**The Future of Emergency Response with Autonomous Drones**

In today's world, emergency response times are crucial in determining the outcome of a disaster. With the rise of autonomous drones, first responders can now quickly and effectively respond to emergencies without putting themselves in harm's way. Our conversation today is with Laura from Sci-Fi Works, a company at the forefront of developing cutting-edge drone technology for emergency response.

**Autonomous Drones as Emergency Response Kits**

One of the key features of Sci-Fi Works' drones is their ability to provide immediate support during an emergency. "We've had customers purchase park systems as part of their emergency response kit," Laura explained, highlighting the importance of having a reliable and efficient system in place. The drones can be set up quickly, usually within five or ten minutes, and can maintain a position at 400 feet without requiring constant operator input. This allows first responders to quickly deploy the drone and begin gathering critical information, such as assessing damage or locating people trapped in rubble.

**Autonomous Capabilities**

But what sets Sci-Fi Works' drones apart is their autonomous capabilities. "We're looking at being able to support mobile missions," Laura said, explaining that the current system can be mounted on a vehicle, allowing it to follow the vehicle and provide coverage over a wider area. This capability opens up new possibilities for emergency response, including the ability to deploy drones in areas where traditional vehicles cannot reach. Additionally, the company is working on smaller versions of the drone, which could be used to navigate through tight spaces or respond to emergencies in densely populated areas.

**Intelligence and Autonomy**

Another key feature of Sci-Fi Works' drones is their advanced intelligence and autonomy capabilities. "We're moving towards incorporating AI into our systems," Laura explained, highlighting the importance of machine learning and data analysis in enhancing drone performance. The company is working on integrating perception algorithms across multiple sensors onboard, allowing the drone to detect areas of interest and adjust its flight path accordingly. This enables the drone to identify potential hazards, such as fires or crowds, and adjust its behavior to avoid them.

**Potential Applications**

The potential applications for Sci-Fi Works' drones are vast and varied. "Imagine being able to use this technology at large events, like the Super Bowl," Laura said, illustrating how the drones could be used to detect and respond to security threats in real-time. The company is also exploring partnerships with emergency services agencies to provide them with access to these advanced drone capabilities.

**Innovative Solutions for Emergency Response**

So where can people find more information about Sci-Fi Works' products and follow up on their latest developments? According to Laura, the company's website (sci-fi.works) is the best place to start. The company also has a presence on social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. By following Sci-Fi Works online, interested parties can stay up-to-date on the latest news and developments from the cutting-edge drone technology firm.

