Fasten your seatbelts for an exciting episode of Redefining Society Podcast, where we explore the game-changing potential of autonomous planes. Ready for takeoff?
Guests:
Dr. Yemaya Bordain, President of Americas at Daedalean [@DaedaleanAI]
On Linkedin | https://www.linkedin.com/in/yemayabordain/
Debra Aubrey, Technical Product Marketing Manager at Intel [@intel]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/debraaubrey/
Anna Chernova, Co-Founder, CPO - Daedalean [@DaedaleanAI]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/achernova/
Host:
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
"Fasten your seatbelts for an exciting episode of Redefining Society Podcast, where we explore the game-changing potential of autonomous planes. Ready for takeoff?"
Welcome to another thrilling episode of Redefining Society Podcast, hosted by Marco Ciappelli! Today, we're diving deep into the captivating world of autonomous planes and how they will revolutionize the way we travel and connect with the world. We have an incredible lineup of guests, including Yemaya Bordain, Anna Chernova, and Deborah Aubrey, who will share their expertise in aviation, technology, and the fascinating challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in this domain.
Fasten your seatbelts and get ready to explore how cutting-edge advancements in technology are transforming the cockpit of our planes. This is a conversation you won't want to miss, as we discuss the role of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the ever-decreasing size and power requirements of processors that are making it possible to implement autonomous systems in the aviation industry. Are you ready to trust computers to take the controls and ensure our safe passage through the skies?
As we delve into the current state of the industry and the future of urban air mobility, we'll discuss the critical role of automation in addressing the shortage of pilots, and how increased automation will lead to safer and more efficient airspace management. Anna Chernova, co-founder of an innovative aviation company, shares her unique perspective as a human pilot on the potential for machines to outperform humans in terms of speed, safety, and accuracy.
From the challenges of navigating congested urban environments to the need for powerful processors to synthesize massive amounts of data from various sensors, we'll explore the technological breakthroughs and trends that are paving the way for a new era of transportation. And as we ponder whether we can truly trust computers to make the final decisions in the cockpit, our guests will provide insights into the balance between human intuition and machine capabilities.
This conversation is sure to spark your imagination and challenge your assumptions about the intersection of technology, aviation, and society. So join us on this fascinating journey as we redefine the future of air travel and the impact it will have on our daily lives. And remember to share this episode with your friends, subscribe to the podcast, and get ready for takeoff on this exhilarating ride into the world of autonomous planes! Are you ready to fly?
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Resources
Future of Avionics White Paper:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/now/daedalean-avionics-whitepaper.html
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To see and hear more Redefining Society stories on ITSPmagazine, visit:
https://www.itspmagazine.com/redefining-society-podcast
Watch the webcast version on-demand on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnYu0psdcllTUoWMGGQHlGVZA575VtGr9
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording as errors may exist. At this time we provide it “as it is” and we hope it can be useful for our audience.
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Marco Ciappelli01:51
And here we go. This is redefining society podcast. And I'm really excited about this conversation as usual. And lately that we don't do the audio only anymore, but we also have the YouTube channel, which is starting to get pretty popular. So I'm excited about it. Not much to see. You know about me, but you know, you can look at our guests, we have also a dog, and my dog is always present in the back. And we may have some other surprise dog visit coming in, I heard. But without further ado, this conversation is again about redefining society with technology. We don't know what come first, you know is that technology driving society is a society driving technology. Who knows? We'll try to figure it out today. And we're talking in particular to have technology that goes in the cockpits of our plane. And that's something that if you travel, you may be interested to hear this story, and how it does affect our society, the way we travel the way we connect with the world and so far. So I'm going to start with a round here of introduction, which is not coming from me because I will absolutely mess it up. We're going to start we Yemaya here Yemaya and a little bit about yourself and then please pass the ball to Deborah and Anna here on the show and then we start rolling the conversation.
