Ziv Marom, Kaizen Aero - Heavy Lift Drones

Ziv has built Kaizen Aero by serving a wide array of clients with heavy lift (500 lbs) and long duration drones (up to 5 hours). Clients range from NASA and the Navy, to Google and John Deere, having started in Hollywood using drones for cinema. He has a healthy conviction that "a drone is just a tool" and "we're here to deliver what the experts in the field know they want." His teams have participated in prescribed fire, and other active fire training with multiple agencies in California, but are seeking the right professionals to move deeper into the wildfire space. 

Transcript

Bryan 0:04

Good morning and welcome to the solving wildfire podcast. I'm your host, Brian Gardner. Today we are joined by Ziv Marom leading Kaizen aerospace, developing and operating heavy lift and long endurance drones, all sides to fold up and fit inside a standard size SUV. This episode is entertainingly revealing because it takes time to bring to surface the many projects and organizations XIVs team has been working with. Spoiler alert: they've done work with the Navy, NASA, fire departments, police departments, Cal fire department of defense department of the interior FEMA. And on the private side, Google Verizon, John Deere oil and gas companies. Power line inspection for utilities. And let's not forget Hollywood flying cameras around where they got their start. Through all this experience Ziv has developed a refreshing humility for viewing his drone technology. As a simple tool, he gladly differs to experts in the field seeking to deliver the technology they want, not the technology he thinks they want. This recording got cut short for technical issues, but we got enough to bring to surface dibs achievements so far. He has motivation and interest in the wildfire space and his approach to joining teams and working with teams for operations and regulation. Let's start into the conversation.

Ziv 1:24

Sure. Brian, thank you for having me. Great to be here. My name is Ziv Maro. I'm founder and. CEO of Kaizen Aerospace. We started myself started in my background both from creative and technology. Basically the technology side is a more like robotics and simulation for search and rescue missions in Israel, in idf. Uh, we use different platforms and basically develop new sensors and communication devices. That's how I got into, uh, we work with some, uh, drone work. And then I used to have I used to be more in the film industry. I did a lot of cinema work with camera and, and real helicopters. And then we basically took the drones and put the cameras on them. And then that's how I started building the largest scale drones that can basically carry large cinema cameras. So we did a lot of movies, a lot of, motion graphics and visual effects. And then I noticed that the same technology is really good for. For other applications like search and rescue and different industrial uh, cargo, for example inspection and, different industrial applications. And my focus was more towards search and rescue because we can Carry heavy payloads and build different different payloads on these drones for for different applications from carrying things to drop and even carrying a person. So we can basically do a quick flight with a human. Either bring a medic into a disaster area or rescue a person from from side of a cliff and stuff like that. Uh, basically replacing helicopters in some of these applications. And, um, yeah, and then the focus was more on that and we started working with different with different companies to, to complete a solution for that.

Bryan 3:00

Nice. I appreciate that intro. so for our listeners, the size of drones that you are looking with, can you give us how many pounds lift? There's the search and rescue lift. You already talked about lifting humans, so we know we're talking at least 200 pounds, two 50 with gear. but give us a, a sense of the size of drones, both in the lift capacity and then how big they are. Feet wide, feet tall.

Ziv 3:25

Yeah, so we have five main sizes. The smallest one is basically to fly a sensor And we have, uh, we can fly from, half an hour to one hour on battery all the way to five hours using our hybrid, which is pretty, uh, pretty long to map an area and to to cover a large area for search and rescue and for, surveillance and things like that. Our largest drone right now can lift 500 pounds, and we are actually working now on a drone that can lift 1000 pounds. Now, as far as the flight time, With the maximum payload can be maybe between 20 to maybe 30 minutes, depends on the environment and the characteristic of the flight and weather. And the idea is basically to have, you know, we started getting requests to build a drone that can lift more and more payloads. But we didn't wanna just. Build a large bigger and bigger drone, you might as well use a helicopter in that case. So what we did is we kind of like build this, uh, we designed the drone that can be still foldable and can still get we can still fit it in your standard size s u v and still, go to a hard to get locations. That you don't, that you can really get there with the helicopter, so it's much quicker to basically to deploy for quick search and rescue missions.

