Blogs

Its the Silicon Valley Drone show time of year again http://www.susbexpo.com looking forward to meeting old friends and making new. The first commercial (all the rest were military/tiny bit of private before) drone show in America makes it to year four. 

Here's the line up so far.

Chris Anderson, CEO 3D Robotics founder DIY Drones

Chris is the CEO of 3D Robotics and founder of DIY Drones. From 2001 through 2012 he was the Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine. Before Wired he was with The Economist for seven years in London, Hong Kong and New York in various positions, ranging from Technology Editor to US Business Editor.

He is the author of the New York Times bestselling books The Long Tail and Free as well as the new Makers: The New Industrial Revolution.  In 2007 he was named in “Time 100,” the news magazine’s list of the 100 most influential men and women in the world. View Complete Bio…

Jeffery Antonelli, Antonelli Law

Jeffrey Antonelli launched one of the first Drone/UAS Practice Groups in the country in 2014 after discovering drone technology in his RC aircraft hobby. The practice has now grown to more than 50 clients nationwide including billion dollar engineering, construction, and telecom concerns, GIS professionals, cinematographers, real estate companies, a news organization, and a forensic specialist. In addition to providing Section 333 and Public COA services, with the firm advises clients on complex aviation needs, digital privacy, tax, contracts, intellectual property, employment law and civil litigation. This is made possible in large part due to his co-counsel Kate Fletcher, attorney and pilot for the world’s largest airline; Washington DC regulatory and telecommunications attorney Mark Del Bianco; and aviation consultant Douglas Marshall. View Complete Bio…

Micahael Chambliss, International Cinematographers Guild

Michael Chambliss is a technologist and business representative for the for the International Cinematographers Guild (ICG), IATSE Local 600, focused on new production technologies impacting directors of photography and their camera crews. He has been working closely with FAA-exempt UAS motion picture and television aerial operators, regulatory agencies, insurers, the motion picture and television Industry Wide Safety Committee, industry guilds, and community based UAS groups to implement this technology as new visual storytelling technique. View Complete Bio…

Goksel Dedoglu, PercepTonic

Goksel is the Founder and Lab Director of PercepTonic, his Dallas-based startup where he formulates embedded vision solutions for next-gen products. Thanks to the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon and seven years with Texas Instruments’ R&D labs, Goksel is a recognized expert in Computer Vision with patents and product contributions in automotive safety, video analytics, face and gesture recognition, and augmented reality. View Complete Bio…

Marke F. Gibson Senior Advisor, Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration

In September 2015, Marke Gibson joined the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the Senior Advisor, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration. He provides executive direction and high level leadership to the FAA with responsibility for oversight of the work related to UAS. In addition, he is responsible for developing and delivering business and strategic plans for enterprise-level UAS initiatives, analyzing integration progress, engaging in scientific and research activities, and maintaining liaison with internal and external stakeholders.
Prior to joining the FAA, Mr. Gibson served as the Executive Director of the NextGen Institute (NGI). The primary role of NGI is to provide a mechanism through which the private sector actively engages with the USG in defining, developing, and implementing NextGen. In that position, he promoted the NextGen Institute throughout the industry, created awareness and gained new support for NextGen initiatives. During his tenure at NGI, he led two UAS Spectrum working groups, an FAA Global Leadership Roundtable, and commenced work on an ADS-B initiative on behalf of the Deputy Administrator.View Complete Bio…

Heller Gregory, GrandView Services

Heller Gregory is the founder and president of Bay Area based GrandView Services, LLC. GrandView is one of Northern California’s first UAV companies focused on data acquisition and processing for civil engineering, geotechnical, heavy construction, and environmental monitoring. Ms. Gregory is a licensed private pilot who has been involved in digital imaging and communications for more than 25 years and with the civil, geotechnical, and earthwork construction industry for more than 20 years. View Complete Bio…

Tero Heinonen, Sharper Shape, Finland

Tero, founder and CEO of Sharper Shape, is an entrepreneurial and experienced start-up executive with a successful track record and experience from international high tech business management, sales and technology management with excellent industry knowledge of several industries, and target-driven hands-on attitude. Tero has co-founded 5 technology companies, where he has served as CEO and/or Chairman. Since 2000 Tero has been focused solely on startups, including Maventa Ltd (exit 2013), Uoma Oy (exit 2010), Tema Networks Ltd, Helmi Technologies Inc., CargoTrax Ltd, BLStream Ltd, Locus Portal Corp. (exit 2004), Synapse, and Optiwise Inc. Before startups Tero worked in business development at Stonesoft Corp (IPO 1999) and in business management at Tekla Corp. Tero started his career as a software developer in 1986. View Complete Bio…

Michael Perry, Director of Strategic Partnerships DJI

Michael Perry is Director of Strategic Partnerships of DJI and leads external outreach on behalf of the company. Since joining DJI in early 2014, he has helped engage industry leaders across multiple sectors, top tier global media and international government partners to understand the potential of unmanned aerial technology. His work also includes identifying and engaging partners to help expand the capabilities of unmanned aerial systems through new hardware or software solutions.

