droney. they are likely to be very old news -- taken by eric, one of the best drone photographers. we're just getting started on the drone journey. we have amazing power here, so let's get going. , -- inchill fetching church hill >> i am chris anderson, the ceo of 3d robotics. i was the editor of wired magazine for more than a decade. i went from the editor of the magazine to the ceo of an aerospace company. let's say it -- back in the immediate days i didn't have to run my own factory and now i do. >> my name is eric cheng, i am the director of aerial imaging.

what is on path and technology and i the computer science degree. i ended up being a photographer doing underwater pictures. i have been stuck back into technology recently. >> i am jonathan downey, the founder and ceo of airware. i started at boeing working on helicopter systems. i was briefly an airline pilot. i started airware to address some problems that i saw as an undergrad at m.i.t. in developing drones for specific applications. we develop platform of software and hardward that power drones.

one thing we don't do is actually build the drones ourselves. >> i am the founder and ceo of skycatch. we build fully economist ground robots for collecting data. some of our clients use these robots to collected all across their job sites. my goal is to help all of these companies with logistics. help them optimize process and safety. i am very thankful to be here. >> first question is for chris -- where are we today with the underlying technologies that make these possible and where is it heading? >> we should define what a drone is.

we will disagree about the definitions. i would define them as being aircraft capable of economy which is the -- autonomy which is they can fly by themselves. there can be pilots if you want. by in large, they do jobs that are dull, dirty, or dangerous without human intervention. these are both robots but they look like they are not. incredibly intelligent compared to where things were a few decades ago. the reason this is possible, the reason these flying robots cost less than a thousand dollars is thanks to the innovations in our phones. i call these the dividends of the smartphone wars but they use the same components, the same sensors, similar gps, similar cameras. what is going on on your phones with the processors and supercomputers they are essentially running the batteries -- the apples and

googles of the world. these components are put into different packages which can do things which are essentially -- were essentially a possible -- impossible five years ago. now it is $1000. >> what are the advances you have seen? >> the ability for these things to be stable in spaces on the photographers have been looking for for a long time. everybody that has had a gopro try to get that hero shot of themselves that they think will make them look cool. this is the extension. you let go of the pole and the camera flies away. a lot of these things are happening every week. there's a new development or company try to do something like that.

for the creative pursuit, these things are opening up something that we could not really -- we dreamed about. i dreamed about this 10 years ago and thought if only i could have a flying camera and that would help. >> for all of human history, we've been basically stuck at eye level. for the first time in history, we can see the world the birds do without having to be in the air which is dangerous. having the skills of flying something, cameras can be positioned arbitrarily. now that you have the boom of spielberg, the crane of a spielberg for free, what are you going to do with it? >> you are attacking this space in a different way, david. why are you going off to the space you are going after specifically? >> photography is a very interesting application. at airware we believe drones

will be used for such a wide variety of different applications. everything from agriculture to infrastructure inspection. land management, poaching operations. we really think that to address such a wide variety after applications, you need a platform so that companies that are developing drones for specific applications are not either leveraging a black box solution that they cannot many be -- meaningfully expand or they don't have to do it all from scratch and develop all of that themselves. they can focus on the pieces of hardware and software that really meant to be differentiated for their application. that is what we are building a airware. >> christian, you are addressing a number of challenges in space but specifically battery technology is something you are doing unique things around. >> our vision is not as exciting as some of the stuff that these

guys are doing in terms of filming kite surfers and all the cool stuff. we work with miners and construction people. we tried to figure out how to make their jobs more efficient and productive. so, in the early days, i spent a lot of time in the field trying to find out if this is useful to them. after a lot of weeks and months, i discovered that it was. i ran into a couple of people. one superintendent once said at any given point at this construction site, there is at least 100 questions people have today that can be answered just by seeing something. if they see that, they can answer that and move forward. basically, what he was saying is that he can shave days off construction. that was really what motivated me to start the company. our biggest challenges today in technology that we are solving with, you know, with these

partners is basically completely automating the experience of the uav. making it fully upon us when it -- fully autonomous when it lands so that you are not involved in the process. >> battery technology -- how long can a drone fly for with a battery? >> we spent a lot of time optimizing how much electricity was sent to the motors. we optimized our drones for the size that props the motors so we get about 35 minutes of high winds time in the air. our average missions are about five to 10 minutes and cover a large amount of area. the idea behind swapping the batteries because batteries have not evolved in ages. it is not going to evolve anytime soon. some of the companies are doing really interesting things with

batteries which haven't been tested. they haven't really gone through the whole rigors of testing to make sure the battery is safe. right now, most of us are buying batteries that have been tested at great companies and they have been mass-produced for hobbyists. >> battery technology is one of the things that obviously is being done. as you look out over the next few years, the pace of development seems to be so rapid that the moment. what do you guys look at as the next wave of development that will enable this? >> this weekend, three follow me projects launched. follow me is one of these things that the drone follows you. you are biking, skiing, whatever and these drones state 30

feet back and up and keeps the camera focused on you and get that perfect cinematic hollywood feel. on one level, that is exactly what the youtube generation wants. it looks incredibly complex. it is using gps and image recognition and creatively try to figure out what the right angle is. looking at the sun and the shadows. this was science fiction a few years ago. this was the droid you are looking for, right? just this weekend, there were three projects that launched and one of them raised half $1 million in one day. that was just today. tomorrow, this mapping function we are talking about -- what christian is doing is this notion of construction. construction is arguably the number two industry in the world.

agriculture is number one. what this $300 helicopter can do is a one button mapper. it does circles around the construction site, takes pictures which get sent to the cloud, and creates a 3-d model. then that model could step onto the model of the engineering company is already doing. now, you get -- you are the client. you want to know what is going on with the construction site. you can either drive there or watch on the cloud, watch your building. snapped onto the building you approved and watch it build up digitally, perfectly aligned. there is no bs. you have ground truth or air truth, if you will. that is a $300 helicopter that is doing that. just imagine what will happen in another five years. >> you are talking about

technology that was deployed on the drone. you are not talking about the drone itself. in terms of the actual mechanics of the drone, are we going to see much development or have we reached the point where -- >> right now, we're using a go pro. eric is using custom cameras that is lighter and smaller. we are working towards bringing the sensors down. we control the camera, we control the gimbal, you can control the communications link. you can then control the cloud and the processors and these huge render farms. the drone itself is just a vector to capture data and transmit it to the cloud. >> what are you think about?

