Episode 208: Navigating Safety: Drones’ New Horizons with Raymond Sheh, Jordan Odell & Syed Izzat Ullah

Episode notes

How can you manage risk and prevent failures?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Welcome to this 20-episode Texas Robotics Summit Mini Series! This 4 day event (March 4-7, 2024) was hosted at the Reveille Peak Ranch and by our friends at Granite Defense , and showcased the use of robotics (air/water/ground) in public safety via keynote presentations, training scenario stations, roundtable conversations, and more.

In this episode:

Importance of safety in public safety aviation

The critical role of communication and interoperability

Advancing technology through standards and risk management

Hear from Raymond Sheh , the UAS Research Lead at NIST , Jordan Odell, member of NIST-PSCR Mission Critical Communications Group, and Syed Izzat Ullah , a Doctoral Student at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Our guests discuss the challenges and importance of integrating robotics technology into public safety. They highlight the need for safety regulations and robust autonomous drone navigation systems, plus emphasize the role of communication systems and interoperability in public safety.

They also stress the importance of managing risks and conducting root cause analysis when things go wrong, and talk about the role of standards in measuring progress and improving technology. The conversation ends with a focus on building connections and transitioning technologies to benefit first responders.

So click play now to find out what they have to share! And stay tuned for the next Mini Series episode!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Kevin's intro: the Texas Robotics Summit mini-series
2. 0:45 Raymond Sheh, Jordan Odell and Syed Izzat Ullah join
3. 1:09 What brings them to the summit
4. 2:29 Introductions: autonomous navigation, comms and NIST UAS research
5. 8:15 The contrarian question: what happens when things go wrong
6. 13:57 Managing risk and root cause analysis
7. 14:32 How their work makes first responders safer
8. 16:19 Building connections and transitioning technology
9. 19:41 What excites them at the summit
10. 23:03 Swimsuits, snakes and drop bears
11. 24:10 Parting thoughts
12. 26:48 Closing

Questions answered in this episode

What is the IEEE RAS Response Robotics Seasonal School?

Raymond Sheh explains it is a program supported by the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Robotics and Automation Society. It gives students the opportunity to interact with the people who will use their technologies. The cross-pollination goes both ways: students learn about the application and end users can talk to people developing cutting-edge technologies that may save lives in five, 10 or 15 years.

Hear it at 1:26

What does Jordan Odell work on at NIST?

Jordan Odell says he works on communication systems, interoperability of those systems, and how to test the key performance indicators of those systems. The goal is to compare systems in an apples to apples way and understand their weaknesses and strengths and when it would be best to implement which ones.

Hear it at 3:53

Why does Raymond Sheh focus on cybersecurity and AI risk management for drones?

Raymond Sheh says these systems are highly connected, especially with things like Drones as First Responder, where they connect into dispatch systems and stream data into networks. The systems also have increasing levels of autonomy and AI. When you rely on them, managing the risk they pose to the mission means visibility into how they can fail and putting in place policies and procedures to manage that.

Hear it at 5:21

What does Raymond Sheh say about things going wrong during technology development?

Raymond Sheh says the most advances in science aren't eureka moments; they are "huh, that's funny" moments when things don't go the way you expect. In the development stage, giving technologies the opportunity to go wrong in ways that aren't catastrophic, such as at events like the Texas Robotics Summit, lets researchers do root cause analysis so that when their technologies are integrated into real systems, they won't go wrong in that way.

Hear it at 10:15

Why did technologies solved in academia 30 years ago not reach public safety users?

Raymond Sheh says when he asked manufacturers why simple, proven technologies weren't in their products, they said no one was asking for them and there was no commercial case. When he asked firefighters and public safety workers why they weren't asking for them, they said they had never heard of those technologies. Making connections between researchers, manufacturers and end users closes that gap.

Hear it at 20:57

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 208 transcript

Navigating Safety: Drones’ New Horizons with Raymond Sheh, Jordan Odell & Syed Izzat Ullah

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Jordan Odell, Raymond Sheh, Syed Izzat Ullah

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to a 20 episode mini-series at the Texas Robotics Summit, hosted by our friends at Granite Defense. We dive into the evolving world of drones and robotics in public safety aviation. Through 20 fantastic conversations with leaders across public safety, from the fire service, law enforcement, EMS operations, wildlife management, and more, we explore the challenges, investments in the critical role of technology in enhancing emergency services operations. A special thanks to the sponsor of the Smart Firefighting podcast, W.S. Darley & Company, for making this podcast possible. Enjoy the show. We are here live in the third podcast of this miniseries of the Texas Robotics Summit. The last podcast was with the two guys from FDNY. Now I have three wonderful looking gentlemen. you just can't see them, this is audio only, alongside Dr. Raymond Sheh from NIST, Jordan Odell from NIST, and Syed Izzat Ullah, PhD student from Texas A&M, Corpus Christi. How you all doing?

[1:06] Raymond Sheh: Doing well, doing well.

[1:08] Jordan Odell: Very good, we're good.

[1:09] Kevin Sofen: What brings you guys to the middle of nowhere, Burnet, Texas?

