before they get out of control, cut the time it takes the Department of Public Safety to assess an interstate crash, or quickly deliver blood or medications to remote locations. Arizona is the ideal place to play a leading role in advancing this life-changing technology. Some of our statewide partners in this program are indeed already using the technology to improve the lives of Arizonans. The Arizona Department of Transportation already has a small UAS fleet that has helped in specific situations to improve traffic flow, such as at a large festival off the highway. Others will soon help its engineering staff safely and efficiently inspect hard-to-reach areas on bridges or do survey work along state highways. In other applications, they have been used to help control wildfires in Arizona. Matt Mintzmyer, Yavapai College’s associate professor of aviation, and his students helped a firefighting crew last October fight a 40-acre sawmill fire. The wind was 40 mph and the smoke was blowing sideways, Mintzmyer said. The sawmill had 4 to 6 feet of sawdust in it and was too dangerous for crews to access. So, the students launched a drone into the smoke and turned on its thermal camera to identify hotspots, some of which had jumped a nearby highway. They immediately dispatched that information to firefighters and guided them to the flames. “Basically, the drone had prevented what could have been a huge wildland fire,” Mintzmyer said. His students also have assisted in the more efficient production of agricultural sites. From street level, some sites can look verdant, green and level. However, a drone has the ability to not only get above the agricultural site but actually in it. In fact, the college was able to spot drainage, soil and irrigation inefficiencies almost immediately and found one site was only producing about 60 percent of its capability. The college worked with the farmer to improve his production.
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Arizona Commerce Authority
The crucial part of AZSkyTech will be its focus on the future. The program will help create a responsible framework for helping to inform a UAS policy that respects safety and privacy ahead of all other things but encourages the state’s strong culture of innovation that has allowed it to thrive as one of the fastest-growing tech hubs in the country. For this and other reasons, Arizona has already caught the eye of a global commercial drone company, Airobotics, whose drone platform is fully automated from end to end and is the first commercial drone in the world to be certified to fly without a human operator. In early 2018, several teams at the Arizona Commerce Authority assisted the company in expanding to Arizona from Israel. Airobotics has developed this unique, proven technology that has been successfully deployed in five countries with Tier 1 customers and has been certified to operate in five countries by aviation authorities. The company is expanding its customer base and is starting to work in the U.S. with autonomous drones. Airobotics CEO and co-founder Ran Krauss said, “Arizona has a strong mining industry and potential partners that we’re excited to work with. Mining companies can benefit greatly from various applications, data collection and analysis tools our drone systems provide.” Krauss also said he likes Arizona for other factors. “The state has a business-friendly regulatory environment that makes it easier to work on unmanned systems. The weather, when not in monsoon season, is good weather to fly drones in as well,” he said. So, with our AZSkyTech program, Arizona is ready to play a prominent role in the safe integration of these aircraft into the airspace. Just as Arizona has done with the development of self-driving cars or the creation of the nation’s first “Fintech sandbox,” AZSkyTech is also poised to lead—but this time from the skies above. SUMMER 2018 AZTECHCONNECT.COM
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