**Conclusion**

As we continue to navigate an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world, the need for innovative solutions like autonomous drones is more pressing than ever. With their advanced capabilities and potential applications, Sci-Fi Works' drones are poised to revolutionize emergency response as we know it. As our conversation with Laura came to a close, one thing was clear: the future of emergency response has never looked brighter.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enbut right now we have a very special interview with you joining us via zoom we have Laura major who is the CTO of sci-fi and sci-fi makes some really amazing drone some drone products I want to have Laura though explain this all to us Laura hello thanks for joining Digital Trends live hi Greg thanks for having me so I want to ask you maybe you can walk us through what sci-fi does I've been reading all about it this morning but I want to kind of give our viewers the overview from your point of view yes absolutely so yeah we are the pioneer in tethered drones and so what that means is we have a cable a very small thin cable kind of like a headphone cable and that connects the drone to a ground station and that provides continuous power to the drone so most drones are limited by the battery onboard and they can only fly for anywhere from 10 minutes to you know upwards of 20 25 minutes our system can stay in the air continuously for hours even for days our longest flight was around 200 hours so went on for you know many days at a time a continuous flight I think that's oh go ahead just also all the communications happen over the tether as well so all the both the command and control of the vehicle and the video down from from the vehicle and comes over the tether as well so it's immune to any type of you know interception I think that's absolutely that's true I didn't even think about that yeah as far as you're not beaming over you know the the actual video feed and where it's directly connected I can see a lot of advantages of that especially talking about the battery life being able to fly for that long because the batteries on drones that's one thing that doesn't seem to have really improved a ton over time I mean you're usually limited I think like 1/2 hours probably about the max at least that I've seen maybe there's some other ones out there that will last longer than that but being tethered you know my first question just about this before we go more in depth in the products is how long is the tether so yeah so we can go up to 400 feet okay our tether length supports that it is a little longer you know to deal with winds and what but we yeah we set our maximum altitude at 400 feet based on FAA regulations we've flown with longer tethers so we have gone up to a thousand feet actually in the past during the product development but we then retuned everything down to the 400 feet because of fitting into the FAA regulations okay so 400 feet that's still a long way yeah that's you can go a long ways I'm 400 feet with me you probably wouldn't want me flying anywhere near trees because I would already ruin it in a second but that's why I'm not flying them so so you've got the up to a 400 foot tether like what kind of applications do you see this being used for mm-hmm yeah so there are a few key applications that it's used for right now so one is security so if you want to be able to have a monitor an area for a period of time but you don't have a tower or another location where you can put a camera you can just have our drone there the park system launch it and have you know eyes in the sky immediately so we recently supported the Boston Marathon for instance where the Emergency Management Response wanted to be able to monitor the crowd flow and you know kind of provide real-time information to the folks on the ground there so that's one another one another big one is communications so being able to launch the basically the antenna or the cell capability up into the air a you know up to 400 feet you can now extend and really create a communication network on the fly and ad-hoc communication network like how do you mean by that with an ad-hoc communication network like actually use that as the hub to beam out Wow okay then I can definitely see that especially in like a security situation or an emergency you know say there's some kind of an emergency situation where cell lines are down and you need to exit that yeah and you can park it up there that's right in a disaster situation for instance where all your infrastructure is wiped out again you can bring in a park and launch it and have it you know stand up a communications infrastructure immediately Wow and so you you've been using this in these different kinds of situations right as it goes along so and he said maximum flying time I mean really is forever I mean as long as there's power source of you know yeah and the components yeah hold up so how big can you make the how big are your drones so they are about about four feet in in diameter today and it Holt Park holds up to six pounds of payload so so it carries a camera and or you know radios I can carry multiple payloads at a time but it can hold up to six pounds and carry that up to the 400 foot limit nice question coming in here on Facebook I just saw Joe ass can you chain them together and have multiple drones chained together physically change no we don't do that and but you can yeah you can connect them over over a flight network their data or control you know control multiple drones from a from a single location but not not physically we have an experimental but not yet yeah I mean yeah I don't know why you would but figured I would ask the questions it was in there so a couple other questions here that I had to just just about the product like so you see ously for the security issues for for communication issues what other commercial applications are there for these another one is emergency response for industrial locations especially if there's a fire that breaks out being able to get eyes on the situation and really understand the source of that fire quickly is very important and so we've had a number of customers who purchased park systems as a part of their emergency response kit so that they haven't you know available and ready to go again a system only takes about you know five or 10 minutes to set up and have it at 400 feet so they can very quickly respond when there is one of you know there is a disaster on there their facility and you probably I'm assuming you probably Park it up there you don't have just to have somebody constantly monitoring it you know like you would with a normal tone have to worry it's fully autonomous the system the operator just sets the altitude and hits go and it goes up and holds position and and stays there without any operator input that's really cool well as as you know the CTO where do you find your inspiration for going forward like what are you looking at what what do you pay attention to you when it comes to designing these drones yeah so I mean we're looking at being able to support mobile mobile mission so right