>> the internet enabled a lot of this drone activity as well. we are sharing all of this data through the internet so everything gets scanned through at the same time. going back to what chris said, a lot of it came from the smartphones. all of that innovation allowed for all these pieces to be affordable. >> you mentioned the internet and eric has posted the dronie on instagram. you can obviously retweet it. one of the other areas of the peace dividend of development we are seeing online is the extensive use of open-source software, but also you are open sourcing the hardware designs. although you are in separate companies, you seem to be collaborating around the common code and design. >> one area i have a different perspective. the open-source projects are exciting. it is what got me into the

space. as the number of applications broaden and as these drones are going to be deployed in front of people's homes and fly over people's heads, i think safety and reliability will become more and more paramount in this industry. i think that is an area that open source is likely to struggle in. if we look at the models that most people use on their phones, most of the applications, specific software, the features that all of the startup companies are building their business models around is developing the apps themselves less around getting into and modifying the android kernel. >> i know you've been using some of this open-source code. >> i'm using for robotic source. we are working closely with them to make it fully economists -- fully autonomous.

we have worked with them on some -- a vast community people working on software so it is easy to get axes the people working in different parts of the source code. we basically could not afford to do that and work on autopilot. having that available to us was extremely helpful. >> chris, what was the thinking going on that route? >> the arc of history is pretty clear. linux is the most secure operating system. there was a reason why the internet runs on when asked and not window -- linux and not windows. this is not our drone. this is the chinese drone made by a company connected to -- they improved it. it is a derivative design. the improved upon it.

we have 20 years of open-source experience. if you're using android, chrome, or firefox, you get it. open innovation -- i think this is the silicon valley way. we have our own drones out there which we would like you to buy, but if you like to have something cheaper, here it is. it works great and we did nothing to make it happen. we just put the code out there and the world used it. >> let's shift gears. i think when we are outside watching the training being done and watching chris do his mapping exercise, i was slightly stunned. by the skill it takes. you guys are the professionals and i know there are some people from accenture in this space. it takes quite a while to pilot these things.

how difficult is it to learn to fly one of these things and to control them? >> you know how to push a button? >> i asked eric first. >> let me talk about how most people are using it today. they are autonomous in some ways. there is high-level directions. we're going to watch the command set go up higher and higher as the technology improves. so, what most people are experienced now it is very easy to put this in the air and do something simple. the rest of it unfortunately is totally based on your personality. if you are very careful and meticulous and you have a goal and you know how to get there, you will probably be very successful immediately.

maybe you race motorcycles on the weekend, you may end up crashing it because if you are piloting it you need to have haptic feedback. you need to control to respond in a way that lets you feel like you are connected to the device. if i have flown this phantom without touching the app, that is fulfilling because it actually goes there. i'm controlling the camera and trying to be creative in that way so i think there's always going to be that component of integrated space of someone who is directing the sensors around in an interesting way. i think autonomy is always going to be tied to some amount of manual interaction and that could be perhaps programmed in. i could imagine a director telling it where to go and having someone else push the button.

you do that 20 times, it is the same every time. it is a complicated question. they are very easy to use, but to do something at a very high level with them takes a bit of skill. >> christian, you are approaching a more autonomous approach. >> our focus has always been the data. we're using these tools to get the data fast, retrieve it fast from different places and the actually able to allocate these robots in places that conditions are very bad. it is really cold or really hot. most of our projects are not very interesting. it is extremely valuable to them to be able to have something that gives them visibility and keeps them safe or creates measurements on a stockpile where they usually send people on top of them. in terms of our technology, we

used to tell investors it is almost like in a world where you have no bikes and we basically have photographers that need to go around a construction site really fast, we created a bike for them to get on it and go around. our focus is not a bike, it is the data that is coming back. through creating the bike, we created these products to create handles so -- our focus is already been a data. >> in your platform, you are looking at controlling multiple drones. how is that playing out? >> i think the level of autonomy is going to be related to how these come out.

people who have operated in these for thousands or hundreds of thousands of flight hours, all of that is in the military. a very significant portion of their losses are all related to pilate and operator error. as we develop the software to make the aircraft highly autonomous and put things like -- somebody can create a mission and stay on the mission and maybe someone entirely different is going to operate the vehicle by driving their van out there and flying the vehicle. a generation of analytics and insight may happen in the lily differently -- may happen completely differently. that is what is going to make the system more safer to operate as well as things that are in development and the development of

algorithms that take into account where other vehicles are located. at think those are areas that we are working on. >> that is something on everyone's mind -- how to solve that very efficiently without using a lot of power. >> you are actually doing something there. >> i am not going to pitch accenture tonight. >> ok. >> there are some interesting demonstrations and examples where we are working with a variety of different platforms. i look at a control like that and don't really know how it works. as you look at this of all thing, will we have the get certified? is it like getting a license to drive a car? >> you always needed to have a certification to be a hobbyist. i was certified. i think all of you heavily certify hobbyists. today, it has gone away.

you don't have to have the certification. before you go to a certain spot and fly and now you can fly anywhere. jonathan had a really good point. i think the faa should establish something where the force people to set up a certification where you say in a year from now, we will require everyone to be certified if you want to fly drones. that will keep people away from doing crazy things. >> we should expect the faa is going to look at certification in two ways which of the same two ways they looked at certification of manned aircraft and operations of manned aircraft which is certification at the level of what is essentially a director of operations at a company was operating drones. this is the person that is responsible for everything that happens before the drone takes off. training of pilots and operators, maintenance of the vehicles, putting the right processes in place to make sure when that aircraft takes off, it is safe and reliable in the

person who was responsible for operating it will operated in a safe way. the second piece of that is the actual operator of the vehicle themselves, they would need to be trained, certified, licensed in a way where that person knows the responsibility that is in their hands even if it is the case of the aircraft that is fully autonomous and what is in their hands is actually nothing but air. somebody will be the responsible party for operating aircraft's in a certain area. i think the other interesting party that will be a piece of the puzzle is insurance companies themselves right now. about one in a hundred companies that is seeking insurance to operate drone aircrafts is able to get that insurance underwritten. the providers and the underwriters of the insurance are going to play a key role as well in establishing what some of the procedures, how some of the aircraft are designed, the

software that is powering them. that will enable and determine how and where these aircraft can be used and for what purpose. >> at risk of being a little -- really? this? this costs $299. you need certification to use this? children use it. do you think the faa will require this? another one is coming out in november and will weigh about a pound. it will be the hot toy. it will be fully autonomous. it will be a toy under the christmas tree. faa certification? >> i know the channel is consumer drones. i'm happy to distend the focus. a lot of the focus is different. some can be addressed with kind

of a very small camera from your cell phone. there are other applications that require carrying larger equipment, larger camera systems, carrying of systems that are actually taking air into the aircraft itself. doing analysis like air quality and looking for particulates. there are applications where data there is a wide variety about locations. the absolute minimum size of the aircraft is two pounds or more. they are definitely regulated. one of our earlier operators regulate in france. they have the most mature regulations as well is probably the most mature commercial drone industry in france right now. all of it is regulated. it is a very good process in place in which drones can submit paperwork and have it faxed.

they can do that within 24 to 40 hours prior to flying the drones. >> what is the status of regulation in the states? >> our number one priority is safety. everybody agrees. the faa is also focused on safety. i believe they are not equipped today to deal with this sort of challenge. obviously, we have certification, getting law enforcement involved, some sort of technology that detects these guys flying around so you know how high they are flying. it will be a very challenging thing to tackle. i think the faa will have to step back and collaborate with -- >> we've seen this picture before. there were telecoms and the telephone companies were regulated. but computers were not and then

they were connected. then lans were connected and that is the internet and now we don't know how the regulated. same thing with personal computers. i think what we see us time and time again you see white spaces. the world says, oh well, 2.4 gigahertz, it is not wi-fi, you cannot possibly destroy the phone networks. we do amazing things with wi-fi. gary knows better than anybody. the silicon valley model is to take the under the radar, the grassroots, and add more functionality. under two pounds, you can do amazing things under two pounds. they could have radar, sonar, all the atmospheric detection. if two pounds is the limit, fine, we will do it under two pounds.