Yemaya Bordain03:23
Awesome. Awesome. Hey, thanks so much for having us. We're really excited to be here. I mean, my ordain, I am president at the Dalian. I'm here with Debbie and Ana, I'll My background is in safety critical avionics. I was previously at Intel Corporation, been at the Dalian last few months and just been having an absolute blast. Since joining, I'll pass it over to our co founder, the lady of the company on a
Anna Chernova03:56
Hi, thank you very much. You're Maya. I'm Anna Chernova. I was trained initially as a physicist, and then I was working for Google for a while, during the lunch break. And before my work in Mountain View office, I decided to start flying because that was the nearest thing to the office actually in the Palo Alto airport. And I went to a super nice super small Flight School, which was called Serious deviation and the people there taught others how to fly helicopters. So I started in around 2002 Lebanon at that point, it was complete. Complete horribly, I had no idea why I'm doing that. Apart from I knew it was difficult and complex in comparison with typing on the computer every day. That was something quite challenging, but I thought okay, let me just learn to hover and that's probably where I'm gonna stop and then the next thing was okay, let me try to fly solo and this is where I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna jump out it's actually useful thing To know about a machine just also use a socket to rebuild, but we can talk about it later. So several years later, coworker of mine who also worked at SpaceX in between working at Google in different countries, he found me as a helicopter pilot, which I became by that point. And he asked me whether I would be interested in starting a company with him. So this is how our company was created. And I was introduced as the human pilot, whom we eventually going to replace with a small shell script. But I think that was put this out some suspense on this toilet. Now here. Let's switch to Deborah for a while, because that's another part of the necessary thing to replace the pilot ability to run this small program on some hardware.
Debra Aubrey05:55
Thank you, Ana. My name is Deborah Aubrey, I go by Debbie. So that's you, Maya and I have worked together for a while before she left Intel. And since she's left Intel, you Maya handed over to me, the aerospace business. So I'm the market development manager for the federal and aerospace market segment. And my particular focus is on the aerospace industry and bringing Intel's drive for democratization of silicon into the avionics industry.
Marco Ciappelli 06:27
Wow, that's perfect. And I fly sometimes, but not piloting, so don't worry. So I will, I can go in so many different places. But you know, we're gonna get a little technical and a little bit of, you know, sociological, maybe because a lot of people, first of all wonder, when is the future arriving? And I often say, you know, the future is here. It depends what you expect from it to do. I've talked to astronauts, I've talked to pilots, I've talked to security people in the in the aviation industry, and they all say, you know, AI has been in the cockpit for a long time, automation, and all of those beautiful things. And of course, the pilot still has a role. But let's go with where, where are we right now with artificial intelligence, machine learning and all those beautiful thing in the cockpit, like, what is the status of the industry right now, and I don't know, Debra, maybe want to start with you?
Debra Aubrey07:32
Well, today, of course, most of the aircraft flying are commercial aircraft that are going point to point over very long distances. And you typically see a pilot and a co pilot, both in the cockpit flying the aircraft. And that's the state of the art today. And I think you understand, and it's in the news, that our pilot population is aging out of service. And so they're getting older, and the the number of new pilots available to fly these aircraft is is reducing. So we see ourselves in a transition period, just on the near term sort of transition to try to reduce the workload on the pilots in the cockpit to perhaps drive towards a single pilot, navigating the aircraft flying the aircraft in order to deal with sort of the the coming shortage of pilots. And then moving forward, we're looking towards, you know, the urban Air Mobility market. And that's really where Ana and Nehemiah are coming into the picture here.
Marco Ciappelli08:45
All right, so coming into picture. Am I on what's the view? And then and then we hear from the actual pilot on?
Yemaya Bordain08:53
Yeah, well, you know, anak can give a really good, I think, take on on this from a perspective of why she co founded a company, and what the role of the company is, but in urban Air Mobility, you know, we're finding that one as Debbie stated that there is this shortage, you see, there's a shortage of pilots. But in this use case, there's going to be an order of magnitude or more, maybe multiple orders of magnitude, more aircraft in the airspace. And so it's going to create quite a bit of density in an airspace that already in some cases is is strained. And where, you know, air traffic control is sometimes struggling to manage even the density of air airspace today. So then you take that order of magnitude, couple orders of magnitude, and the problem becomes an even tougher problem. And so we believe that by increasing the automation have the systems toward autonomy, it'll end up being safer for the airspace where the aircraft are autonomous or fully automated, and the difference being whether there's a human fallback or no human fallback. Maybe
Debra Aubrey10:22
I was going to just maybe offer, you know, when we're talking about urban Air Mobility, you know, today the legacy aircraft are flying point to point between distance new cities that are pretty far spread apart. When we start talking about urban Air Mobility, we're talking about bringing that ability to use the airspace into our urban center. So now you're not just flying, you know, from Boston to tel la for example, here you're perhaps flying from you know, one Regional Airport to another so like Phoenix to Tucson, or, or perhaps we have air ambulances in order to get people from, you know, the site of the accident or, or, you know, their site of injury to the hospital much more quickly. So that when we're talking about urban air mobility, and the traffic congestion, now we're talking about air airplanes, air vehicles, sharing the space that we have automated car sharing, and, and, you know, you have light poles and and all kinds of different obstructions. And so that's, you know, the context of that urban or Air Mobility challenge that we're, we're solving.