now that the system goes up and holds location one single location and there's been a lot of interest of can we put the ground station on a vehicle and drive it away and have the air vehicle follow it yeah or even you know on a ground robot in the future so so we've been working on that capability and that's something that that we're getting close to being ready to provide to users also looking at other sized vehicles smaller vehicles where you could take this capability into other you know other environments so I think again this idea of being able to have persistent so you can fly you know continuously without without that limitation I think opens up a lot of opportunity and again adding in the intelligence the autonomy being able to pull that data bring that to the user without having them you know needing to control the system or interact and then you know a flight sort of capacity but really be able to focus on the data that's coming down from the drone when you have something and you know in the air for so many hours at a time you really want the operator looking at you know just the the result of that of that mission not having to pay attention to every second of the flight especially if you're in an emergency you know an emergency situation or something like that security you don't want to waste your time you know it's possible on that and in talking to that kind of point you mentioned you know the autonomy is a big part of it how much do you incorporate AI into this is AI something you're gonna start using more and more or what do you use currently with it yeah so certainly we're moving towards towards AI in a number of capacities and so we're looking at a lot of you know adding in perception you know across so fusing across many different sensors onboard being able to have autonomous you know many autonomous behaviors that we have autonomous behaviors today but now taking it to the next level of can you now start to detect areas of interest and manage your flight your flight path based on on that information so that's what we're looking at is pulling pulling those together the onboard autonomy with the you know being able to detect and you know identify areas of interest whether that's again a source within a fire or whether that's someone cross you know coming into a crowd that you don't want there and being able to you know go collect more data about that without having to bother the operator and again just provide the key information back to the operator that's uh that is yeah actually really interesting an interesting use of AI you have that I guess I'm kind of imagining it kind of like you said Park it up there say it's adding a big event you know you got the Super Bowl or something and there's something happening in a section that maybe security doesn't see and it can just immediately alert like there's something wrong over here that's right so really turn the vehicle into a teammate for the operator so forward you know isin you know eyes ahead where they don't have to think about it they just get an alert back from their team member when there's a you know something of interest very well and again it's sci-fi CY PHY and where can people go to find more information about your products and follow up with everything that you're doing yeah so we we have a website and sci-fi works comm and that's probably the the premiere place to go where we're also having you know presence on social media Twitter Facebook and you know all the typical places all the usual ones yeah yeah on our website Laura thank you so much for hopping him with us today too I mean really appreciate it learning more about this product and sci-fi and the tether drones and you can follow up and watch this section again go check out their web site right here on digital trends live Thank You Laura for joining usbut right now we have a very special interview with you joining us via zoom we have Laura major who is the CTO of sci-fi and sci-fi makes some really amazing drone some drone products I want to have Laura though explain this all to us Laura hello thanks for joining Digital Trends live hi Greg thanks for having me so I want to ask you maybe you can walk us through what sci-fi does I've been reading all about it this morning but I want to kind of give our viewers the overview from your point of view yes absolutely so yeah we are the pioneer in tethered drones and so what that means is we have a cable a very small thin cable kind of like a headphone cable and that connects the drone to a ground station and that provides continuous power to the drone so most drones are limited by the battery onboard and they can only fly for anywhere from 10 minutes to you know upwards of 20 25 minutes our system can stay in the air continuously for hours even for days our longest flight was around 200 hours so went on for you know many days at a time a continuous flight I think that's oh go ahead just also all the communications happen over the tether as well so all the both the command and control of the vehicle and the video down from from the vehicle and comes over the tether as well so it's immune to any type of you know interception I think that's absolutely that's true I didn't even think about that yeah as far as you're not beaming over you know the the actual video feed and where it's directly connected I can see a lot of advantages of that especially talking about the battery life being able to fly for that long because the batteries on drones that's one thing that doesn't seem to have really improved a ton over time I mean you're usually limited I think like 1/2 hours probably about the max at least that I've seen maybe there's some other ones out there that will last longer than that but being tethered you know my first question just about this before we go more in depth in the products is how long is the tether so yeah so we can go up to 400 feet okay our tether length supports that it is a little longer you know to deal with winds and what but we yeah we set our maximum altitude at 400 feet based on FAA regulations we've flown with longer tethers so we have gone up to a thousand feet actually in the past during the product development but we then retuned everything down to the 400 feet because of fitting into the FAA regulations okay so 400 feet that's still a long way yeah that's you can go a long ways I'm 400 feet with me you probably wouldn't want me flying anywhere near trees because I would already ruin it in a second but that's why I'm not flying them so so you've got the up to a 400 foot tether like what kind of applications do you see this being used for mm-hmm yeah so there are a few key applications that it's used for right now so one is security so if you want to be able to have a monitor an area for a period of time but you don't have a tower or another location where you can put a camera you can just have our drone there the park system launch it and have you know eyes in the sky immediately so we recently supported the Boston Marathon for instance where the Emergency Management Response wanted to be able to monitor the crowd flow and you know kind of provide real-time information