>> that is arbitrary. on both sides of these products, you can pretty much run forever and see products on both sides. i started a project that lets you control a paper airplane with my phone. will not be regulated? it's possible will probably not. where is that line drawn? you will see hundreds of products under whatever that arbitrary line is. one is the weight in capability of the aircraft and the other is commercial use versus hobby. hobby -- i am not certified because i came to the game much later. what i understand it is a voluntary guideline. it has nothing to do with what is legal. it has to do with what the users -- the rules in which the users are willing to adhere to. that is what we're looking for. a set of guidelines that are perhaps voluntarily adhered to by this community.

the rest of it is the message that these things are here and are not going to go away and wait to be responsible. >> i remember i used to fly back in 1984 -- i'm not that old. used to be an engine you put gas in them. it used to be a small community. not like today where everybody is a hobbyist and everybody can buy a drone. back in the day, everybody knew each other typically. everyone got the same news, same updates, things were not shared on facebook or twitter. things changed grammatically when it comes to the guidelines they put together way back when. it doesn't fit the landscape today. >> i funded the paper airplane

app. i don't imagine that will be regulated. can we turn to cameras? how is that evolving? what is going to be possible? >> if you were to buy one of these a year ago, you would buy something that would carry an existing camera. in many cases, the gopro. this product, this is the phantom 2. you notice it has what looks like a lens on a stabilizer. this was the first product in this space that really -- we decided to split the camera and to stabilize and unstabilized portions. there is no reason to stabilize a button that is used on land. what you want is a very, very robust, stable sensor and lens.

i have been flying these and other ones that carry bigger cameras for a while now. i much prefer the way these handle. luckily, a camera is a camera and they all have the same parts. if you take away the parts that are required for use when you're holding in your hands, it is still a camera with the same capabilities. you just control it from another device. these cameras are going to hop on the same curve the normal cameras are on. we know that gopros will have a high frame rate really soon. it is going to happen this year. >> will the cameras -- two, one with a separate camera and another with an integrated camera. how will that evolve? >> i don't feel like a separate camera has real-life in this game because you cannot do

anything with it. yes, they're opening up bluetooth and cables to let you control things but ours is fundamentally designed to let you control it like the thing you are caring it with your hand or the sensor. >> they are doing a different approach on camera technology? >> both of these are mechanical stabilizers. they have these motors and gimbles and sensors. with the next generation topped chopper, it is digitally stabilized. you can put a fish eye lens in front of it and movies were -- move these rectangle captures without any of the weight or complexity. it looks like a lens. as a result, because you are reducing the complexity, the copter is smaller.

it is safer and cheaper. it is probably not good enough for the kind of cinematography you do. >> it will be. >> weight is absolutely critical. >> the fastest route to safety is the weight. if these things are done, a dragonfly sized. regulatory question goes away at that point. these can't possibly hurt anything. >> on the ski slopes, we see people wearing the go pros. when will we see people with their own personal drones? >> next week. what you will see is one follow the skier into a tree. none of these systems have any avoidance technology. my response was not entirely positive.

i love that they exist but it is negative because i feel like the people who buy them and use them will be disappointed because they are expecting magic. none of the video shot was shot with products that actually follow you. they were shot with piloted projects. if you are on the ocean and on a yacht, that will be a great application but in the real world on land, you things that pick up. the question of how you retrieve them. you have to time your run pretty well so that you are at the bottom, you still have battery life so that it will come back to you. maybe these things will be like rocks in the future. >> the beautiful thing about it is there a lot more people thinking about it today. smart people are trying to solve that than a year ago. they're going to be a lot more people sobbing as a year from now. it will get to a point where it

is extremely reliable. i talked to a company trying to figure out how to collaborate and solve this. >> let's go to the commercial use of drones. christian, you have given some examples. where is the in for the technology? where it is agreed value for commercial organizations? >> this is my own opinion. i think this is something chris said. we are going through this phase that the attention is the drone itself. just like the computer era, everyone is focused on the computer. then they focus on the operating system. then what software applications. that is going to go away. it will be more focused on what practical things of how people

are using or extracting out of these drones. that is going to be all about these really cool stuff that people are doing with drones that are practical, adding value. in the future -- i read an article about how they plan on using drones on mars or the moon to map mars and figure out of the kaput agenda engine on it -- that they could put a jet engine on it. we have been able to get so far and just a little about of time. five years and now, all of this innovation will make it smaller, cheaper, more reliable. the battery will be far more reliable. the opportunities are incredible. we had someone ask us if we can build a drone work cleaning windows and high-rises.

people are creative out there. people building these applications can provide for these rare use cases people are coming up with. >> some of the examples you give are along with improved safety, give workers less risk and increasing productivity so you get straight to what you need to do and not worry about the safety. some of these cases -- >> for us, we are using tools these guys are building to collect the data. we are teaching all these industries how to use the data. we spend -- some of the projects we're working on are fascinating. we sit down with construction workers everyday and they use images on the screen and draw circles on top of it. they print them out. we have 200 people using our images at these very incredible sites. they turn around.

if someone lost something in the middle of the field, we can launch the drone and create a new map and able to find this one item they were looking for just by looking at hi-res images. that is collection of data and being able to see things right away. we want to go beyond that when it comes to data. we want to detect things on the ground, alert people via sms messages. construction sites for three years, that may analyze the area to pinpoint the areas to improve on. all of those things are going to be tracked. two weeks ago, we had a construction site where they found a stockpile and the contractor came back to recharge them for the stockpile. they were able to use the images to say you took this pile away and then brought it back.

they were able to catch those guys and recharge them. they fired them but that is the accountability that does not exist today. >> different sensors of being attached to these devices. the mapping clearly was not being done. >> it was. it was only a gopro. software does amazing things. the big picture here is that we like many other industries. we have the ability now with the sensors and cameras and satellites and camera phones, we have the ability to now measure the world around us. bring this into the internet and cloud and start to make sense of it. agriculture is a great example. you plant, you wait six months and you hope for the best.

we don't know what is going on because forms are too big. we can't walk the fields anymore. what if you could digitize farms? what if you close a loop? what if we could figure out we don't have the spray pesticides that because we don't have any past infection -- pes infection. we know that because we digitize the world. that is one example. >> let me ask a question. jeff bezos when he was talking about the drone delivery of amazon said that it will be five years out from becoming a reality. why? what is going to happen and change? >> safetywise, there are so may things they have not thought about. you cannot have it flying into your front yard with kids around. chris and i talked about this.

a lot of things these guys and to think about before you go into that world. >> there is a lot of technical challenge that comes into play between delivering something from point a to point b and point a and point b are always the same to delivering something from point a to maybe thousands of amazon lockers to delivering from point a to everyone's household, including apartments and homes and anywhere else people may be asking for deliveries. the broad scope of the picture is likely far, much farther than five years out. it may in some cases never be possible from a regulatory standpoint. maybe applications where something's being delivered from a known area to a known area i think are some of the applications of delivery we would see first. some of our early data customers or researchers at m.i.t.

demonstrates the livery -- the delivery in southeast asia with a place where delivering two is a known quantity. the case is a life-saving scenario so there is a high motivation to make sure this happens. >> working with autopilots, knowing your weight, you cannot have that as a variable be his accommodate the autopilot. it needs to be a fixed weight in order for it to be efficient. >> you mentioned the social good aspect of drones. i would be interested to hear more about those examples were drones are doing social good. >> we are building a platform that is focused not on a single vertical application but all at the same time brought it onto a lot of applications. what we did is we took a wall and started writing all of the different things on the wall that we thought drones will be used for. we came up with a lot of common commercial ones that we talked

about here. we also had a section of the wall where he wanted to come up with some of the things we hope and we wanted to see drones really used for and that is where we came up with things like antipoaching operations, wildlife conservation, area of delivery of vaccines and medicine. those are examples we have been involved in. >> any other -- >> one of the interesting things we got the early days was walmart. they asked us if -- this is something they publicly talk about. the use of satellite imagery to figure out how many people go to stores but they wanted to take a step farther and find out how many people go to the stores based on their ad campaigns or their commercials on tv. being able to map that and correlate that -- 30 people

showed up in the store globally and regionally is huge. another person was talking about the satellite company how they are selling imagery around all the manufacturing plants in china where they can tell if they are manufacturing a new apple phone because they see the trucks going in and out. they are selling this data to different people. >> we have five minutes before we will go to q&a. let's talk about where the money is. i've seen predictions by someone whose company is in the audience tonight around the drone market for 2025. driving $100 billion of economic value. the faa saying in a couple of years there will be 10,000 drones.