Marco Ciappelli11:35
So the Jetson as a kid from the 70s I'm still waiting for for that. But so even why, and I'm gonna pass the ball to Anna here. So there is the perspective of security pilot in and in. And then there is the aspect of convenience, which come when we connect with society. And I don't know, I try to fly a drone a few times, and I just couldn't fly that anywhere. Unless there was in the desert, I mean, la pretty much is air is airspace everywhere. So it's like, Nope, you can fly here because these because that, so thinking that there is going to be a lot of flying larger drone around the city, it makes me think about, you know, the city of the future. But um, then there is the aspect of the pilot security or flight and some people. When we talk about a tonal mouse, or general intelligence or anything like that, the fear is, Can we really trust computers to make the final decision, and should we always have a backup of the UI there, so let's go there.
Anna Chernova12:47
So I actually for myself, I came to such In conclusion, first on my first deal flying then, on my first day, a day off so long as the day of my private pilot license exam, I basically from gaining the game, that's a different level, I came to exactly the same thought there should be a machine who would do what I'm supposed to do much faster and much safer. Even though of course, I am the I'm benefiting from the unbelievable freedom. Even though the airspace around is difficult, even though the my instructor, my examiner, he would raise his eyebrow, anytime I would deviate half a degree from the course, because of the airspace because of the noise. Because flying over the builds in the San Francisco Bay area, for whatever reason, however, the ability to take off from Palo Alto and go land somewhere in the canyon. So it's another end of the spectrum from the commercial airlines. But there are so many things which you need to take into account about video, you're there. So of course, I'm talking about the small helicopters, which don't have too much instruments on them. So essentially, if you didn't even have a glass cockpit, it was just six pack instrument with extremely basic analog things which you are as a helicopter pilot, you're not even supposed to look at most of the time. So your information was mostly coming from the build outside of your unit when you're landing, you're supposed to have the small book speed vehicle and things that are in safe region and hydrophilicity diagram. However, the amount of things which you need perceive and interpret is insane. And this is where I thought that a machine would do better the machine would do better at the hardware and the person would keep the position in the cover better the machine would make the trajectory better than myself. It's great fun. But the amount of safety margin available to me and my reaction speed is no way comparable to any basic computer. So to give a particular example is that in the single engine helicopter So, if your engine fails, your rotor still keeps rotating, but you have 1.3. Second, to disconnect the rotor from the engine so that you still have enough momentum in the rotor. And you can still learn. Obviously, if any engineer will tell you, why would you have a human in this type of loop? And, yep, let me just pause that. So, for smaller craft, I think the reason, same reason, same gap, which we are almost ready to fill in. And that's why we also have our company who is exactly trying to make the breakthrough in this particular area.
Marco Ciappelli15:44
Got it. And so I remember I read a book once a long time ago about the you need to be at the right place at the right time, especially when it comes to technology usually is a convergence of many different technologies that come together, and allow what it could have been a dream, I don't know, 10 years, 20 years ago, somebody that had a vision for to make it happen. So I guess I'm gonna go with, with Debbie here of computer power, in the last 20 years, you know, just multiplies and multiplies? We do. We're looking at things now that really, we feel like we just forward into the future. Is that what was needed? What What else do do we need? And how do we present this to the users and say, look, it really is, like I said, much safer, maybe if you just let it run by the computers.