[1:14] Raymond Sheh: Well, for me, the biggest thing was the opportunity to see you in your suit, the amazing suit that you wore last time I saw you, what happened?

[1:21] Kevin Sofen: Didn't make the suitcase, I had to leave it all for these new podcast microphones that I'm using.

[1:26] Raymond Sheh: Ah, this is why it sounds so good. But no, it makes sense though, because of course we're here. The reason we came, of course, is because this is the application, right? We have the red dust that kept the suit at bay. We have the hot weather which kept the suit at bay. You know, we have all the wilderness. And this, you know, just as it doesn't work so well for the fine suits that you wear, it also causes havoc for these robots. And so we're here, we've brought some students with us as part of the IEEE RAS Response Robotics Seasonal School, so supported by the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Robotics and Automation Society. And the whole idea behind this is to give students the opportunity to interact with the folks who are going to be using their technologies. And the cross-pollination goes both ways, right? The students want to learn more about the application, but the end users, this gives them an opportunity to talk to the people who are developing these cutting-edge technologies that are going to be saving their lives in five or 10 or 15 years time. And being able to tell that story in both directions is really powerful.

[2:29] Kevin Sofen: So just to kind of set the stage a little bit, and Graham, we are in a little bit of elevated platform here in this wonderful yurt that we're sitting on. I'd love to hear like a little 30, 60 second high level overview of Jordan, Syed, and Raymond. Maybe Syed, you start and then throw it to Jordan and then you, Raymond.

[2:46] Syed Izzat Ullah: So I'm Syed and I'm doing PhD in Corpus Christi, Texas in Corpus Christi. and my research is on the autonomous navigation of the drones. So what happens is these drones, for example, if we look, so in the near future, we'll be having drones during packages from one location to another location. So think of it, the Amazon, the USPS, the Walmart. So they will have these drones carrying packages from their warehouses to the consumer premises. So in order for them, for these drones to share the same space, work in the same sky. So they need to have very robust in terms of safety. And that's where I thought, okay, I need to know more about these safety regulations and those things. So then I came here to this workshop to learn more about the safety of the robotics.

[3:40] Jordan Odell: Well, Syed, I feel that I'm most excited for probably a Domino's pizza delivery via drone. So I'm holding out for that.

[3:47] Kevin Sofen: Even those today, was that delivered via drone?

[3:49] Jordan Odell: It was not delivered via drone. I'll have to get on about it.

[3:51] Kevin Sofen: I am underwhelmed.

[3:53] Jordan Odell: I'm Jordan Odell. I work alongside Raymond Niss in the Boulder campus. And I primarily work on communication systems, interoperability of those communication systems, and how you might test the key performance indicators of those systems, mainly to be able to compare those systems in an apples to apples way and understand what their weaknesses and strengths are and when would be best to implement which ones.

[4:16] Kevin Sofen: And then I think for Raymond, I think the better question is, what does Raymond not do?

[4:21] Raymond Sheh: Evidently, Raymond does not wear suits anywhere near as well as you do. No, so I'm at NIST. I'm actually at Johns Hopkins University, but for 100% time with NIST, where I'm the Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Research Lead at the NIST Public Safety Communications Research Division. I've actually been in this role for about half a year. Prior to that, I spent over a decade working with the standard test methods for response robots. So I believe you've already had some people on your podcast talking about some of the tests that were developed in that project for measuring the performance of both the various robots as well as the operators. And in fact, you will see the test methods that were developed under that project all throughout the event here. But that was sort of my past life. And that's continuing, of course, with the wonderful work that my former colleagues are doing still. Right now, though, I am working with Therese Manley, who has just walked up to the podium.

[5:18] Kevin Sofen: The one and only.

[5:21] Raymond Sheh: We're doing a couple of things. The first thing we're doing is we're running competitions that push the state of the science for uncrewed aircraft systems for public safety applications. But also a bit of a passion project of mine that I'm very thankful has found a good home here, and that is developing greater awareness for cybersecurity and AI risk management for public safety, specifically around uncrewed aircraft systems. And it seems like a sort of a weird match-up. But you've got these systems that are highly connected, especially with things like Drona's first responder, where they're connecting right into your dispatch system. They're connecting into things that are downrange, where they're streaming all of this data into networks. You also have these systems that have increasing levels of autonomy, right? of us who remember flying model aircraft and model helicopters in the old days, where the only gyroscopes in the system were mechanical with a fly bar. In fact, I remember as a poor grad student, the model helicopter I had didn't even have a heading lock gyro or collective pitch, cyclic only. Trying to keep that thing stable was a pain. The things that we have nowadays stay in the air due to very good control loops, but also a decent helping of AI, helping them along, which is all well and good, but when you come to rely on them, managing the risk that they pose to the mission also means visibility into how these things can fail and how to put in place the policies and procedures to manage that. So that's kind of where we are now. I guess my background, I have a PhD in machine learning for robot behaviours from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, as well as I studied both communications engineering and computer science. So I've got a bit of a background through all that, but I also spent many years in the previous project coming to events like this and actually getting an understanding of what the end users are doing. Realizing how little it is that us researchers know about how these people do their thing out in the field and seeing this is how technologies fail to make that leap or make that leap poorly out of the lab and into the real world. So one of the things that I'm hoping to do by being here and being on your podcast here is to try and foster that communication, right? Talk to your researchers, foster that communication with the folks who are developing these technologies that might not come online for five or 10 years. Help us with the outreach, even right down to high schools. We have high school competitions where we're trying to foster, again, this understanding of what the end users are going to be doing. Anyway, I've been monologuing a lot and sort of derailing your podcast here.