i'm wondering why they're coming out with the number so low. where is the value today? how is it going to be volvo over time -- to evolve over time? >> it starts with hardware and then becomes data. right now, these things are basically a way to get sensors in the sky. what you do is a big opportunity. we are essentially a software company. we are very happy to have other people make the hardware. at the end of the day, no one cares about the drone, they care about what he can do. whether that is pure data -- it's about the cloud service. >> fast forward with these guys are doing which is enabling the public to do what uber did for anyone to be a driver.

you can be an agent and provide services to people you couldn't do before. it could be a a search and rescue person with a drone and utilize these drones to find people with the data. the amount of things that will show up in the next three or five years will be on a manageable today. -- unimaginable today. >> and will not go to the hardware space? >> satellites are a prece dent. climate corporation said they would take the satellite data and give it to farmers but they didn't know what they would do. they went back to ask the farmers what they wanted. the answer was they have this variability in their crops and they wanted cheaper crop insurance. they turned it to an analysis

that allowed them to generate better crop insurance and became an insurance company and sold for a billion dollars. >> i cannot wait until the day when drones are boring. i've been using these basically every day for a number of years. i still get excited because they fly, but it is just a tool. i am not thinking about the drone anymore, i am thinking about what i am doing with it. i don't care about it. it is a thing that can take a camera or a sensor somewhere. it changes a little bit. if you like to do flips and stuff, the technology is changing fast enough so you are always interested in what is coming out. i am interested in flying longer, flying more safely, and getting a better picture out of it. i don't think about other features. >> you see that would journalists as well. >> this is about robotics in general. the moment it works, it is a

dishwasher. i cannot wait for these things to serve as dishwashers. who cares? who cares how it flies? it flies. discuss. >> the cost of the hardware is coming down every so many months. we have the viewpoint that just consider the cost of the card -- of the hardware free. if the hardware was free tomorrow where is the value is in the software and software specifically that requires fewer people on the ground operating the aircraft that software that enables you to operate them in an autonomous way. it lowers the risk associated with using the technology. software that allows you to be compliant with any regulations and what the insurance requirements are.

software and then, of course, the purpose of all the software. these big giant multinational companies are all interested in using drones. they are not actually interested in using it at all. they're interested in the data they could collect by using drones. it is just one type of data collection mechanism and in many cases, these companies have many ways to get the data but they are doing it from the ground where it is usually overly costly, dangerous, or very time intensive to do so. it could be decreased by doing it on the air. >> let's go to the q&a. start over here. >> first, is there any definitive website or publication where all drone people go periodically?

for example, if someone wanted to issue a certain type of drone. there is a new drum company every week so they would you know when to send it to so they would post it there. how would the new faa rules be made? would there be proposed rulemaking? for example, having a two pound limit on drones to me is kind of dumb because you can get killed by a one pound drone falling out of the sky. what would make sense to me is the harm factor. what is its terminal velocity determined by its hardness? a 20 pound styrofoam drone would do less. >> that is what france is doing. i think one of the biggest problems in the united states is that congress mandated that the faa come out with regulations

and from the onset said one of the dividing point is 55 pounds. it is unfortunate. they should've said to the faa, you come up with regulations that you think are appropriate and the faa would've likely look at this problem and say 55 pounds does not make sense as a dividing line. what may make sense is to pounds or five pounds or certain amount of kinetic energy. in other countries like france, they have dividing lines at much lower weight classes than 55 pounds. >> there is the manned airspace territory. then there is the unmanned. above a thousand feet, his plane collisions. what would take on a jetliner? 55 pounds would deftly take one down. two pounds is bird sized. if a jet engine injected this, would this be a terrible thing?

that should be the limit. below 1000 feet, you're talking about running into power lines and children. there you are talking about personal safety. i don't want to pound landing on my head which is why of what life is down to six ounces. >> the other thing is manned helicopter flights including search-and-rescue, police, as well as flights. they're almost always below 1000 feet. helicopters are more efficient. especially in agriculture, cropdusting within the last two years has already been multiple incidences of small unmanned aircraft nearly colliding with cropduster aircraft. the two pound aircraft is a large obstacle to hit at 70 miles brower in a plane the only ways a thousand pounds. >> 83 feet happens to be a number arbitrarily in the law.

83 feet was some chicken farmer back in world war ii decided that airplane flying below 83 feet was scaring his chickens. tell me what the number is. 6 pounds, 83 feet. whenever. -- what ever. >> there was a committee called rtch. >> the question is how will the world be made? -- the question is how will the rules be made? >> several industry companies that are involved with coming up with part of the process and proposed rules. the faa's opposed to release the proposal of the rules will be which will not take effect until next year and that is for smaller unmanned aircraft. >> the other question was what is the forum that you go to?

>> we sit on the standards committee which is tasked with creating rules. what are the standards for your aircraft, software have to comply with? >> to the next question? >> patrick is here. he collects a lot of breaking news about this space. unfortunately, in the consumer space, if you're interested in just hobby flying, you have to go to the forums and they are not that friendly. >> the head of the fpa talks about the challenges of setting up the laws. one of the biggest challenges -- we have a lot of relationships with the faa -- it is working with law enforcement and cities.

how are they going to enforce these laws? it becomes extremely expensive when you start thinking about having these guys fly around and police having to be responsible for enforcing these things. you will see courts filled up with people claiming they didn't break the laws. -- it is definitely a big challenge on that and. we are attacking the private space area where a lot of these companies we are working with have insurance for things falling out of the sky. have hardhats. --re are massive companies they arehaving -- proactive that working with the faa to figure out a plan of attack with them rather than .rying to circumvent them guest: chris, you made a great

comment. we're digitizing the world. we are digitizing the world. my question to the panel is about privacy and ownership. which is what happens when i digitize my neighbor or what happens when i digitize my competitors. how do you look at that going forward? >> i get this question a lot. a lot of people are not aware that the faa -- flying over your neighbor's backyard is illegal. it is banned by faa regulations. you can't fly over populated areas. yourdy flying over backyard is essentially an faa violation subject to a cease and $10,000 fine. privacy aside -- privacy is incredibly fragmented. it varies from region to region.