Debra Aubrey16:41
So when you're looking at putting computers on board, these small aerial vehicles, and generally speaking, we refer to them as vertical takeoff and landing or electric, most of the industry is moving towards electric aircraft. And so your shorthand would be Evie tall. So as you're looking at the systems, they're not there, they're very small, relatively speaking, when you compare that to a Boeing 737 Max or an Airbus 330. These are these are very small systems. And so they're going to be challenged from a size away in a power perspective. So you know, if they're electric powered, then that means the amount of power that that the that the system can draw, has to be scaled down from what you know, a large aircraft can handle. And so as we've seen, Moore's Law affect the silicon industry, where our power, our size, and our weight of the chips are getting smaller and smaller, and smaller. At the same time, we're seeing the performance per watt increase. And so that's what's allowing us to realize some of these new architectures. And the other thing is when when you're looking at these systems, whether it's an AI copilot on board a regular aircraft, or an AI copilot onboard one of these Evie talls the ability to take in information, so synthesize data coming in from multiple cameras from multiple radar systems, and and to be able to process that data requires a huge amount of processing power. So and you need to be able to take that data in and synthesize it and fuse it together to build essentially a digital picture and a reliable digital picture of the surrounding environment in which in which you find yourself flying. And, and the, the fact that the processors have become smaller, requiring less power, requiring, you know, less, smaller board effectively to host that processor, as well as that increase in the performance on those systems. Because we aren't standing still, each time we get smaller, we actually get more powerful from a from a performance perspective. That's what's allowing this innovation right now.
Yemaya Bordain19:19
Yeah, I got my more and more t shirt on after Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, by accident, by the way from a computing perspective, and then there's also just the explosion of computer vision. And that's tied as well to the computing, right and so there was a time where computer vision, you just could not process enough, you know, at the size, weight and power and then suddenly there's this hockey stick of, you know, being able to leverage neural networks. In order to do what used to be done with trigonometry, and you know, and these traditional methods where you, you really needed to know and be able to identify an edge very, very clearly. And now with, you know, neural networks, that was a part of what has enabled this capability that we have.
Marco Ciappelli20:25
So, so can we run a parallel? And I like, all of you to jump in? If, if, if you got something to say, because I'm thinking people may be thinking, okay, autonomous car, you know, we heard about that for a long time. And then now, you know, autonomous, pretty much everything. And you think about their environment where they operate, at least for what I know, and talking with many people, the car could already and ready does. A lot of things on his own may not be level five, but you know, it's pretty good. I mean, I have a car that I can trust to keep the distance on the highway. But you're on two dimension. Now I come into the airplanes and the flying object, drone and Le copter, whatever they are, then you're working with another dimension. So it's hard not to think about a sci fi movie, like I don't know, the fifth elements or whatever they you are Star Wars for what it is the Mandalorian where you can see flying things, one on top of the other almost like highway. So maybe you're my it's there's so with you what is going to look like this thing? And is it easier to have autonomous flying versus cars?
Yemaya Bordain21:39
Yes, so I probably can speak more about the problem statement that is ahead between flying cars and and aircraft. You know, the aircraft problem statement is basically that whatever I can see, I don't want to fly into unless I want to own it. Right. And so I don't have to know the difference between a paper bag and a pedestrian, or a plastic bag or pedestrian, right. And so you're you are necessarily in isolated space when you're in the air. So the problem statements have is quite different in the way that you leverage the technology is quite different. But I think maybe from a pilot perspective, I would pass that on to Ana to talk about, you know, what, what are you going to see when you're in the air and you're piloting in the future?
Anna Chernova22:31
Well, I'm sure we will go and see a more confident and most and safer landings. Because landing is basically your primary job as a pilot, and that's the only safe state which is available to in flying. So we tend to believe that actually, flying itself is much simpler robotics problem than driving. And you indeed need to have way less semantic understanding of what is happening. But this magical system because political ending, and starting from where we've been just coming from both the geographical physical and human marking some semantics of the environment of the airports, and of the landscape, and also of the obstacles on the ground. That's the primary thing which you need to worry about. So that again, is done much easier by the processes for which we have now rather than rather than the brain of the human, so for example, they are definitely over performing already a human seeing other obstacles because a human pilot sees only 12% of what they're supposed to see what would be good for them to see. So most of the pilots are not even aware of the threads which have lying around. And even our some of our products, we can show much better performance already so that that's not even the bar to be compared to. And that opens up the possibility of course of having more aircraft in the air. So currently, for example, in the instrument instrumental metrological conditions, you can only have one helicopter bow above the central London. And that's not practical for economic purposes. Of course, there may be other factors such as noise. If you want pollution, there's additional restrictions. But if we are moving on to the evils, then the density can create some there is no reason to this thing and further ability to do search and rescue operations. And so that's actually the primary request from people who are doing these type of operations in the mountains. Can you give us something which wouldn't be afraid to crash if we have to fly is marginal weather. So speaking a little bit to these calculations when they are when this tool can help people also with transportation between hospitals and things like that.