Bryan 4:40

Okay, so for search and rescue, we can throw this stuff in the back of a truck or a an S u v, pull the thing out and then send the thing around. And of course, your endurance, the time you can be in the air, is impacting the payload you can carry.

Ziv 4:56

Yeah, definitely. So with our smaller drones for now we have a hybrid system that we developed, and then we can fly, like I said, for up to five hours with, let's say five to 10 pounds payload. And then if we go to, let's say 20 or 30 pounds, we can fly for a couple of hours, which is great for delivery of medical equipment and things like that. Our larger drone can fly, a hundred basically the The draws that we have the model is X fold and we have a few different models, right? So the smallest one, like I said, is the spy. Then we have Exfil travel, exfil Cinema, X Dragon, and then X fold. Dragon H, which is, h is basically for the heavier payload. So the h we have between 100 to 500 pounds payload. And now we're working, like I said, on a 1000 payload for special missions with with actually with. The government here for search and rescue applications. And then from that we can change the payloads to, um, you know, we can either fully autonomous kind of work flight from one point to another and basically deliver a payload or pick up a payload. We work also on autonomous flight that you can release the payload from the air basically to basically maybe deliver food supplies or, or search and rescue, kind of like different application for between vessel. So there's a few different type of payloads that we can use. Depends on the emission.

Bryan 6:12

Okay, so there's a technology stuff that of course me being an engineer would love to go into. But let's take this to the... There's the search and rescue. First of all, I imagine these drones are, you have a pilot, so. If you are bringing the thing, you put it in a truck, either the person who drove the truck or someone who rode in the truck is gonna be manually flying this thing for the search and rescue mission. Is that correct?

Ziv 6:34

Yeah, there's a couple of ways to you know, depends on the mission. Again, if it's if you get to a location and there's somebody stuck on a cliff, and basically we need to either deliver some medical equipment. To them or base or even lift them and pull them back. So there will be someone that actually flying it manually. Um, if it's an area that you can that you know exactly the mission, you can do it autonomously. So there is gps there, there are sensors that, works, fly through the camera and so you can fully. Automate a path to fly. If you need to scan an area, for example, and you take the drone with the hybrid, you can fly for five hours and basically just scan the area and fly around just to see if there's any either survivor or if you're looking for something specific. Or if we work with fire departments. Sometime we even. fly Just as in standard area, just to see if there are hotspots in the area with some sensors that are on the drone. And then once we d discover where the hotspot is, we can drop uh, retardent, on that area or basically bring another drone to drop a lot more, um, material on that area, to call one of the largest drone basically.

Bryan 7:41

Okay, so you can have an automated mission, a scanning mission, a search mission, basically. And then when you find something interesting, flip a switch and the human takes over from there.

Ziv 7:51

correct.

Bryan 7:52

Okay, so search and rescue and working with fire departments. Give us just real high level first, what's the scope of missions you've actually engaged in or executed for these agencies. And then let's dig into some of the details and stories of those missions.

Ziv 8:09

Yeah, so we had, we worked with on a few missions, we had a let's see, we had a couple of. interesting ones. We sent a team to after the volcano in Hawaii. And so we sent a team there. It was actually a project with Google that we did, and we basically mapped the area to see what the damage was. And then we did the same, similar also with Google in in Florida after the hurricane. So basically it was a controlling to see basically, The damage that was there and to see how it was before and how it looked now, basically to compare and see the, the issues. And then we had another mission with department of Interior during fire actually. So they want us to fly the drone with the heat sensors. Basically we could detect the gas from the fire and there were people on the ground. And then through that the team on the. ground Could tell them where to go. So basically, there's there's some gas that is very toxic, so you can see it, in real life, but you can see it through the sensor. So the team from the ground talked to the people on the ground and told them where to go, depends on the gas and basically, you know, uh, to come out of that area. Um, we had a couple of times we had. We did more testing with Cal Fire here in California. And basically it was the same thing, mapping an area, look for hotspots and then dropping retardent it on it if from that same drone. So basically we did a lot of mission like that. One of the issues that we had from FEMA and from, the more the counties is the permits and regulatory. That they didn't really allow us to to fly in that particular in that particular time. And it's very unfortunate cause we can actually help, but this technology is already there, but they still. Really want us to use it. So, and I think the main thing is that they afraid if something happened, they would be responsible for allowing us to do that. So I think that there's still some work to work with them there, but I'm sure it's going to get there, you know?