town legislative processes right now trying to figure out -- privacy is a moving target thanks to traffic cameras and facebook and camera phones. in the united states where we don't have a monolithic privacy rule as they have in europe, it will be based more on safety. we don't want that thing flying over our backyard. whether it's taking pictures were not. -- pictures or not. existingis a lot of law in the space as well around privacy. flying over your neighbors yard and taking pictures is actually more of a civil case then it will be a criminal case. or a case where the faa needs to be involved at all. >> a lot people don't know what these are yet and they don't do what cameras they carry. they assume if they can see one, it can see you. in a resultingls

picture. a guy was attacked by a woman on a public beach because he was flying one and he caught it on video. it was vertical video. was attacked because she said he was a pervert he posted the footage he got them a which is very high-level. like looking in the grand canyon. what thatt understand thing was an just to attack him for it instead. >> one of the things people don't think about until they see them -- you can put your camera phone and take a picture of your neighbor and they have no idea. you fly one of these buzzing things of your head and they totally know. >> next question. >> are you getting any pushback from industries that could potentially be disrupted? if i make my business out of operating a crane camera or doing helicopter shots for

movies, would i be looking at this as rather threatening? >> >> in many of the industries they are looking at this technology as a tool and something complementary to the existing way they are doing it. something that will increase total market size. companies doing existing power line inspections by manned helicopter are very excited about adopting this technology so they can actually do some of the miles of inspection of powerline that are not astronomical to do today with manned helicopter with drone. >> with cinematography -- >> is an increasing possibility. the space is bigger, and you have existing players. there might be a good reason for putting a big helicopter in the air. there are many good reasons. the case of hollywood, they have already been using these. when you see aerial shots in

movies, chances are they were not taken by helicopter. they were probably taken by a drone. they have been under the radar because you are not allowed to do it commercially according to the faa. but now that is starting to change. we see conversations between hollywood and the faa and some exceptions to the rule. >> unlike most robotics, which you think about replacing jobs, these create jobs. it is hard right now to get cameras in the sky. you need trained pilots, certification. so these guys are largely empty. it's not like these are replacing pilots. they are doing jobs that are not being done. >> my own experience, we were working with uc davis. we went to one of their farms and we were introduced to the

farmer. he did not like us at all. and the professor basically introduced us and said, we want to try out this new technology. this will help automate the process of agriculture. he was completely opposed to using it. he was like, i walk my farms. i don't use these tools. the funny thing, we went ahead and flew the drone around, got imagery, and we were using -- we let him see with the drone was eating and let him fly with us. he refused to do it. do you want to try them on? the professor was fascinated. he finally agreed and said, all right, i will put them on. he put them on and said -- can you fly to the left a little bit, to the right, can you go forward? that was beautiful. you always need someone to analyze the data. that is what he was doing. he no longer has to walk, but he can still analyze the data using these tools. >> next question?

>> i have heard about facebook's new ngo. and they want to provide internet signal everywhere. to remote places. what is the biggest challenge you see here for facebook, to provide internet with drones, internet signal? >> one of the big challenges is flying at such a high altitude. the way they are proposing doing this is with solar powered aircraft at 70,000 feet. the benefit is that controlled airspace ends at 60,000 feet. the challenging part is to actually get up to 70,000 feet and operate, where there is very little air and where you need an incredibly light aircraft, which is in most cases not incredibly sturdy. but you have to fly through all the other layers of airspace to get up there. that is a difficult challenge. that is an altitude that is

nearing space, so you have to harden the electronics and software to deal with things like radiation. >> after dinner, you were talking about the fundamental technology. similar to the technology of satellites. >> one thing we think a lot about, are we competing with satellite? the microsats, between elon musk and planet labs, map box, just bought by google, we saw this before. 15 years ago it was satellite phones versus cell phones. you put 64 satellites out there and cover the world. why would you put cell phone towers every three miles? that is crazy, so expensive. well, we saw how that ended up. it turned out the higher bandwidth and resolution of the terrestrial network beat the reach of the satellite network.

right now, these things have 100 times better resolution than satellites. and they are under the clouds, the data is free, and you can get access to the skies. but satellites are getting better. they're getting cheaper. i think this will be one of those kind of epic battles, satellites versus drones. >> you can get consistent coverage with technology like that. >> one thing i want to answer, the question about facebook. getting social networks interested in flying things is phenomenal. it helps all of us. just like the innovations that got everyone excited, helped everybody. i think that ambitious projects like that are fascinating. challenging? absolutely. a lot of the stories out there, specifically on that technology, i don't think -- none of it has

been tested, necessarily, but at least we are thinking big. and i think that is huge, being able to get there. satellite companies -- i think that will happen. it is becoming easier and easier. flying under the clouds. it is just going to happen. >> next question. >> whether analyzing a field in agriculture or photography, what types of interactions do you guys see of drones with nature? a bird landing on the drone, colliding with it? tell us about your experience. >> i am smiling because i wrote an article that talked about my 15 friends that lost phantoms the month after i flew over water and had the video go viral.

many protected areas have over flight restrictions. you are not supposed to fly over them at low altitude anyway, mostly for nesting birds and other wildlife. i have flown over a lot of wildlife. i find that for the most part these things are completely ignored. they don't know what they are. if it is a big animal, these things are small. if you are flying over a whale, which i have not done. a lot of people will be listening to this. there are a lot of rules against these things in areas. bird strikes are a factor. if you can design these things so they are resistant to being struck by things. accidents can absolutely happen. >> regarding birds in particular, the copter is not a problem but the fixed-wings are perceived as intrusions into territorial spaces by birds of

prey. hawks often attack planes. i can tell you, the hawks win. anything that flies will investigate these things. birds usually just fly away from these things. some elephants have been afraid of them because they sound like bees and elephants don't like bees. you have to look at each animal and see how it might respond, but mostly it is looking at where you are flying to determine if you should be flying there. >> we had a big company coming to us when we were basically saying we were about data. multiple companies came to us asking -- it makes me believe this will be a massive space. this company basically wanted to hire us to dissuade birds away from these turbines.

and the contract and the deal was enough for us to say, let's try it out. we did a test. extremely challenging. you are trying to keep birds away from these turbines. birds get used to you. [laughter] they get scared first, but they get used to you and go right past it. it is sort of -- as you put more of these things in the air i think birds are just going to get used to these things flying around. >> one last story. the california condor is an endangered species. they have been attracted by ranches, carcasses. the natural territory is down in baja. so people in charge of helping

condor conservation want to encourage the condors to move down south. so they drop these cow carcasses on a breadcrumb trail down south. how do you tell a condor there is a dead cow 10 miles away? birds look for circling columns of other birds. you don't have a lot of time. you drop a dead cow, you want to get a bird over it. how do you circle? the answer is a drone. you get a drone to circle over a dead cow, and from a distance it looks like another bird of prey. keep doing it every 10 miles all the way to baja. >> wow. next question, please. >> way over here. you know, we have been talking a lot about drones as flying objects in terms of pound to pound, but as you said, they could become like dust.