Debra Aubrey25:15
And so I think the challenge is between automated cars and and then the sort of automated air vehicles are different when you think about it. So when you look at an automated car driving around, and I live in Chandler, Arizona, and we happen to be kind of the ground zero for Waymo automated driving, and I've actually been in a car, a way mo car without a driver in the front seat. So when you think about the challenge faced there, we have automated cars driving on the same streets as humans. And we can make our automated cars very deterministic. So you know, they're always going to if there's a human near the road, they're going to wait and see what that humans going to do. You can't rely with a human driving a car to do the same thing. So humans driving cars introduce, and when it's not like it's new, humans driving cars are unpredictable, and somewhat unreliable. So we have an automated car, which is pretty ridic, predictable, fairly reliable, interacting with very unpredictable and unreliable other drivers on the road. And when you start looking at an air system, you know, some of the IDI talls for an air ambulance or search and rescue or air taxis. Now that that that sort of unpredictable human is taken out of the loop, because we aren't starting there, we aren't starting with a human piloting the Evie tall by themselves, we're starting at a place where the human is piloting that Ed tall with AI assistance. And and now we've got, you know, the possibility of vehicle to vehicle communication, so that one taxi can talk to an ambulance. And we can have that conversation between those vehicles, leveraging AI and inferencing, to understand what's going on around them, that you don't have the benefit for when you're looking at a system that's driving the streets where you know, we can't have this automated car talking to this person's car, because they just fundamentally don't have the same architecture within them.
Yemaya Bordain27:35
Yeah, and even in the airspace today in the US, every aircraft has to have an ATSB that says, Hi, I'm here. And so it's you know, all the time, there already is some kind of communication between the two and in fact, it which is a great segue into our first product that is currently in the process of being certified with the FAA concurrently validated with the Aza, and it is a system that is a traffic collision avoidance system or traffic awareness system. And it provides both cooperative and noncooperative traffic awareness. So your systems today pick up a you know, they they they communicate with transponders from other aircraft. But what about birds? What about gliders? What about hot air balloons coming from China? Right? Our system because it's it's a it's a vision based system is a passive system, it sees everything around. And it also is an input into this traffic awareness system that says Hi, I'm here to I'm a bird.
Marco Ciappelli28:48
Well, you know, that makes sense to me. And also, there is an entire ethical perspective if we want to bring it to this table. But you know, make me think that sometimes when we have the Trolley Dilemma for the car, you know, which one of the, if I have to kill someone, who am I going to kill? And we go very philosophical in that and I'm like, Are we expecting a little bit too much from Ai? Like, maybe we're even expecting too much from human that they're like, Do you really think they're making that decision in a fraction of seconds or a fraction of a second? But you know, that's an all different story, but I understand that the difference between having an environment that is built for this particular kind of interaction between the different elements as you were explaining while on the street of Florence, where I'm from, you know, it the street made for horses and carriage and not even big ones. So you know, then you drive a big car in there is a problem in LA, and not a problem. The street are big, there's traffic and so on. So I think one of the big barriers for adoption, it is actually that you will need to rebuild the infrastructure for for all of this. And is there a problem as well in coordinating everybody in the aerospace industry?