Bryan 10:06

Yeah. And that's, that's one of the things that we wanna bring to light. And one thing that I've found is that, regulator side they actually want the innovation to come through, but they want it safe because they don't want to, they don't want 10 people dead because they approved some startup in their dream that the startup founder thought was all ready to go, but actually wasn't. So let's go to, we've got volcanoes in Hawaii. We've got. Hurricanes down in Florida, and then we've got a handful of fire experiences out there in California. Have they been up and down California? Were they all with Cal Fire? What were your relationships that opened these up?

Ziv 10:45

So that was actually through a an exercise with the police department, the fire department, Cal Fire, and some search and rescue. It was actually a gathering through over a few different companies that wanted to show the technology and. But then, like I said, when it came to to actual time, they didn't allow us to do that. I mean, we did everything in the test. Everything was great. We have some really nice results from that. We did like a secured fire and we actually, predict and simulate how we can do all of that. Everything went great. But when it comes to actual work, they still didn't allow us to, um, we weren't able to do that. And that was right before the pandemic. So, hopefully by now they. Will allow us to do more tests, and we are hoping to, to show more of our capabilities, especially with our heavier payloads So we can, deliver equipment, like for the fire department, for the people or actual cargo and even surveillance and, simple stuff that we can do.

Bryan 11:41

Okay, so this was, it was multiple agencies When you've done this stuff and you went out there, you did the testing, the development, but then basically when it came game time, you show up there with all your equipment and they say, yeah, that's great, but you have to keep it on the ground.

Ziv 11:57

Yeah. They let us, uh, come there. There was some. Volunteers for, um, that can just come and help. But then they ended up not allowing any of the drones, which I understand. I mean, they don't want just drones flying, especially when they're helicopters and things like that. And one of the things that they were talking to us, we had a project through, Verizon for installing, for having network after a, a disaster. For disaster area, and they were saying that, they prefer to have a drone in the air as long as possible, even few hours, but they can. They cannot have it up and down all the time because that airspace is for helicopters that are using it. So we came up, came up with a tether solution, and then we can have just one tether, tether drawn to the ground, and then the drone gets the power from the ground. And this way you don't need to climb up and down every time. So it's basically like a standard. a pole, you just stand there. So that's another solution that we can provide.

Bryan 12:52

Allow me to push back on this a little bit. So in first glance, that seems like a good solution, but it seems like it. Solves a regulatory problem, but creates a much more dangerous situation cuz now any helicopter or any airplane has a whole cable they need to worry about, not just a drone. What are your, what are your thoughts on that?

Ziv 13:10

Yeah, exactly. So that's another thing. The, so it depends on the area. Usually when they come, they have at and t or when they do network, they come with a truck with a large, like a antenna goes up. so we can eliminate that and go even higher. But you're right, there's a, there's that issue as well. That's, but then they already know where we are and we don't climb to that height. We don't need to climb that height. And that basically gives, uh, some solution in some, in some areas. We actually had to fly pretty far and just stay there for a long time. And that's why we're, our hybrids comes that we can stay for five hours versus, 30, 40 minutes maybe flight time of a standard drone.

Bryan 13:49

Okay.

Ziv 13:50

give us advantage for.

Bryan 13:52

Okay. Again, there's fun technology stuff that I'd like to get into there. One of the... one of the things investors, their viewpoints is that the technology problem can be solved. We just get some smart engineers, put them on it and it's gonna get done. But the uptake of solutions by the agency leaders who have the authority, the power to say, yes, we are going to buy this service. Or even if it's paid for by someone else, we are going to use this service. So let's go. You had the fire practice stuff before the pandemic. And then the pandemic hits. But then you wanna show up and you'd already practiced with Cal Fire and, the county fire department and police department and regulatory said no, and you get it because there are other helicopters in the air. So that's all fine. Um. You guys can deliver multiple solutions, but what do you see as the why? Why haven't these solutions been uptaken yet?

