefit of attending a well focused trade show like Interdrone!

I had a good laugh with Marc at the end of our interview and I mentioned some drone carnage, to quote Marc  "You're not a pilot unless you've lost a drone or two! " to which he confessed losing 2 in one day and I could relate! True words of encouragement despite loss of gear in this field of work. So get out there and fly and dive into the amazing world of drone tech...

INTERDRONE 2019 Celebrates 5 years for a good reason

Own a drone? Thinking of breaking into the vast and exponentially growing commercial market space? Search and Rescue, Law Enforcement, 1st Responders, trying to get drone programs started in your city? Construction, Agriculture? Science, Researcher, Innovator., Cinematographer, photographer...

 I can keep going here... if any of the above match your interests then INTERDRONE 2019 is a must conference for you to attend! Experts from all fields, FAA officials, the top of the field have all arrived at Interdrone ready to educate you in your field of choice. From building, programming, schooling, licensing, rules and safety, flying, mapping, cinematography you name it and you'll find that there's a session waiting for you! It's the best jump start to get into this market space now.

I am not affiliated nor am I being paid by the promoters of Interdrone but I am speaking as one of you. The amount of tradeshows with breakout sessions is startling and confusing when it comes to drone/UAV technology lately. You can do the research but I can tell you this....Interdrone is a highly focused event and it covers all aspects of this new industry and in my book this show is now a must see event.

"Is my DJI drone data being stored in China?" DJI's Romeo Durscher answers.

LIVE FROM INTERDRONE 2019
So your drone keeps insisting over and over again whether or not you would like to "SYNCHRONIZE YOUR DATA!" What does that mean? Am I to grant DJI rights to DJI to store the data from all of my flights? Big brother watching? All my data is going to China, where DJI is headquartered?


If you're a commercial drone operator the odds are you need to select YES , SYNCHRONIZE MY DATA, otherwise you will be unable to get the critical data needed for mapping, photogrammetry and more image type data collection and processing.



So tonight I had the opportunity to discuss this with Romeo Durscher of DJI who had just delivered a keynote address at Interdrone. Romeo explained this widespread misconception by stating that all the data goes into the Cloud, where it is simply stored for retieval by it's owner and never leaves the USA. Romeo also stated that DJI could be doing a better job assuring it's customer base that their data is indeed safe and not being used by any foreign power.  So I guess we can all relax and breathe a sigh of relief that there will be no future invasion based on complete mapping details of the contiguous 50 states from millions of USA based DJI drones!  Hey how do we know AMAZON isn't up to no good... to be continued


see related article: https://www.cnet.com/news/dji-denies-sending-drone-data-to-china/