i'm wondering how you are interacting with clients, with the public like this, and thinking about the drone in our centerpiece tonight, able to listen to our conversation. while privacy was an aside, i don't think that was the case. how are you thinking about the evolution of drones in terms of embedded sensors? humans do not perhaps have the capacity to sense. >> do you have a smart phone? because i have been recording you the whole time. [laughter] no -- the sensors have been here the whole time. this space will catch up to the

phone. more and more sensors are getting packed in, all the time. i don't know if it can sustain itself forever, but answering your question about drones everywhere, people are building drones for water monitoring. they navigate in the water, completely autonomous. so you will see a lot of innovation beyond flying things. they just get the most attention. but there is innovation in robotics everywhere. mining, these trucks that are fully autonomous in australia. industries as a whole are looking for automation. when it comes to safety, remove the human from very dangerous places and put robots instead. that goes beyond just flying things. >> there has to be a privacy discussion, fundamentally, if you talk about miniature things

that can move in space and record. we have to think about privacy is a fundamental issue. no matter what tool you use to violate someone's privacy, you still violated their privacy. so i would love to get the discussion away from drones and just tool sensors, and make policy around the entire class. >> next question? >> this question is in response to jonathan's statement about hardware becoming free. in the course of technology there has been the idea that software would become free. practically every new service i enroll in is with free software. you seem not so concerned about the trend. i am curious how the business model works around that. >> certainly a lot of web-based

software begins as free and it is definitely the case that a lot of people, especially large enterprises paying for software -- i know i pay for a lot of software, our company pays for a lot of software. >> it is such -- some scenarios you are talking about using, driving significant volume, significant volume is at stake here. >> i think about the drone industry today as having a lot of corollaries to the early computer industry. it is certainly the case that people started by building hardware, building in their garage, where what you really bought was a big brick of hardware in which there was very little software available. and the emergence of things like the personal computer, where a lot of, initially you are buying

hardware and then there is the emergence of operating systems. we saw dos and windows become the platform of choice for a number of decades, then software moved into the web and we began to see a model that was a lot more around software that is free, but data that is paid for. i would not be surprised if there was a similar progression in where a lot of value is in this space as well. >> i agree. our model, we give away all our software, all open source. we make money by instantiating software and hardware. we get our share. i agree. ultimately the data will be where the value lies, and the services around the data. >> a lot of the services -- they are not free. you are, the product is you and

you are paying in a different currency. the data is most important. the other thing about hardware becoming free, there are consumables and all this stuff, the batteries. all the other stuff may it free, but the batteries you will have to replace and they will not be free. >> next question. >> you mentioned a few times that the drone is just a tool. we have heard how it is a tool to collect data. but i'm curious about in the world of art and cinematography, whether it be a scorsese film, espn, the next "blue planet," what will the cinematographer be able to do that they have never been able to do in the past? >> there, the great thing about creative arenas is it's really up to the people out there with

the tools. we think about these as cameras you can arbitrarily position. so it's mostly low altitude stuff. anything beyond reach is new territory. and we see now a mad rush for people to collect as much of that footage as possible because it is all new. the first video i had that went viral was just of surfers. no one had filmed surfers from 15 feet up a for and tracked them as they go down waves. it was not a particularly great video, but it captured the imagination of a lot of people. cameras that can stay in one place at low altitude creates all these new opportunities. there are significant challenges. these things make noise. they are big. they have the possibility of

crashing. so there are challenges, but if you just do a youtube search on drone videos. you will find virtually every kind of low altitude imagery imaginable. some of it is incredibly creative. a lot of it is just people having fun in their backyards. the whole spectrum. >> if you look at the rise of gopro being used professionally, one of the things that is amazing about gopro is it is kind of disposable. it can get damaged. when will drones be considered disposable in that context? >> we are sort of already there. they are similarly priced. this costs less than a high-end gopro. they don't cost very much, and i think about them as being tools that are essentially disposable. if you are working in imagery, you already spent a lot of money

and time and gear on travel, and these are relatively inexpensive compared to all the other costs. the thing i am worried about when you talk about them being disposable is littering. you do not want to consider them to really be disposable. if you go to national parks now, see a beautiful arch, you will find phantom propeller parts all over it because everyone has tried to fly through it. the batteries can catch fire. there's potential for bad things to happen. one of the things we are working on with the scientific end is disposable drones made out of biodegradable corn-based foam. you send 100 out, and none come back, but the data comes back. they did things in the arctic measuring temperature. when they don't have to come back it doubles the range. they land in the water, foam melts, a very small amount of metal floats to the bottom.

the batteries are an issue. we have not resolved that. but we resolved the foam. >> on the create of elements, with the golden age of videography we have in our pockets the most extraordinary cameras and software, and a standard where we are able to tell her own stories, record our own lives in cinema quality. this is just one more of the tools. if you watch an nfl game, there are cameras on wires, you get these incredible aerial shots. why shouldn't your kid's soccer game be recorded in the same fidelity? >> one more question. >> good evening. regarding the application of drones for delivering goods in rural or urban areas, where we

have hundreds of drones flying, how do you consider the problem of air traffic? who's going to monitor and manage it? a public agency? >> we are working with nasa to explore options of building out what is considered a low altitude air traffic management system for very small uav's for this futuristic application of something like aerial delivery. some of the key elements of that, connectivity, internet connectivity with the drones themselves so they can all be relaying in real time where they are positioned and coordinate like the robots in kiva systems, all communicating in real time so that what looks like a near-miss between two robots is actually a well-orchestrated

system where they never could have hit each other. >> there is a standard called adsb, basically a transponder. aircraft carry this thing. it doesn't have to be a physical device. we already have a telemetry link. it can be a virtual signal by which the aircraft sends its position, broadcast by the adsb network that the faa may run. our vehicles can already report their position. >> like cars have registration and are tracked by cameras and police, i believe early days -- we are working on this thing called air highway. we talked to the city to see how

they can benefit from these things flying around. focusing on how the city benefits, and from registration, toll payment, tracking every move so the cities benefit from this thing flying around, then we layer on top what the technology would be to lay out a very ambitious project. 15 years from now. that's why i never did it. >> thanks. back to karen. >> i want to say thank you to our speakers so much for being so sharing with your perspectives. really appreciate it. [applause] also to robin for guidance before and during the program,

guiding the conversation. you did a wonderful job. [applause] we have a small gift for you. the speaker t-shirt of the churchill club. please wear that in good health. video should be available on our youtube channel, and you have been a very wonderful audience, as usual. thank you so much. we hope to see you next week. good night. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] "book tv." craig whitlock with the

washington post. focusing on national security. launching a year-long investigation recently into the safety of american drones. let's begin with why you decided to look into this. guest: this has prompted a lot of conversation about surveillance with drones. congress passed a law that said essentially to the federal aviation administration that we need to legalize the widespread use of drums in the united states by next year. while the other subjects had gotten a lot of attention, there has been very little public record on the safety of drums on whether they are safe to fly in the same airspace as passenger planes, is the technology up to snuff? how will this work you got that is what we wanted to look at. host: the faa is supposed to be studying this and issuing some sort of role but your headline

today is they will miss the deadline. guest: >>. has been a number of reasons but it really is a this technological and regulatory hurdles. the faa has not been able to figure out how to set rules for on how to keep the skies safe. host: part one of the three part series, inside the newspapers, when drums fall from the sky. statistic.how this more than 400 large military drums crashed in accidents worldwide between september 11, 2000 one and december 2013. how did you find that information out? it was not easy. it took us many years. the reason why the book that military plane drones is they have more experience than anyone

in the world. they did not invent drones but use them more than anybody else. they use them in warfare. they have the biggest record by far to examine. we went back to september 11, two thousand one and with a number of freedom of information act request, we sort of painstakingly put together all of the major crashes over certain threshold over that time and tried to examine and determine the patterns, the commonalities to find out why these things were crashing, how often, what were the lessonsances and what did the military learn as the faa tries to figure out how to fly them safely in the united states. host: let's take those questions. each of those. why are they crashing, the military drones? guest: we are talking about large drones. people are familiar with the predator drone's.

we are looking at drones that are the size of regular aircraft almost. not small little helicopter drones you might see online. the reason these are crashing is pilot error in a lot of cases. they still require a pilot to fly them from the ground. host: you are talking about pilate city miles and miles away and they have a joystick essentially and that is how they are controlling it. is right.t two ways you can visualize this. sometimes pilots flying by satellite plane thousands and thousands of miles away. come in fory landing, a lot of times they will hand them off to a local crew.