Ziv 14:51

Yeah. So. I think there was, um, still lack of testing of actual. I wouldn't go to an actual mission before, testing the technology properly and to test it. I think it's not just, testing it at home and go and do it. It's actual do it, in a tough environment. So I think what we need to do is basically, do more actual tests in a secured fire environment and basically do it, a hundred times thousand time and just basically prove that it works and do it under some stress and pressure and make sure that it works. And then just go on, do it maybe at the beginning, just on a small area, just to prove until there's more reliability or basically more trust, of this technology. On the other hand, you say, Hey, there's fire You can't fly a helicopter there anyway. You can fly a drone, even if the drone, something happens, it's not a, it's not a man helicopter. So the risk is much less. And the, it's much less expensive. So, the risk is much lower. So just go ahead and do it. One thing I know that, there's private. Companies that been, that hired, in some areas I know that in LA some neighborhoods hired their own security or their own um, small firefighters groups. And then there's more option actually to do stuff over there with our technology. Uh, so it's basically just to get the airspace and then, you know, you can. do that

Bryan 16:11

Okay, so maybe for our listeners, we're talking about the wildfire stuff, but just to give context for them. You got your business. Kaizen Aero does a lot of stuff other than wildfire it would be easy to scratch your head here saying, well, if you guys had this technology from before the pandemic, why haven't you built more relationships and built more inroads? So why don't we just answer that question a about what is your attention, your engineering attention, your sales and marketing, your business attention? What's that going into and what do, what are you looking for in terms of team of build out for building this wildfire arm of your existing company?

Ziv 16:48

Yeah. So, yeah, like you said, our company is not focused on firefighting. I mean, uh, we built a technology for the platform for a few different for a few different applications. Our main application right now is more cargo and logistics actually that can work with also with fire department or with, search and rescue teams, but also with different industries. We do a lot of work with oil and gas. We do a lot with, uh, power power line inspection, which is actually somehow related obviously to, firefighting. We have, different drones for different missions. We don't really build human flying drones, but we can deliver that cargo, that payload as well. So for search and rescue, we can do that for small, few minutes, 10 minutes flying, from here to there or between islands, or if somebody's stuck on a cliff, we can definitely, do that for a human.

Bryan 17:36

Have you actually lifted a human, in any of your drones and carried them from a to b?

Ziv 17:41

so we did, uh, we did in Thailand a uh, an actual. Test an actual, uh, um, demonstration of of search and rescue. Cause they have a lot of floods there. And we have, what happened is people go up to the roof, of their houses and basically waiting for the water to come down or somebody to come and rescue. So we, we actually did a test with medical equipment and also have a stretch on the drone and flying a person back. But we did we only used a mannequin, a person size and weight mannequin. Again, just because of it was just a demonstration and the regulatory and everything, and the permits took. Actually lift the human is different, but we are planning to do a couple of exercises here basically with the Navy to deliver a person or search or rescue a person from the water into a vessel or into a ship. So we are just working on that now. We're going to, we're gonna hopefully have it in the second quarter of this year. That's kind of like our schedule.

Bryan 18:37

Okay. So you guys are busy and lots of other things. you wanna do the wildfire thing? What's your game plan? You're the c e o of, of Kaizen Aero What's your game plan for getting into wildfire faster than you have

Ziv 18:50

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I think the right way is basically to work together with a few different companies and basically create a complete solution. Cause just flying a drone, which is great, it's just a tool, right? There's a lot of other things that can combine that, if you combine the technology, it'll be much more solid. There's software that can predict if it, there was a fire, now where it would go, depends on the direction of the wind, the strength of the wind, and then we can basically work with ground units as well. Robots, robotics or mend units, to basically work together on that. So the drone, our side of our basically part is basically to be of course from the air, but we can work, simultaneously with the teams on the ground. If it's autonomously, we can use, similar flight similar computer, similar software to work together. So I think the right way is to basically go and create a complete solution. Go and test it, demonstrate it, and start working with with actual units at some point.