Anna Chernova30:14
Well, Viva actually thinking when they started the company thinking that yes, it wouldn't be very nice if the instructional structure for the new aircraft is different from from the legacy aircraft. But given the rate of the evolution of the aviation industry, we couldn't bet on it. So from the day one, we were thinking that our products should seamlessly work in in the mix of the human pilots and the automated pilots. Because the only automation which came through the regulation in the recent decades was, for example, the automated tape which leads you the weather forecast, that's the level of the change of the instruct structure. That's like their major change what happened. So we should be able to understand the traffic instructors get back the clearances, and make sense of what they're saying, because they make sense of what other people are saying. But of course, couldn't leave that when the actual behavior what is observed from the camera on that aircraft. But the interesting video, what I also wanted to mention a connection and what they dimensioned the unpredictability of the world around. So this is actually the normal point on which we are working with the regulators. Because the build is inherently inherently unpredictable. So we can write our software and the way we can run those big guarantees that there are very few bugs, we can run all the possible tests, satisfying the software, best software writing practices and the aviation regulation requirements. But they will distill some uncertainty in the world out there. So how do we quantify it? How do we make sure that we actually be within the safety boundary within the quantified safety margins, which we established for ourselves? How do we stay there. So that's, in addition to the performance of the computers, which we have, that's another, the complement part of the break through, which we are trying to make, so that we know we developed the mathematical apparatus, basically, to be able to do it, these things together, then would produce the product of you want, which gives you the performance? On par with human when it makes sense? Or better than makes more sense?
Marco Ciappelli32:49
Wow, can we give some concrete like case study scenarios? Or where you have tested so far? Or where where you see like the vertical the industry, I mean, I can make some guesses, you already went to search and rescue transportation of medical maintenance, they're already using it, I know that there is, you know, in the suite setup, I know, I know, you're in Zurich, this was up I mean, we're already using drone to detect and flying, you know, maybe after an avalanche or anything like that. But for the everyday life, can I get some some example of where you're focusing first in applications Yemaya start with you. And then Deborah, and
Yemaya Bordain33:34
yeah, well, I think the bigger one is where we started on this, this, this emerging urban mobility market that is really trying to transport people from one side of the city to the other side of the city. So in the future, and in what we hope is not the the long the distant future, you'll be able to go into say your Uber app, and pick where you want to go and it'll give you an option for or maybe even Google Maps and it'll give you an option you know where it gives you the you can walk you can take a bus you can you know ride a train for instance, you'll have a little icon that has an aircraft and then you know you you'll be able to hit point to point service that might mean that I get picked up in front of my house. The the car takes me to my local spot where I you know, take an elevator to the top of the building, it flies me across the city to another building, I go down and or another hangar and I go down to there's another car waiting for me and it takes me to work. That's
Marco Ciappelli34:50
you. So let me let me interrupt in this like, do you see this to be the first application or because I'm kind of thinking Isn't it easier to start with? Okay, we can do emergency transportation. We can start with that. Because I mean, I, I can see that a bigger vision than Yeah. Okay, let's start with specific application.
Yemaya Bordain35:18
Yeah, absolutely. And you're right there urban Air Mobility, I think ultimately it, it requires so much you're talking about regulatory change, you're talking about infrastructure needs to be bolstered, we're gonna see bills that are large infrastructure bills, maybe even bigger than what was the recent one last year in the US? Interesting, I was working on that one, and I can't remember the name of it. But there are gonna be large infrastructure bills that are going to, you know, pass down and going to turn into smart cities and Smart Mobility bills at the city level, the state local government level, in order to enable urban Air Mobility, I think ultimately, that's going to take a while. But where there's so much headroom for safety is in safe, safe search and rescue where they are operating in environments that are so hazardous that, you know, sometimes it's like a marvel, that that you end up living through 3d experience, right? That's where we believe that there will be we will see this first. And, you know, we talk about I've heard you say multiple times about AI being in in aerospace, but honestly, it's not airspaces is a market in safe systems, and safe aerospace systems, vehicle systems. It's a market that adopts technology on decades later than the technology is available. So as an example, Debbie and I, we work together very closely at Intel, I started Intel's offerings in safety, critical avionics. And I was blown away in 2017, when I started working on that, to learn that, by that time, multi core processors were in commercial electronics for almost two decades. And still, there had not been a system, like a flight control system that implemented but had gotten approved to implement multi core processors. And in systems that still do, in most cases, you know, you hear dual core work, we're up to Quad Core or more. In these systems in the highest safety level, or highest safety, criticality systems, they disable all but one core. And it's really because of what Debbie talked about determinism and being able to manage the resources that are competing with the with the like memory, or cores that are competing with the resources like memory, and cash. So AI, or more specifically, machine learning still has not been certified to go into aircraft. And that's what to Dalian. That's one of the many challenges and a means to an end for us to achieve in order to get there. And we do believe that we will be the first company to do that.
Marco Ciappelli38:16
Debbie? So I think, oh, yeah, that's sure. I'll keep my question for Debbie later on. Now, go ahead.