Before joining DJI, Michael served as a communications strategist at global public relations consultancies, advising Fortune 500 companies on corporate communications, media relations, public affairs, and thought leadership programs across North and South America, Europe and Asia. View Complete Bio…

Parimal Kopardekar, NASA NextGen Concepts and Technology Development Project

Parimal Kopardekar (PK) serves as the Manager of the NASA’s NextGen Concepts and Technology Development Project. He has published more than 40 articles. He enjoys initiating new concepts and technology ideas that increase airspace capacity and throughput, reduce delays, and reduce the total cost of air transportation. View Complete Bio…

Tad McGeer, Aerovel

Tad McGeer is Aerovel’s founder and president. He trained as an aeronautical engineer at Princeton and Stanford, and then joined the new Engineering Science faculty at Simon Fraser University in his native British Columbia. There he developed the concept of passive dynamic walking, which went on to be adopted as a paradigm for study of human locomotion and design of legged robots. In 1990 he returned to aeronautics, joining a Virginia start-up, Aurora Flight Sciences, as Chief Scientist. View Complete Bio…

Terry Miller, President of Transport Risk Management, Inc. and Unmanned Risk Management

Terry founded Transport Risk Management in 2003 because he recognized the opportunity to innovate an industry and do things better than they were being done.
Transport Risk is a pioneer in the field of UAS insurance and has developed many systems unique to UAS insurance including an innovative aircraft registration system and insurance quote submission and policy management systems. View Complete Bio…

Knut Torbjørn Moe, Squarehead Technology

Mr. Moe, a Norwegian citizen, directs drone detection solutions at Squarehead Technology in Oslo. The company has delivered premium audio detection solutions for customers worldwide since 2004. He has managed multiple industrial and law enforcement drone projects in North America, Southern Africa, Middle East, Europe, The Arctic and Scandinavia, and has dealt with risk analysis and capability mapping of drones for the last decade. He is also an accredited drone operator on various systems, and an expert of counter drone tactics and systems. View Complete Bio…

Nicholas Pilkington, DroneDeploy

Nicholas Pilkington grew up in South Africa. He studied Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge. He also worked at Toshiba on speech recognitions system and Base4 on nanopore gene sequencers. He co-founded DroneDeploy in 2013 to make drones productive and accessible to everyone in the world. View Complete Bio…

Maj. Gen. James O. Poss (ret), USAF, ASSURE

Maj. Gen. James O. Poss (ret) is the Executive Director of the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE) Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Center of Excellence Team. ASSURE is 18 of the top US, Canadian and British UAS research universities with 100+ corporate members teaming to solve the FAA’s UAS research issues. General Poss works for MSU at their Stennis Space Center Campus. He is a 30 year US Air Force veteran with combat experience in four wars and was the Air Force’s senior career intelligence officer at his transition from active service in November 2012. He is a leading expert on UAS, having targeted the first armed UAS strikes, designed the US Air Force’s remote split operations system for UAS control and the Distributed Common Ground Station for UAS intelligence analysis. General Poss received his commission through the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at the University of Southern Mississippi. View Complete Bio…

Gene Robinson, RP Search Services

Gene Robinson has continued on the same path of learning that started back in 2005 with the first search using a small unmanned aircraft.  Since his book “First to Deploy” has been released, Robinson has served the community by developing procedures and using his field experience to guide the growth of UA technology for first responders and Search & Rescue organizations. View Complete Bio…

Colin Snow, CEO Drone Analyst Research and Advisors

Colin Snow is CEO and Founder of Drone Analyst Research and Advisors, a consulting firm for the commercial unmanned aerial systems (UAS) industry. Colin is a 25-year technology industry veteran with a background in market research, enterprise software, electronics, digital imaging, and mobility. His experience includes aerial photography as well as making, programming, and piloting remote control aircraft. Colin holds an MBA from Florida Atlantic University and is a member of all major UAS industry groups including: AUVSI, RCAPA, and AMA. Colin writes the ‘The Market’ column for sUAS News, and you can find him on Twitter @droneanalyst. View Complete Bio…

Andy von Stauffenberg, Founder & CEO, VStar Systems Inc.

Andy von Stauffenberg is the founder and CEO of VStar Systems Inc. VStar Systems Inc. provides End to End Unmanned Systems Research and Development Services to both commercial and government clients. Prior to establishing VStar Systems, Mr. von Stauffenberg was the Global Hawk Block 30 Chief Engineer at Northrop Grumman, overseeing all technical aspects of the product life cycle, including the development, production and sustainment efforts for the United States Air Force. Mr. von Stauffenberg has years of remote sensing, systems engineering, flight operations, system test and project management experience across a wide range of applications, advanced technologies and platforms. Mr. von Stauffenberg served eight years in the US Navy in various positions. He holds a BS and MBA from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in addition to a Master of Engineering in Systems Engineering degree from Stevens Institute of Technology.
View Complete Bio…

Micahel Thoss, Ethoss, Germany

Michael Thoss, is a trusted expert within his home country Germany and in the global, commercial unmanned industry. Being involved since 2008, Michael actively joined the industry representing the German manufacturer microdrones. As microdrones Marketing Director, Michael successfully developed, positioned and established the brand on the international commercial drone market and also was responsible for (the growth of) the global distribution network. Moving on, Michael founded his own company called “ethoss”. The company is regularly helping drone industry businesses and supports with strategic consulting and marketing services next to its extensive global network. Michael consults with established, global organizations, which look for his advice in order to successfully implement unmanned technology within their organization and operations. Michael actively is involved in drone operations and projects around the world, for both, security and commercial applications. During the last years, the main focus was clearly set to Europe, Middle East, South Africa and North-America. Currently, Michael is in the process of founding further businesses, related to the unmanned industry. View Complete Bio…