Bryan 19:44

Okay, so if I'm hearing you're right, if there's a fire chief off somewhere who's listening to this and says, that sounds like the heavy capacity drone that I want. They've done work with the military and. It's funny, innovation tends to happen from enter entertainment. or war

Ziv 19:59

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Bryan 20:01

and, and you guys have your feet in, you've been in both of those buckets and you are in both of those buckets right now.

Ziv 20:07

Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that because when we work with we work lot with do od and on different applications, things like that, and they're actually very, we're very interested to see what we did for film, right? Be just because we could fly the really high-res cameras like, in sensors without any, for example, vibration or movements and stuff like that. Cause that was, when I designed the kind of like the from, anti vibrations to calculate of vibration and remove them. So that was very for film at first. And that was, a really big interest for the military as well, for different sensors. So, like you said, it's very, it's related in a way.

Bryan 20:43

Yeah. Yeah. So if a fire chief somewhere in one of these states, in the US or in Thailand for that matter, were to call you up and said, Hey, I've got an operational team who I trust to know the fire situation. They know the regulatory relationships, but we want a team to work with. To get the right drone in there. You guys would, you'd be happy to go in there, be the drone provider, maybe not the leader of that team per se, but put your engineers on it and work with those other, maybe you'd be a team of teams is what it would be, but that's,

Ziv 21:16

Mm-hmm.

Bryan 21:17

that's something that looks attractive to you.

Ziv 21:19

Yeah, exactly. I mean, my background is not, I worked with fire, with search and rescue in, in the military and here, but it's not really my background. So, I would love to have somebody that would lead with their experience or a team that would lead and basically we can, provide our, our technology. And that's basically my, kind of like, um, In different, in different areas as well. So, you know, where we work with search rescue for example. I would like to work with someone that has the experience when we work with agriculture. For example, we did a really big demonstration with with John Deere, for example, on sprain drones and everything. So this is not my background. My background is more the technology and the but to partner up with someone like John Deere, it's great. So same here. If we can like you, A world expert or somebody that has a lot of experience that will basically tell us what we need to, what they need and then we will know how to build it for them. So that's why, like I said, it's not just our solution. I think it's a few companies together, maybe even different drone companies that does something else, that basically we can combine our efforts, basically for that for that unfortunate big problem that we have all.

Bryan 22:21

Yeah, that sounds interesting, and it's also reassuring that you've had experience and success playing nice with other companies. It's nice when you can get ego of the founder out of the way of the company. Then.

Ziv 22:33

Oh yeah. At the end of the day, you, especially with solution like that, it's not just about the money. It's not just about, like I said, this is not our main target market or this is not our, but it's definitely something that I know that, and we prove that we can. Provide a solution for some of it, at least, at least from the air with our heavier cargo and, longer flight time. But it's not just that, obviously it's not of real helicopters, it's not, but it's definitely a tool that can provide something that was missing until now. So I think a combination of, uh, different technologies together that will actually bring, and that's what actually was the, what we tried to show and prove that we can do it, you know, with software companies with different ground on the team once we did, when we did the test with Cal Fire. I think that was a great solution. Mm-hmm.

Bryan 23:21

go real quick. You, you come from outside the us you've done a lot of work outside the US being US-centric. It's real easy for us to get hung up on ourselves and not look over either of the oceans. Having done that, the search and rescue work in Thailand, taking people off the tops of the flats on there. What is your view on regulatory hurdles and development technology, not just the technology and the drone, but the operational development and the team development that's succeeding in America versus that succeeding first outside of the us.

