Commercial Drones FM

All about on-demand, risk-based drone insurance, featuring Brandon Packman, Head of Business Development at SkyWatch.AI. SkyWatch.AI is an innovative startup offering customers a new twist on drone insurance.

Why did Verizon, a $30+ billion telecommunications company, acquire Skyward, a 4-year-old drone startup out of Portland? Mariah Scott, President of Skyward, joins Ian to discuss exactly that—the decision behind the Verizon acquisition, her thoughts on the direction of the drone industry in 2019, and why the future of UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) is so critical.

Ian is joined by Greg Agvent, the Senior Director of CNN's Aerial Imagery and Reporting Unit—known as CNN Air. When evaluating drones for business, it's easy to think of all the things they can replace. For aerial journalism and newsgathering, helicopters are the first thing that come to mind. But if you think national media organizations are going to fire the helicopters in place of drones... think again. Drones aren't replacing traditional manned aircraft any time soon.

Join Kespry's CEO, George Mathew, and host, Ian Smith, for a deep dive into Kespry's enterprise drone hardware and software offerings and outlook on where the industrial use of drones is heading. And would you like to know what the CEO of one of Airware's direct competitors thinks about them going out of business? Listen on and find out.

Colin Snow, AKA "The Drone Analyst", joins the podcast for the 3rd year in a row to talk about his company, Skylogic Research's, annual report on the drone industry for 2018. Colin and Ian dive into five topics and key insights: • DJI's 70%+ market share • Customers buying more expensive drones • Drone service providers reporting little revenue • High-accuracy mapping techniques are not being adopted quickly • Drone fleet sizes are small and number of flights are lower than anticipated

In September 2018, Parrot Group's senseFly released some exciting new professional drones - the eBee X and the ANAFI Work - along with several new camera options. Jean-Thomas Célette, Chief Strategy & Product Officer at Parrot Group, joins Ian to provide an overview of the new drones and camera options from senseFly. New senseFly products include: eBee X drone ANAFI Work drone Aeria X camera Duet T camera S.O.D.A. 3D camera

Experience the story behind the expedition to capture the world's first thermal, radiometric images of humpback whales' blowholes with drones. This is Expedition: Too Hot For Snot.

Josh Ziering (JZ) and Josh Pruitt of San Francisco software startup, Kittyhawk, join Ian for a roundtable discussion. The trio discuss recent drone industry news like Section 336, the company's recent $5 million funding, and what the future has in store for Kittyhawk and the drone industry as a whole.

Ian Smith, host of Commercial Drones FM podcast, joins Randy Goers' Drone Radio Show as a guest to talk about what has happened in the commercial drone industry over the past 2-years from 2016 to 2018.

DroneBase is one of the world's largest, professional drone service provider networks. Think of it as "Uber for drone pilots". If you need a drone operator to come accomplish a mission for you, chances are, you can get one through DroneBase. Dan Burton is CEO of DroneBase and has been leading the charge at the Southern California-based company since its inception.

The drone industry report for Q2 2018, brought to you by Commercial Drones FM. Get briefed on the most important and newsworthy happenings from the previous quarter in the drone industry—all in less than 20-minutes. Covered topics include drone hardware, drone software, regulations, drone delivery, funding, mergers and acquisitions, and more.

Drone-based inspections are rocketing in popularity. Businesses are employing drones en masse. As onboard sensors and hardware improve, the software that facilitates many of the actual visual inspection activities continues to advance. Ken Falk, CEO of Scopito, speaks with Ian on why drone inspection software is critical, advancements in A.I. for automatically detecting anomalies in images, and much more.

Hear host Ian Smith answer questions about drones on a podcast instead of always being the one asking them. This week's episode of CDFM is a syndication of Udacity's, The Drawing Board podcast, titled, "All About Drones." Ian is joined by Adam Bry, CEO of Skydio where the two talk... all about drones.

Why is Ford, a legacy automobile company, building drones? Adi Singh, Principal Scientist for UAV Systems at Ford's Silicon Valley office, explains all the ways that Ford is researching and planning on using drones in their global business. And it's not just flying cars.

Nightingale Security is a robotic aerial security company - not a traditional drone company. But they do make robotic aerial security platforms (drones) and fleet management software that their clients deploy to help protect their assets and integrate with their existing security teams. Jack Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Nightingale Security.