Anna Chernova38:26
I just wanted to make a little remark on the use cases to the initial question. So we do actually have already an offering for the flight schools, because when people are learning to fly, they are very much interested in the feedback. And the maximum which you would usually get from an instructor is okay, it was a good landing. But you don't know the details. So people are recording their tracks, through the GPS, for example, why law always system, which runs in parallel can immediately tell you how much you're deviating from the ideal flow, for example, alternatively, while you're trying to focus on the lending, our system can help you look out for the other traffic on the other aircraft.
Marco Ciappelli39:08
Got it? Okay, did this actually connect wonderfully to what I was going to ask to Debbie, which is I mean, you're always pushing ahead, obviously, at Intel with, you know, the quad core and, and everything possible. And then you'll find some kind of wolves, which may be regulation, maybe adoption. So, how do you think we can improve on this? I mean, what do we need to take? I'm putting this in an air quote for people listening, risk taking a little bit more what do we need to facilitate regulation? I mean, how can we actually get to the point that regulators are comfortable companies are comfortable security of the system, it's you know, it's As pair as human, let's say, I mean, I'm kind of going in a utopian, and then there's topia, and where everybody's scared of everything, we're not going anywhere, or everybody just trust everything, because there's blinking light and funny noises. And, yeah, let's just put it on a plane and see what happened. So is that a bomb?
Debra Aubrey40:21
I think it depends on what value you place on a person's life. Right? Because when we're looking at an aircraft, as compared to a car, you know, when there's a car accident, the number of casualties is, you know, relatively small. But when you look at an airplane, when there's a catastrophic incident there, the loss of life is, is pretty major, you know, it's a, it's a very big impact on, you know, not just the families, but you know, the, you know, it's the whole ecosystem, right? It's, you know, it's the pilots, families, it's the cruise families, it's a really big impact. And so there's a reason for these things to kind of take a while to work through the system, because there's a lot of risk being assumed by the aircraft manufacturers, to ensure that people are arriving at their destination safely. So, you know, the, what we're, what you see is the industry is very slow to move, because they want to see the evidence that this next innovation is going to allow them to continue their mission and transporting people safely from one point to another. And so I mean, what we need is to be able to have the evidence collect the evidence, which is collected over years and years and years of a device's ability to meet that mission or assistance, ability to meet that mission. And it just takes a long time to get there. You could see maybe there's another opportunity to introduce, you know, some machine learning in order to do some kind of Peredo on an architecture to decide, you know, what's the chances that this architecture is going to fail in operation? I mean, there are other opportunities there to accelerate that sort of usage cycle. But you know, when you when you step back and think about it in human terms, I'm not sure it's really moving that slowly. You know, I mean, for me, it Intel, you know, I've got companies that are just now adopting my 11th generation processors. Well, we just introduced our 14th generation processor. So, you know, it's, it's slow from my perspective at Intel, where we move at lightspeed. But if I look at it, from my personal perspective, I'm not sure it moves that slow, you know?
Marco Ciappelli42:55
Yeah, it's a matter of perspectives here for sure. One last question. So we talked about infrastructure, we talked about, you know, application, I can imagine many more commercial application can think just like, I mean, I'm gonna say Amazon, I'm not advertising of course, always people talking about it. But you know, that's, that's a good example, delivery of goods. I remember years ago, there was some kind of Leonardo da Vinci kind of flying machine that was supposed to be the headquarter of it. And yeah, pretty much the gateway in in air and space of Amazon distributing package to everyone. So there is that, but then it makes me think, apart from from the Sci Fi way of thinking, the global reality of our commerce and the way that our airplanes, of course, need to connect people in different parts of the world. And so, you know, it's, it's important to look at a commercial, and a market that is global, and we're trying, despite all the problem and in our society to connect, because if something breaks, and we've seen during the pandemic breaks there, it breaks everywhere, right? Are other companies or other, you know, around the world that are working on this same solution, and how is people collaborating? I'm a big fan of collaboration. It's Is there a future there?