Ziv 23:57

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point because I'm from Israel. I grew up in Israel. I lived in England for a few years as well, and then moved to New York about, so my English obviously is. Not that great. So it's, communication is like one thing. But as far as technology, uh, for example, in Israel, some of the software companies that I mentioned that predict, uh, fire that they actually, they're from there and they're very strong in the software side. And then regulatory there is very similar to here. Sometime it's actually harder to get approval to fly a drone over there, especially for this type of missions and especially for drones that are heavier than 25 kilos there, or 55 pounds here. This kind of like an f a thing. Um, and it's all over the world. On the other hand, in Thailand, Once we had. So we, we did the demonstration with the military there and with the Prime Minister, and he was there and, and it was, they called it right away. And we didn't, once they said okay, there wasn't really any specific um, Permission we had to go through or to wait three months for a COA or something like that. Uh, they can just say, okay, and we do it. Uh, we did some tests in Mexico as well for oil and gas and and basically heavy lifting that can show search and rescue as well. And all we needed the local police say okay. And it was okay. So, in a way, it's a good way, but for that matter, but obviously it's not, it's not as strong as here. But I just hope that here, I think, I know that, they trying to get more and more permits and, uh, you know, through the fa to fly heavier payload and that will give It'll open more opportunities for heavier drones heavy cargo drones to show the capabilities and to start, working together.

Bryan 25:28

Yeah, yeah. You've come back here to the trust element that the people operating the systems trust it, and that's part of what the F A A is here for and the other regulatory agencies. I don't want to leave quite yet. Getting systems, teams, operations established outside. So these things operating in places where the Prime Minister can just make a call and say, approve these guys. Whoever's in their regulatory agencies knows that you just take the orders of that Prime Minister. Maybe they're endangering their people and whatever else. But they get to make those calls. What are the hurdles to just establishing a team and developing it, making that be plan A, that we are going to develop this first in Mexico or Thailand, or fill in the blank, where the relationship can be made and they want to put their mark on the world of, this is where wildfire technology was developed, operational practices were developed. what are the hurdles to doing that?

Ziv 26:24

Yeah. Well, I mean we develop things here and we build it here. we can actually go and fly and test it in a different country. Right. Once we get approval there. I hope it'll change. I hope it won't have to be like that. I hope, it shouldn't be just a phone caller of the guy that in charge to say, okay, it's obviously needs to be safe and secured and planned and not just, you know, okay yeah, just go and fly. Definitely not. I mean, it needs to be secured area. It needs to be, not overcrowded and it needs to be maybe over water at the beginning in a very secured and safe place. Just like you have. Just like you have areas that you fly F fifteens and N 16 and bombed the crap out of the area secured, right. So, you know, there, there are ways to do it properly and safe. Right? I think it's just a matter of time. And, um, uh, but I mean, I know we work on a few DODs with drones for heavy payload and stuff like that. And once that area is covered in certain area in the. We can technically do whatever we want because it's a safe area and it's a military zone and so we can test other things. so I think that would be maybe the right way to do it here in the United States. Basically work maybe with, with the military or with the government on that. And I think they're actually looking for that, you know? Um, and, and it's definitely.

Bryan 27:39

Huh. You know, it's, uh, it's actually reassuring when I prod you. In the just cowboy direction and just do whatever and make it work and you come. It seems just, it's built into you to do it not just the fastest way, but to do it the right way, which includes doing the proper regulatory channels. And there's a piece of me that looks at a team that's gonna be working with you. It would seem to instill a piece of confidence in them that if you say you can do something, you do have already in the back of your mind and at the forefront of your. mind You're asking what is the right way to do this? And you're not gonna be the, the loose cannon, on the team that says, oh, we can do this and we'll just sneak by here. So it seems like that mentality, it's, it's sustainable and there's a certain measure of, of safety. And I'm not just saying that to try and, you know, tout you guys or anything. But I'm just as, as another business builder and having been involved on.

