DRONES

Eyes to the Skies

We just published our guide to drones. It offers an in-depth snapshot of the history, technology, and key players in the drone space, but it can’t provide continuous updates like a newsletter.  

Never fear, this newsletter is here. Emerging Tech Brew sat down with a few drone industry leaders, since we’re always eager to hear more about tech, regulation, suppliers, and market developments happening right now. We’ll be releasing these convos over the next couple of weeks.

Up first: Skydio 

The Redwood City, CA, startup makes and sells autonomous drones. Skydio started out in the consumer game, but has since leaned aggressively into the enterprise and government verticals, including numerous police departments across the US.

“There's a sort of gray transition period from consumer up to enterprise where a lot of commercial drone programs start from the bottoms up,” Skydio CEO Adam Bry told us. “A consumer brings their drone to work and finds interesting use cases for it.”

• He cited DJI, “the dominant manually flown incumbent,” as an example. Their consumer products were repurposed for business applications. 

Manually flown?

Skydio’s secret sauce is its autonomous software. The drones can follow and film you, while continuously sensing their surroundings and avoiding obstacles. “We now have customers out there making all kinds of insane videos that you wouldn't be able to film any other way, like riding a snowmobile alone in the woods.” 

Bry says Skydio has seen “organic pull” from customers all across the board, including energy utilities, local government departments, engineering firms, and construction companies. 

• One use case: Bridge inspections. When you see what the alternative inspection tool, the snooper truck, looks like, you’ll understand how drones could be a safer and easier way for transportation departments to carry out their business. 
• Another one: Skydio and Eagleview, an aerial imaging and data analytics company, will use 5,000 drones for automated roof inspections. 

Geopolitics

DJI dominates the consumer and commercial drone markets. The US government and national-security establishment is increasingly skeptical of the Chinese drone maker. 

“People have realized that these light, small drones that seemed like toys are incredibly powerful tools,” Bry says. “In a lot of places, I think there’s concern about being dependent on Chinese products made by a company that’s beholden to China’s IT policy.” 

• By that, he means a 2017 law that requires companies to hand over data to officials. 

Washington’s pressure campaign to ground DJI drones and its efforts to develop a domestic supply chain have certainly been tailwinds for Skydio.

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DRONES

The 30,000-Ft. View

We wanted to hear Skydio’s take on wider industry trends. Find some excerpts from the convo with Bry below. 

On unsexy use cases: “There's all these massive multi-billion dollar industries that consumers don't interact with that revolve around inspection, data capture, security, monitoring of site areas, and critical infrastructure. That’s where drones are going to be—and already are—deployed widely”. 

On drone delivery: “Delivery gets a disproportionate amount of mindshare” for the average person, because we all receive packages so frequently. “The package showing up at your doorstep [represents] all the hard problems.” The checklist: 

• You need highly reliable autonomy and a five–ten pound payload capacity, which means a 40–50 pound drone, “which means the drone will be very noisy and dangerous.”
• Flight over populated areas means integration into complex airspace. 
• Widespread delivery will be “one of the last” use cases to materialize, Bry predicts. 

The niche use case that’s currently working and economically viable, Bry says, is rural drone delivery of medicine.

On hype management: “Drones are flying under the radar now. There was a lot of hype in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and all the concepts got people excited, but the technology and markets weren’t ready.” Everything is clicking these days: the regulatory picture, autonomy software, maturing markets, and more demand. 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Shell announced a plan to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations worldwide over the next four years, up from 60,000 today. Yes, that Shell. 

Quote: “The Lee family has to reform."—An outside exec to the FT, opining on how Samsung (and its ruling clan) should move forward. 

ICYMI: Nine experts identified the biggest barriers facing algorithms and AI in the first installment of our Demystifying Algorithms series. 

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THREE THINGS WE'RE WATCHING

Today: I will (maybe) watch a rare Texas winter storm through the lens of my flying camera. My drone has its own Instagram; you can follow its adventures here. 

Tomorrow: Palantir Q4 earnings before the market opens. The data mining company’s stock shot up last week after it announced an AI partnership with IBM. Since Palantir’s stock has been a recent favorite of retail traders, we’ll be following along regardless of Q4 results. 

Thursday: NASA’s Perseverance rover is expected to touch down at Jezero Crater on Mars. Follow along here. 

PATENTS ARE A VIRTUE

IBM is the most prolific paperwork filer, receiving the most patents in the US for 28 years running. But you can’t always draw a straight line from intellectual property to successful products. 

One way to monetize your trove is by selling or licensing patents. Last week, Instacart said it acquired 250+ patents from IBM and that the two entered “into a mutual patent cross license.” What kind of patents are changing hands between the two is anyone’s guess…

Elsewhere on the intellectual property beat, Porsche received an EU patent for a retro sports car with butterfly doors and Apple filed a USPTO application related to its mixed reality work. 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• 3D sensor tech: What’s in the lidar pipeline, and what’s hype? 
• Jack Dorsey shares an update on decentralized social media
• Study: Apple Watch could flag potential Covid cases sooner than PCR tests

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