Yemaya Bordain44:32
Yeah, I'd say absolutely. And in fact, we are solving a problem and taking what I believe is a pretty unique position in solving that problem. There are folks that like Debbie that are developing you know, higher performance computing capabilities, that companies like us then take and we turn we develop boards we develop system As we add software to it, you know from the the low level software to middleware all the way up to the application layer in order to build insights, and you know, what we call situational intelligence. And then we support folks that are developing airframes. There's still those airframes there, they're going from airframes, that had been, you know, the larger airframes. But now you're talking about holding, carrying one or two to four people. And so the electronic systems or avionics systems have to be converged. And so we're seeing more where a single processor needs to run, say, our navigation system plus your controls, not generally, there's still air gap controls, but your navigation plus your displays, plus your comps, as an example, right. And all of these have to come together all the way up to the application layer. So we are partnering not only with suppliers, like Intel Corporation, that are developing the ingredients and the components that make this happen. As well as the the scientific and the the the computer science community that is continuing to make headway in developing artificial intelligence, neural networks and, and other algorithms and computer vision. And then the the airframes directly all the way out to the operators. And the operators or the end users are the ones that are generating the pool and the need. And so we have to partner to make sure that as we develop our systems, in the software, we are working with the end users who will be using that right, if our systems are going to be seen from a pilot, it's very important that we have people like Ana on our staff who can empathize and who knows, you know, is this going to be a distraction? Or is this actually helpful to me? So, in order for us to be successful, it's all about partnerships.
Marco Ciappelli47:18
Right? And talking about honor, there is a there is a guest, I don't know if people are watching the video, but officer has. There you go. So are we looking at a future pretty soon that this is going to happen so that your little guests there can can fly in autonomous? Data go from one one place of the city to another? I mean, what do you guys think that timeframe will be for actually see this happen? I'm just curious.
Yemaya Bordain47:48
You know, go ahead.
Anna Chernova47:51
Well, then they started the company, thinking that it should definitely happen before retirement. Otherwise, what's the point?
Yemaya Bordain48:01
Yeah, and I'd say to add on to that, if this were solely a technological problem, we would be there already. But really, we are doing this, we our company has had to develop the theory for certifying known networks, just so that we can ensure and coining the term learning assurance in order to ensure that these can go into systems and into safe systems. And so when you are thinking about that, right, we have to consider the intended use of machine learning. And so it'll be a while I think it's more of a regulatory and just ensuring that folks are safe. That's, that's our highest priority. Always.
Debra Aubrey48:50
Yeah, we also have a, you know, a societal hurdle to over you to kind of overcome because I think even today, you hear people who say they would never step foot in an autonomous car. And kind of now we're asking them to step foot in, you know, even if it's piloted, a piloted small vehicle, not, you know, not a great big aircraft, but a smaller one. So, you know, there's also that influence the societal influence that that we need to, that we need to have in order to help them understand that, you know, these are all the things we're doing to make sure that you'll be safe in this aircraft. And it's all these things that Yemaya and Ana have spoken about. You know, we're we're working hard to make sure these systems will be as safe as possible, so that you will successfully get from one point to another, even if all you're doing is hopping across the city.
Marco Ciappelli49:42
And to wrap on this, I mean, I've of course, I love that you got into the societal aspect, because that gets really complicated. I mean, if I remember, well, the first cars didn't even have brakes, and nobody really cares at the time. There were no regulation. For cars in the city. It was really a Line move there. And of course, there is an early adopter, there is the one that wait, there is the one that, you know, are gonna jump on later on. But I am sure that technology is running really fast. But I also want to be positive and think that we're taking our steps. Plus, we're under everybody. Eyes. I mean, look at chat GPT. And is that good? Is it bad, and that doesn't really hurt anyone. I mean, in terms of physical hurt, and but it's up there. I never heard talking about ethics and philosophical aspect of technology as much as in the past five, five years. So it's in the conversation, I really appreciate this conversation and having three unbelievable people that just taught me so much. And I hoped that the audience got that and get motivated to learn more, to look more into this and be ready for for a future. So I want to thank you very, very much, Anna Yemaya and Debbie, Deborah, for being part of this conversation. And I hope that our listeners will walk away with a lot of questions in their head more than answers because that's when I feel we have done something good. Use their brain think about the future and be part of it. So again, thank you very much.
Anna Chernova51:26
Thank you. Still everyone to fly. While
Marco Ciappelli51:34
there you go. That comes from a pilot. Goodbye, everybody. Stay tuned on ITSPmagazine and subscribe. Why not? enjoy this as much more come? Take care.
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