VentureBeat: What are those industries interested in?Ĭhell: Their position is a bit more around “What are we going to do to protect our consumers and help give them some assurance to attract them back to our business?” We see this notion of there being health measurement reports available, kind of similar to how you would see weather reports. We’ve had significant commercial interest from the airline industry, the tourism industry. For medical facilities, it can help triage incoming patients during a surge - it can measure employee health coming in as a facility for the sake of the employees, but also for the sake of patients. But no, it’s also come from the health care industry. VentureBeat: Was this “insatiable demand” simply from law enforcement and police departments across the country?Ĭhell: That’s certainly a portion of it, police and law enforcement are certainly an important part of that. But also to take the learnings and continue to grow so that if there’s a resurgence in the current pandemic, or if there’s a new epidemic or something that starts to emerge, this type of tool can be implemented, and implemented on a scale because there’s been proper policy and procedure that’s been thought through. We need a pragmatic approach to help manage our resources. VentureBeat: Have other towns shown interest?Ĭhell: The demand to test the technology has been insatiable. In those types of scenarios where you’ve got industry making decisions based on bottom-line type of metrics, I think you’ll see this get implemented very, very quickly. Because workplaces want to know: What’s the health of their workforce, and do they need to take steps in order to protect them? And certainly on the industrial side from consumer safety, a theme park or an airline, consumers are going to want to know what are the health measurements. However, on the industrial side, for workplace safety, I absolutely see this type of technology being implemented. And they do it while they’re flying drone missions for other things.
We see some hotspots emerging, here’s what’s happening.” And then in that case, I think local authorities can take a proactive approach and start doing some sampling. From a public safety perspective, it’s a bit more like, the CDC or World Health say “Hey, we got an issue happening here, and we need to amp up our vigilance. I don’t think this is going to be like a routine thing where you see drones flying in the sky doing health measurements. From a public safety standpoint, I don’t know that it will be all that useful. VentureBeat: Have you seen any indication that monitoring crowds for their temperature and whether they’re coughing and sneezing can actually be useful, or is it too early in the tests to determine?Ĭhell: I think it’s a bit early. Below are a few excerpts from our interviews at the respective times. Chell had a lot to say before and after Westport made its final decision. Draganfly’s original timeline was to test at other sites once phase two in Westport was complete - but phase two never happened. Long after this epidemic is over, drones could play a critical role not just for delivery, but also in detecting and tracking similar outbreaks, safeguarding both public health and business operations.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced the public and private sectors to consider drones for everything from tracking the spread of COVID-19 to gauging when to lift restrictions. We spoke with Draganfly CEO Cameron Chell both before and after the first pilot, in Westport, Connecticut, ended abruptly.
to offer social distancing and health monitoring services using machine vision and AI tech licensed from the University of Southern Australia. We recently profiled Canadian drone maker Draganfly and how it quickly spun up its “pandemic drone.” In short, the company is running pilots in the U.S. Hear from CIOs, CTOs, and other C-level and senior execs on data and AI strategies at the Future of Work Summit this January 12, 2022.