Gadgetory

hey it's been popper with the verge I'm here at CES 2016 I'm about to sit down and have a chat with Brendon Schulman who is the VP of policy and legal affairs at DJI the world's most popular drone company so tell us just a little bit about yourself how you got into drones and how you got to the job you are at now so I'm a VP of policy legal affairs my role is to really help educate government officials try to help advocate reasonable regulations for the technology my background is actually as a model aircraft enthusiast I've been into radio control planes for over 20 years so over the last year we've seen actually quite a lot of movement from the regulator's here in the US what do you make of the moves by the FAA and the DoD in terms of creating a registry and you know working towards sort of a broad set of rules for commercial use I think that's a that's a good mechanism for getting people to take responsibility and to be accountable if they get into trouble and also it's an opportunity for education people who register are given the effe guidance on how to operate safely and that's really in everyone's interest so you come from the world of model aircraft what do you think of the fact that you know some of the larger organizations from that world are protesting you know telling their members not to register and I believe there are several legal challenges being mounted to the registration registration in and of itself is is a good policy outcome I don't think anyone objects to the idea that there should be some level of registration for some category of drones you could debate what weight cutoff to use you could debate you know what types of Thrones and I think the challenge that we've seen is that there's a community where they already have was essentially a registration process the AMA has a requirement to put your AMA number or your your contact information on the model aircraft and essentially the FAA is duplicating that so from a policy point of view their system works as well as the FAA is rule and the real concern is that in 2012 Congress said not to introduce new rules for model aircraft that are used recreationally and this is perhaps a non objectionable rule but it's a rule and I think the concern is if you can introduce a rule that contradicts that statute from 2012 what's going to happen at what new regulations would we see that might overreach and be unacceptable to the community so that the problem is really one of process of how the rules are made clearly the scale at which the these crafts are now being used is what's changed and that's why fundamentally we have to come up with a new new structure for policing them right well I think those numbers tell you that that the technology is very safe I mean there really are a limited number of incidents that raise safety or security concerns that the problem is that those are the kinds of incidents that are very know worthy that make the news and that really unfortunately also drive the policy decisions particularly at the state and local level that the the number of reports that suggest that people are using drones to invade privacy at countless reports about that in theory and I have yet to hear of one actual instance of somebody using a drone to spy on a neighbor we did have a prosecution in New York State there was a gentleman who was flying around a medical facility and was alleged to have been spying on people who were being examined in the medical offices he was prosecuted all the way through jury verdict and acquitted under the existing New York State unlawful surveillance law so we didn't need a drone specific law to prosecute him in New York State he was acquitted because he wasn't actually spying on anyone the building was actually had mirrored finish on the windows so he couldn't have been spying and yet if he had been he would have been prosecuted and convicted of that crime so you know I think the issue is to come to reasonable outcomes both in terms of safety and responsibility and a lot of the answer there is is education providing information to the user about how to operate in a safe manner now I know DJI doesn't work on this but if we were to think about a world in which Amazon and Google achieve their mission and there's thousands or tens of thousands of drones flying over a major city like Las Vegas or New York would that require new regulations or would that require only you know technology and structure in order to make sure that they stay in their lane they get where they're going with minimal accidents I think very much that that technology is going to solve the kinds of issues like that you know what do we do when we have more traffic than now I don't think the skies are gonna be blanketed in drones if you think about the size of a drone relative to airspace it really drones are quite small they're not gonna collide with each other just because they're near each other and I mean they would have to change the FAA you know rules around line-of-sight around you know having a man pilot at all you know a pilot at all times and they would have to change the you know the designations in the airspace to carve out space for you know low speed high speed you know package man I mean they there would be things that need to be done on the regulatory side right that's true and if you if you consider drones to the aircraft and to already be fully regulated you run into a lot of contradictions or complications and and that's actually one of them so delivering packages is considered an air carrier operation now it doesn't make sense that the drone that's delivering a package versus taking a photograph is basically doing the same thing it's just leaving something behind but in the manned a traditional aviation world that's an air carrier operation and therefore outside of the the rules that are currently being made and will be released this year by the FAA you've got the visual line of sight issue of how do you fly far enough away to actually make that delivery worth doing while also ensuring that you aren't posing a threat to other air traffic and so that I think that's a technology solution but also a regulatory one you're correct because the proposal that the FAA has now for commercial operation is within line of sight so