they can almost see the drones coming in. ,hey will take control remotely but maybe from a few miles away but not so far. those are the two sets of pilots they would have. dronewhy are these remote pilots cause them to push the button or a crash. procedure.plicated you have to get the landing just right. you have to take into account wind conditions just like a regular pilot except for the regular pilot is sitting in a -- feelnd can see the the wind and see if something does not look bright. if you are doing this by remote control, it is not as easy. there is also a lag of the second or two between the satellite link.

you are doing it with a slight time delay. back and be tricky, too. imagine driving your car and do not feel the brakes go on for a second or two. [indiscernible] the second or two has led to crashes? guest: in some. by before lanza when death comes in, something is not quite right. in the space of a second or two by the time the pilot feels it or sees it, sometimes it is too late. i was wondering, do these pilots sit in a simulator? one of the stories you write about is the pilot did not realize they were flying at sign down. guest: these illuminated the kinds of mistakes that could be made. they train on those constantly.

a pilot flying a drone and afghanistan have been warned by other crew members, don't press that button because if you do, the plane will fly upside down. she thought they were kidding. the plane kept going and going and they were sending her text messages and computer messages, but i think she was befuddled and told investigators afterward she did not realize the predator drone was flying upside down and thought they were joking when they warned her not to hit certain buttons. wherefor the military, are most of the crash is taken place in what has been the impact of them e. guest: more than half were in iraq and afghanistan, which is what you would expect him in wars going on. more than a quarter in the united states. more than 49 took place on

training missions since 2001. increasingly as they are used elsewhere in the world like africa, we see more and more happen in places like that. pakistan, dijibouti. force by fare air has the most drones. they have the most experience. second is the army. they have their own fleet of drones. under different conditions and different pilots. the navy has a much smaller fleet. the lease by far is the marine corps. host: what about the cia? guest: they find them too but unfortunately that is really classified. nothing about the cia. that is kept in the dark. the first part of the series taking a look at the

military safety record. what does that mean for the faa decision making and flying drones in the united states? guest: we found a lot of patterns for what they're trying to do. one major problem that still has theyhen result is what call the links between the pilots on the ground with the joystick trying to control the aircraft. these are done through radio transmissions. wireless control. most of the time they hold up pretty well but pretty common for the links to be lost, to go down. imagine gps with your car went out for a few seconds or even a minute. what would happen pretty frequently is the links would be disrupted and the pilots would lose control. it is only a second or two and not a big deal but if this goes on for several seconds, a couple of minutes, even longer, then you have real problems.

that is something the faa has had problems figuring out, how do we fix that for when drones become common in the united states? guest: independent caller. the morning. caller: good morning. my question is since the supreme said that money is speech for the first amendment, how is outlaw throughot the fourth amendment fourth search and seizure, patriot act, national state registry and homeland security spying on citizens in the united states, etc.? thank you for c-span. you bring up a couple of really good issues. our newspaper has filed a legal brief on behalf of a young man who has been flying drones for

commercial purposes and the fda -- faa had find him. our newspaper as well as many others filed a legal brief singing the faa in french on the news gathering rights of the country by banning drones. a lot of news organizations get use them to footage of crowns. fairly inexpensive way. how does the first amendment factor into this and how do you balance that with safety how will they: deal that with security? presidential candidates and the crowds that gather around there and news organizations or otherwise with their drones above them. good: that is a really question. right now is the guide is you are not supposed to fly them around crowds or airports and cities but as they become more

legalized, that is exactly the scenario. how will that work? who will be flying bees and will they be well-trained or will people on the ground going to be safe? the caller brings up fourth amendment search and seizure and to what degree can may be used for surveillance? if you are in your backyard and you have a reasonable expectation of privacy there and someone wants to fly a camera drone overhead and take pictures of you, who was in the right and who was in the wrong their? guest: it may have been answered already. these are not that easy to land. wouldn't that stand to reason that maybe it is easier for them to hit a target also? they might not be so easy to control. what did you find out?

caller: that is another good question. the use gps coordinates to pinpoint very specific locations to file a missile. he haven't found any missiles going off course in that way. you can argue that people being targeted, in afghanistan or iraq or places like that, by and large the missiles go where the crews portland to go. host: bill is in florida. caller: i would like to thank the gentleman for his words. an indifference to collateral damage that occurs with these drones. from theof coverage news organizations such as fox -- host: let me take those two

points. the connection with you is not good. four the washington post, we have devoted a lot of ink and coverage to who is being targeted in counterterrorism strikes with drones. it is not an easy subject to get information about. it is an important one. news organizations should and do -- devote a lot of attention to it. focused on safety. that has gotten less attention. host: when you focus on the military in part one, the military has flown 4 million hours. how does that compare with domestic use? guest: the vast majority of that has been overseas. more and more, is happening in the united states as the wars

have ended. afghanistan, that is drawing down and more drones are coming back for training purposes in the united states. the military has been applying for more hermits. in shared airspace with civilian traffic, there has been a significant increase in that. the pentagon says that will go up up. we will see more drones in civilian airspace. host: what does that mean for possible crashes or other accidents? guest: that is good question. the military says they take every precaution and they are extremely careful. they say they have more experience than everybody else. we will not fly them in certain aircraft or overpopulated areas. we will take care with this. at the same time we have found that there is a number of crashes taking place, including in areas where you would not

expect a military drone. will give you an example. armyril, there was an drone the weighs about 400 pounds. it is still pretty big. it was flown from pennsylvania. it crashed. it crashed right next to an elementary school in pennsylvania. the drone came in over the treetops and over the playground. it crashed right in front of the school. it was 30 minutes after the kids had gone home for the day. you can imagine how that made people in that community feel about the interaction and the proximity they have to these kinds of aircraft. host: we are talking with craig whitlock. we are talking about the safety records of american drones. we just showed you the map of the united states.

let me explain this. the faa is creating rules for drone use in the united states. diamonds are accidents involving faa approved drones since 2009. the black circles are close calls involving rogue drones from only 12 to the present. this is part three of his series. we have an independent caller in maryland. caller: good morning. i am complaining about these aircraft in the airspace in baltimore. aircraft overese , i amand shopping centers a freelance reporter. i have put several articles about-face -- on facebook about it.

you can see them coming toward you on highways. it is unsettling. host: are we seeing many more in u.s. skies? onet: i haven't heard's of -- heard of one's around baltimore so much. you hear about small drones that maybe you are just between five and 20 pounds that people can buy online for several hundred dollars. without much training you can fly those. aircraft.ike model they're pretty harmless. they are so easy to fly and can go up to significant heights, people are flying them in places they should not be. this is something we found the third part of our series. there havet out, been 15 dangerous encounters between small illicit drones being flown over airports and

airliners or other private pilots trying to land at an airport. that is something that gives safety advocates and the faa and others nightmares. even though it is a small drone, it can cause a lot of damage when it is flying at 3000 or 5000 feet at a high rate of with af that collides passenger plane. that is a nightmare scenario. to new yorkl go next. caller: has he done any research on the use of xbox in desensitizing the youth. to see if is used they would be good at being a drone operator. i have a son who's friend applied for the air force. he is a college dropout. he does not have much going for him. addict. xbox

they put him on a list grade they gave him money to join. they put them at the top of the list for special training. xbox -- they have statistics about how they're using xbox's. they probably do. they said he just about everything. there is a huge demand for drone pilots in that sort of service. i don't know of xbox as a good experience. i don't know if you should put that on your resume. i am sure hand to eye coordination assented to do with it. pilots need good eyesight and response time. a factor that is translates to different skills like that. host: we will go to a democratic caller in brooklyn, new york. is what isquestion the public reaction to drones?