to the folks on the ground there so that's one another one another big one is communications so being able to launch the basically the antenna or the cell capability up into the air a you know up to 400 feet you can now extend and really create a communication network on the fly and ad-hoc communication network like how do you mean by that with an ad-hoc communication network like actually use that as the hub to beam out Wow okay then I can definitely see that especially in like a security situation or an emergency you know say there's some kind of an emergency situation where cell lines are down and you need to exit that yeah and you can park it up there that's right in a disaster situation for instance where all your infrastructure is wiped out again you can bring in a park and launch it and have it you know stand up a communications infrastructure immediately Wow and so you you've been using this in these different kinds of situations right as it goes along so and he said maximum flying time I mean really is forever I mean as long as there's power source of you know yeah and the components yeah hold up so how big can you make the how big are your drones so they are about about four feet in in diameter today and it Holt Park holds up to six pounds of payload so so it carries a camera and or you know radios I can carry multiple payloads at a time but it can hold up to six pounds and carry that up to the 400 foot limit nice question coming in here on Facebook I just saw Joe ass can you chain them together and have multiple drones chained together physically change no we don't do that and but you can yeah you can connect them over over a flight network their data or control you know control multiple drones from a from a single location but not not physically we have an experimental but not yet yeah I mean yeah I don't know why you would but figured I would ask the questions it was in there so a couple other questions here that I had to just just about the product like so you see ously for the security issues for for communication issues what other commercial applications are there for these another one is emergency response for industrial locations especially if there's a fire that breaks out being able to get eyes on the situation and really understand the source of that fire quickly is very important and so we've had a number of customers who purchased park systems as a part of their emergency response kit so that they haven't you know available and ready to go again a system only takes about you know five or 10 minutes to set up and have it at 400 feet so they can very quickly respond when there is one of you know there is a disaster on there their facility and you probably I'm assuming you probably Park it up there you don't have just to have somebody constantly monitoring it you know like you would with a normal tone have to worry it's fully autonomous the system the operator just sets the altitude and hits go and it goes up and holds position and and stays there without any operator input that's really cool well as as you know the CTO where do you find your inspiration for going forward like what are you looking at what what do you pay attention to you when it comes to designing these drones yeah so I mean we're looking at being able to support mobile mobile mission so right now that the system goes up and holds location one single location and there's been a lot of interest of can we put the ground station on a vehicle and drive it away and have the air vehicle follow it yeah or even you know on a ground robot in the future so so we've been working on that capability and that's something that that we're getting close to being ready to provide to users also looking at other sized vehicles smaller vehicles where you could take this capability into other you know other environments so I think again this idea of being able to have persistent so you can fly you know continuously without without that limitation I think opens up a lot of opportunity and again adding in the intelligence the autonomy being able to pull that data bring that to the user without having them you know needing to control the system or interact and then you know a flight sort of capacity but really be able to focus on the data that's coming down from the drone when you have something and you know in the air for so many hours at a time you really want the operator looking at you know just the the result of that of that mission not having to pay attention to every second of the flight especially if you're in an emergency you know an emergency situation or something like that security you don't want to waste your time you know it's possible on that and in talking to that kind of point you mentioned you know the autonomy is a big part of it how much do you incorporate AI into this is AI something you're gonna start using more and more or what do you use currently with it yeah so certainly we're moving towards towards AI in a number of capacities and so we're looking at a lot of you know adding in perception you know across so fusing across many different sensors onboard being able to have autonomous you know many autonomous behaviors that we have autonomous behaviors today but now taking it to the next level of can you now start to detect areas of interest and manage your flight your flight path based on on that information so that's what we're looking at is pulling pulling those together the onboard autonomy with the you know being able to detect and you know identify areas of interest whether that's again a source within a fire or whether that's someone cross you know coming into a crowd that you don't want there and being able to you know go collect more data about that without having to bother the operator and again just provide the key information back to the operator that's uh that is yeah actually really interesting an interesting use of AI you have that I guess I'm kind of imagining it kind of like you said Park it up there say it's adding a big event you know you got the Super Bowl or something and there's something happening in a section that maybe security doesn't see and it can just immediately alert like there's something wrong over here that's right so really turn the vehicle into a teammate for the operator so forward you know isin you know eyes ahead where they don't have to think about it they just get an alert back from their team member when there's a you know something of interest very well and again it's sci-fi CY PHY and where can people go to find more information about your products and follow up with everything that you're doing yeah so we we have a website and sci-fi works comm and that's probably the the premiere place to go where we're also having you know presence on social media Twitter Facebook and you know all the typical places all the usual ones yeah yeah on our website Laura thank you so much for hopping him with us today too I mean really appreciate it learning more about this product and sci-fi and the tether drones and you can follow up and watch this section again go check out their web site right here on digital trends live Thank You Laura for joining us\n"