Where Can American Drone Companies Go To innovate?
Preston Huntington is the Client Relations Manager at Xelevate Solutions, the mid-atlantic regions premier UAS Center of Excellence located in Leesburg, VA. With on-location labs, and varied operational areas, Xelevate offers innovators and operators a safe location to mature unmanned products, policies, and procedures in any industry.
Prior to Xelevate, Preston served as a Program Analyst at the United States Marshal’s Procurement HQ team working side-by-side with law enforcement contractors. His career has also seen him serve in various roles in the higher education industry eventually becoming the Director of Admissions at the Texas A&M Bush School of Government & Public Service in Washington D.C. Preston has a Masters in International Relations and a Bachelors in History from Norwich.
In this episode of the Drone Radio Show, Preston introduces us to the Xelevate UAS Center of Excellence, and shares how the center can help strengthen American position and presence in the drone industry.
How can LIDAR provide value to organizations?
Lukas Fraser is a LiDAR Specialist at the Geospatial Group of NV5. NV5 is a provider of engineering and consulting services to public and private sector clients. With offices nationwide and abroad, NV5 helps clients plan, design, build, test, certify, and operate projects that improve the communities where we live and work.
At NV5, Lukas creates engineering-grade 3D mapping products from LiDAR imagery. He specializes in the collection and analysis of topographic and topo-bathymetric LiDAR data . He turns raw datasets into useful information such as AutoCAD drawings and surfaces, GIS databases, or online interactive web maps.
In this edition of the Drone Radio Show, Lukas talks about the process to collect LiDAR and image data with UAVs, how that data is analyzed, and then how products are created that provide value to clients
Can a drone listen for missing people?
Macarena Varela is a researcher at Fraunhofer FKIE, a German research organization with 72 institutes spread throughout Germany, each focusing on different fields of applied science. With 29,000 employees, mostly comprised of scientists and engineers, it is the biggest organization for applied research and development services in Europe.
Macarena has been with Fraunhofer since 2007. She studied Electrical Engineering at Laval University in Canada and she has a Masters and a PhD in Computer Science at University of Bonn. Her recent project involves a system that can fly over disaster areas and help pinpoint the sounds of people who are screaming for help.
In this edition of the Drone Radio Show, Macarena talks about the institute’s Crow Nest Array and the use drones equipped with microphones to ring missing people in distress.
Joining Macarena is Kai Nuernberger who since 2013 has been on the Board of Management at Fraunhofer leading strategy and business development. Kai Studied Linguistics at University of Berlin, University of Marburg, and University College Wales. He has a PhD in English Literature at University of Marburg,
Can drones be used to count birds?
Maddie Hayes is a Remote Sensing Analyst at the Duke Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab. The Lab promotes interdisciplinary research using unmanned aircraft systems and other small robotic platforms. Maddie’s research focuses on the applications of artificial intelligence and GIS to analyze drone imagery.
She is currently using deep learning frameworks and remote sensing theory for seabird population assessments and water quality analysis. Maddie graduated from the University of Vermont in 2019 with a B.S. in Environmental Sciences and Geospatial Technologies. Before joining the Lab, Maddie worked at the University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Lab, where she researched the use of drone imagery and object-based image analysis for aquatic invasive species classification.
In this episode of the Drone Radio Show, Maddie talks about using drones to automate counts of huge seabird colonies in the Falkland Islands.