Ziv 28:33

Of

Bryan 28:34

Worked with NASA and with the F AA and the Air Force on launching those rockets in spacecraft. There's, it was fun, even a SpaceX there. There was still the spectrum of people that wanted to play by the rules and people that just wanted to give a middle finger to the rules just because maybe we could get away with it,

Ziv 28:51

Yeah, well there are ways to kind of like, do you know, for example, we did a really big project, um, with nasa and basically we were lifting 650 pounds in the air for, you know, like 500 meters and, and did some, some experiment with different, uh, with different sensor on it. And it took us, I think, Uh, two or three months to get the, the co-op for that, the, you know, the permits to do that. Uh, of course we had to go through everything. It has to be everything US made, uh, you know, no sensors or whatever. And it was successful. We got the permits, to fly, over 400 feet, which is, usually the, what we allowed to, or over 55 pounds. Cause we have 650 pounds in the air. Uh, we did things that, you know, usually. Well, usually you won't be able to do it with any drone, but you can just go and do that. Um, so we could theoretically go to do it in a different country, but instead we actually went through the right, through the right way. It's obviously took us longer, which is fine, but we did get the permits, perform them, with nasa, with the Navy. So there are ways to do it. So I'm not, saying just sit and wait for permits that hopefully one day it will do things, you know, make it. Prove the technology. And once you go and show it, there are ways to do it legally and safe and also, in insured and all of that stuff. There are ways to do it, which is great. And I think more and more regular deal, like, flying behind visual line of sight. Now there are sensors that allowed to do that. Um, there, you know, fly over 55 pounds. They are, technology and regulatory that you can do it legally and safe. Work by the rule. Make the rule happen, in a legal way, if that makes sense.

Bryan 30:24

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So let's say you found a collection of fire chiefs in, whether it's California or up, where I am in Washington, Oregon, somewhere in the us. And we know we're gonna play by the rules. what do you think would be the lowest hanging fruit that you could get this fire season, and if they were to approach you and say we trust your team, your technology and your ability to develop with us over a 10 year relationship. What would you see as the low hanging fruit, the first service that you could provide. And what would you need in terms of resources, maybe that's additional engineers or just redirecting engineers or just revenues to justify redirecting. What would be the low hanging fruit, and what would you need to go get, this season?

Ziv 31:08

Yeah. So in a perfect world, I would love to have a team that focus specifically on that. So not just our team are great, of course, but they work on a few other things and focus more on the platform itself for different solution. What I would love to have is to build a team that focus on the solution. And then bring the technology of what they need. For example, if there's people that already know, of course, how to deal with fire, how to deal with the regulatory, how to deal with, with all the permits and everything for, or what it takes, as far as technology and just put it together and go and test it. So we will need to have, I, I dunno if, um, the complete solution will be able. theoretically be this fire season, but maybe with steps. Yes, we can already go and fly smaller drone maybe for, to look for, hotspots and things like that. And then work with the teams that already knows the drone. It's the thing is like, it's not just go, Hey, there's a fire. Let's bring our drone and see what's going on. We need to work with the team on the ground to know what they're looking for and they know how to work with us. So basically, it's a lot of training together. I think so in a perfect world, we will have a team that dedicated for that. With experienced firefighters and just go and test and show and proof that we can do the job and do it, in, in a secure, safe location first, and basically train with actual fire department, of California, to basically be part of their team. So they can trust us and they can cause the last thing that they need, during fire. Like, oh, there's a drone. What, what do we need to do? Look, they shouldn't even care about it. Shouldn't even worry about us. We need to help them, right? it's more about working together beforehand and not just go, whenever last minute thing.

Bryan 32:43

Yeah. So correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing is you don't need more engineers to make it work. You have engineers that work on the platform. You've adapted this platform to a whole spectrum of tests. You don't need new engineers for that. But what you do need is an operational team that is focused on it and builds those relationships, builds that trust over working with the responders.

Ziv 33:08

Correct.

Bryan 33:15

That's about the point where our recording got glitched, but I'm certainly glad that I could share that part the conversation with everyone. That was Ziv my Rome, leading Kaizen aerospace, a diversely experienced team with heavy lift and long endurance drone capability, both for automated and manually pilot admissions. Their expertise is in the drone technology and they've demonstrated their ability to work well with area experts, including some firefighting already. You can find more on their website at Kaizen dot arrow. K a I Z E N dot H E R O. Thanks for listening.