basically as far as you can see it or the surrounding airspace so I know you're not gonna like this question but yesterday right when we were I was on the the panel right before you there was a former member of the FAA who I believe now is a drone lawyer or lobbyist okay who was leading the panel to remember his name Jim Owens yeah okay and he said you know I think we understand when we look back at the history of manned aviation that in order to make progress some people have to die and by that he only meant that the industry is going to grow to a robust size we're going to be doing lots of things in an in an environment which to some degree will always be dangerous flying in the air and as we make progress and build new things and grow and scale somebody there will be an accident somebody will die do you think that that's a reasonable way to think about what's going on the drone industry I think if you look back at the history of manned aviation in the early pioneers there were weekly deaths you go back to those old newspapers where they talked about the Pioneers flying around we tolerated a much higher level of risk back then than we do today particularly in the aviation world so people are extremely sensitive to safety for any kind of aviation and I think even disproportionately so so you have that you know yes there are safety risks and and they will lead to incidents that that might raise concerns thankfully we've had if you think back to the history of DJI we've been around for 10 years we're celebrating our 10th year anniversary now and I have yet to hear of any fatality anywhere in the world attributable to the kind of multi rotor drones that we or other companies like us sell so they and we've tried to estimate the number of operational hours that we have it's tough to do because we don't really track all that information but a rough estimate is probably like three million operational hours per month if you consider for example general aviation which is currently highly regulated and you look at statistics there for every hundred thousand hours of a private airplane like a Cessna you've got one point five fatal accidents so we already tolerate a level of risk and the question is are we going to tolerate any level of risk for drones I think the fact that there's no one on board is great because you're already dealing with a safe technology what I would be concerned about is that you know in the course of doing anything there are going to be risks and if there's an overreaction to it to an air safety incident that could hamper the growth of the industry right yeah I mean again DJI is primarily focused on selling drones to consumers and cinematographers people in Hollywood but now you're expanding out drones that are optimized for spraying crops recently one with a thermal camera that would be used by fire departments or search-and-rescue and so I'm sure that your drones will play a large role in the industrial applications actually I think like two-thirds of the commercial exemptions in the US are for DJI products right and so when you think about it like that are you comfortable with the idea that these drones could be used for you know something that begins to bleed back towards you know law enforcement or military use I mean I know that are already police departments that are thinking about how to use them you know just for the kind of things that they would have normally used a helicopter for well we so we don't market to government to military government or or or law enforcement obviously everyone who's interested in the beneficial uses of the technology is going to find the platforms that work the best of the most reliable the most easy to use so so we have users across the spectrum everyone from the back yard flyer to the to the top-of-the-line Hollywood cinematography and you know I think for me that the government agency applications are by far the beneficial ones the search and rescue opportunities whether it's using the the new thermal camera or even just photography to me you know you get if you put a drone on the back of a firetruck you were going to help save lives and you know up the risk that we just talked about the risk of a of a fatality or collision is already outweighed by the number of people whose lives have been saved so you got to get out there and have us journalists write more of these positive stories right every time you get a cat out of a tree there needs to be a story I look I news is news I and I think the bleeds it leads I don't know I don't know what to tell you that's how that's how the business works you know that that's that's for you to decide but I there there are great stories out there to be found and told if you want to find them so I'll ask you one more question and then we'll wrap things up Jim do you think we'll get to a point where drones are as ubiquitous as smartphones maybe or personal computers car something that every family has one of because there's a lot of utility that you can get out of it and it's not so difficult or dangerous that people are worried about having one it's hard to make that prediction at this point if you think about the the history of the computer and how you needed like the basement size mainframe to do anything and now we've got something that's like a million times more powerful in our pocket it's hard to see the application so we you know we just released version 3 of our SDK so I think in the future we're gonna see like smartphones apps written for drones to do all sorts of beneficial things so you know what will the drone be used to go fetch the newspaper in the morning or walk your dog if it sort of household uses that might lead to everyone owning one it's hard to say but I think it's very exciting to imagine where we are now compared to where the PC industry was or even a mobile telephone industry was this is like the the age of those giant clunky car phones and and we've got years and years ahead of us so from like a legal perspective if the drone walks your dogs that have to scoop the poop or is that yes okay right well we'll end on that note be sure to check out the verge for lots of great drone stories from CES 2016 go to DJI and see what they're up to with drones and subscribe to the YouTube channel above thanks