some withre have been amazon. public opinion is unsettled. surveys finding that the majority of the american public has concerns about the legalization of civilian drones and united states. there are a lot of people who see potential in drones. they can do tasks that would be too expensive or complicated for irregular pilot to do. amazon thing.e he is been very public about using drones to deliver small farmers with large-scale agricultural operations might want to use drones to apply fertilizer. filmmakers would like to use drones to film movies instead of

having helicopters or manned aircraft. there is an endless list of martial potential to use drones. aloft much longer than regular planes. you don't have to have a pilot on board. they are much safer in some ways. you're not risking a highlight in the plane. the question we try to answer is, that sounds good. but what when they are flying the same airspace as everybody else. ? drones beingl allowed in airspace, 63% believed it would be a change for the worse. changeieve it will be a for the better. americans support the use of drones to target extremists. 61% say they support the strikes. you can see how that compares with other countries.

the number of people who disapprove grows in different countries. there seems to be widespread operation outside the united states and israel when it comes to military strikes. guest: i think that is right. there is a disconnect in america. you're more likely to support drone strikes overseas, where people might do you harm or your country harm. when it comes to should they be home,hat -- flown at 's concerns tend to grow. host: what is the chance of someone crashing a drone on purpose as an act of terror? not wantedakers have to talk about that very openly. it's that is a risk. tore is a big difference between a small drone that weighs five pounds and a predator drone that has a

missile on board. i think most people understand that the chances of a terrorist causing trouble getting on a predator drone is remote. if they wanted to find a 20 pound drone and fly around an airport and crash into something, there's not much to prevent that from happening. democraticve a caller in utah. caller: there was drone training in the neighborhood where i live. one of the pilots was bringing a drone to earth level. see how that would affect somebody's heart rate. he was not a medical person. he thought that was ok. guest: i am not too familiar with the circumstances with

that. we see a lot of training for military drones out west. host: what about crashes? guest: we see a lot, particularly in nevada. if you are flying over a in nevada, there are not very many people and it is not a concern. they are seeking more permits from the faa to fly in shared airspace. they have so many that they need more room to do training. host: matt is an independent caller from baltimore. caller: hello. dronesbeen involved with for quite a while. i helped develop the navy runs. -- drones. you can get a lot of information from operations of drones. that is the technical

organization. the principal thing that we have been looking at was jamming and traffic. that theyevident would be wonderful as traffic surveyors.ners -- with multiple news agencies flying, the traffic in the air serious rash problems. good points.ose are i am familiar with your organization. i am not a member. the navy has developed a helicopter drone call the fire scout that takes off from ships. it looks like a regular helicopter but there is no pilot on board. hacking in jamming and the congestion in the air is a concern. how will the faa can's -- handle that?

of newset a lot organizations over washington wanted to get views of traffic on the beltway, there have to be rules of the sky to keep them from running into each other. host: we are talking with craig whitlock who wrote a three-part series about drones. the safetyng at record of american drones. it is a year-long investigation. liz is in a maryland. caller: i guess i got cut off. thesebeen seen drones. i complained. in the woodlawn area. they do, on the highway. do come up on you on the highway. i have complained to organizations like the

department of homeland security. faa and thested the for ad border patrol response. i have not gotten a response. i want to ask mr. whitlock what his position is on people complaining or critics complain about them? people have concerns about what is going on over the homes. they should have a right to complain. it is frustrating to figure out who is flying the aircraft. that is certainly not a new problem with drones. host: what is going on with the faa? ? guest: congress told them to integrate drones into the airspace by september of next year. at the same time they are under

statutory obligation to make sure that this is done safely. that is what they are all about. they need to make sure these guys are safe. safety rate of passenger air traffic is amazing. if you get on an airliner, you are not worried that you're going to crash. that has been very, very rare. how do they incorporate drones into that equation? host: the disconnect seems to be the faa control towers can talk to the pilot of a manned aircraft. how can they talk to the pilot of a drone? to.t: they will be able they do this now with the military. if they are trying to land a drone in afghanistan, they take a from the same airport as a military jet. whoever is flying the drone has radio contract -- contact with the tower. host: the faa will require the

smaller drones to be online with some? guest: if you are a hobbyist and you just want to fly one, that is ok as long to keep it under 400 feet. if you get above 400 feet, that is where you can get into problems. it is ok if you keep away from airports and from urban areas where there are crowds of people. if you want to go to a field somewhere and fly your drone under 400 feet and it is just a hobby, the faa says you're not a danger to anybody else. once you start going higher than that are going over urban areas or airports, problem's and concert -- problems can occur. ask hisi would like to opinion about the situation with the nsa and the irs and a lot of

politicians on the left mainly accusing people of anarchy and terrorism. it would be unsettling for those people to see drones flying all around. if anybody in this country --osed the government host: the cultural aspect of it. guest: there is an interesting political mix in this. you have conservatives and liberals on both ends of the spectrum. they are concerned about government intrusion and civil liberties. the revolutionary aspect of drones is going to be their ability to conduct surveillance. it is not just that you have a remote controlled airplane. the cameras are very powerful.

these are amazing technological advances. they can zoom in very closely. that is a technology that is going to be affordable for anybody in the marketplace. that is going to shake things up as we know it in terms of conducting surveillance for the government and for rival individuals. host: gary is in kentucky. said something that very much concerned me about these private drones. if they can fly 400 feet, birds can bring down a jetliner. are they good enough to fly a drone into a jetliner engine? they have mandated that they have to do this. homegrown have terrorists.

they can get these drones online. we've got your point. guest: i think it would be difficult to aim a drone and a jetliner engine. it is coming in very fast. i don't think they're worried about intentional targeting. it is the accidental targeting by a drone flying overhead, they move slowly. what if an airliner can't see the drone. this is a we found in a number of cases. date can't really see it, it is too small to show up on radar or traffic collision systems. a jetliner can be going several hundred miles per hour. the drone goes much lower. if they cannot see each other, there might be an accident. that is what they are concerned about. host: william is in texas. caller: if people thought this way when cars were invented and

ify was killing people, these drones that are talking to had a dronening over their neighborhood and felt secure with it, it only happens when you get here house invaded and then he would say thank god for the drone. drones bring a lot of capabilities and technological advances that we did not have before. -- changes are going to be it is hard to get your mind around how much this could change aviation. there are technological processes. when cars were invented, people worried about how this would affect the horse and buggy. there have been a lot of safety improvements in a cars. we have airbags. traffic accident

deaths come down. people recognize the capabilities of these advances. how do you do it safely? host: where is the studying and being done on drones and why? sixt: the faa has set up test sites around the country. they are in different locations in states where they will start gathering data by doing experimental flights and feed this data into the faa to say we used this drone in this weather in this condition. here is how they responded. ,his is going to help the faa with rules. these are rules for certifying the airworthiness of different kinds of drones. you won't be able to build one in your backyard and fly it over and airport. certain drones will have certification for being

airworthy. they will have rules for certifying pilots. altitudes be certain that they must be trained for. what will the standards be and how many hours? these are the kinds of things that the faa is sorting out. other than the military, not that many people have experienced trying these things. dead -- entire show was dedicated to the test sites. if you missed that, you can go to www.c-span.org. areer: if the drones getting legalized, what is stopping citizens from weaponize in them to protect their own a property? the drone as part of their property. what would be the