[7:53] Kevin Sofen: That's what it's for.

[7:53] Raymond Sheh: Yes, I know, I've drifted off the suit topic, so. By the way, who on the podcast has seen Kevin in his marvelous suit?

[8:00] Kevin Sofen: I mean, if you're listening to this, give it a like, or give it a comment if you've seen me in a suit. It's only happened once, it might happen again. Once every, yeah, once every, Raymond actually posted a photo of it.

[8:11] Raymond Sheh: Yeah, I think on my LinkedIn I posted it.

[8:15] Kevin Sofen: That was appreciated. It's always easy to get excited about all this technology, how the drones, how drones and robots and all, you know, AI and all these tools can be used. But I think I want to take a slightly contrarian approach with all three of you from your different perspectives, from the autonomous navigation standpoint, the comms, and sort of the, you know, and Raymond, obviously you're talking about testing and everything you're doing with drone integration, but like, why do we need to be cautious as we are integrating these technologies within the public safety, and what happens when comms fails? What happens when drones have a collision unintentionally? What happens when some of this technology ultimately goes wrong? So sort of an open-ended question, but I'd love to hear kind of a cautious contrarian thought from all of you and the work that you're doing.

[9:02] Syed Izzat Ullah: Yeah, so. Yeah, you wanna go first?

[9:04] Jordan Odell: Yeah, so I would say what happens is you get my job. So my group in NIST is a Public Safety Communications Research Division, and we're born out of 9-11 when comms didn't work, when all these different fire chiefs showed up to respond to the incident and nobody could talk to each other, right? And so this was obviously an issue, so much of an issue that it spurred congressional action, which is an own act of itself, right? So it's definitely a big issue and it's definitely recognized.

[9:35] Syed Izzat Ullah: Yeah, so I mean, in terms of the autonomous navigation, so for example, if a drone has supposed to go, you know, safely from one location to another location and in the meanwhile, if something goes wrong, it's gonna be a disaster then, for example, it can go, so if it was intended to go, you know, like directly or avoiding the airport, the commercial airport. And for some instance, the algorithm gets failed. And what happens is. You know, in terms of, or hit any commercial airplane or something, it's going to be a disaster then. So eventually, I mean, these algorithms, they have to be very robust and they have to be very secure and safe.

[10:15] Raymond Sheh: So when things go wrong is always a little bit of a tricky question because at that point, what do you mean by were things going wrong, right? And this comes back to the push that I'm making towards risk management, right? But if something goes wrong that you expected, had a good chance of going wrong, you're doing something that you know is dangerous, but you're doing it because you have an understanding that if things work, there's a big payoff, that's great. Public safety takes risks all the time, calculated risks. So as I sometimes say, some of you folk are allowed to drive the wrong way at high speed down Main Street. This is not minimizing risk as far as traffic is concerned, but it's minimizing risk in total of things going bad if you don't get to where you need to go in a hurry. So it's about managing that risk. It's about having your lights and sirens on and then having the societal culture that joins you in that risk management when they hear the lights and sirens, they know that they ought to be careful that someone is doing something more risky and they need to get out of the way, right? So when something goes wrong is tricky. You know you're taking a bigger risk, right? You know that there is perhaps an elevated chance that an accident might happen if you're doing this, but you're willing to take that risk to prevent something else from going wrong. If an accident does happen, you have an understanding that, okay, something went wrong, of course things will happen. So there's a little bit of a difference between that and something going wrong that you definitely were not expecting, right? Because now you have to figure out how do you do the root cause analysis if it's a big enough thing in order to figure out how it happened to make sure it doesn't happen again. That's also part of your risk management, because it's managing your risk going forward based on risks that you took in the past. And that's one of the big things we're doing here is that how do we put in place the guidance to determine whether it's appropriate, when it's appropriate to insist on that. Some of these new systems coming online, you can't do your risk, your root cause analysis, like you could if the brakes failed on your vehicle, right? Or your throttle got stuck open or whatever the case may be. So how do you incorporate these new technologies into the same risk management culture that deemed it appropriate for your personnel to take these other risks that you have to take in your daily jobs? So that's one aspect of things going wrong. But there's another aspect of things going wrong that I think is very valuable for what happens here. And that is the, I often say, and this is a quote that's very old, and that is the most advances in science aren't eureka moments. They're, huh, that's funny moments, right? It's when things don't go the way you expect and often when they go wrong. And a big chunk of this is in the development stage, giving technologies the opportunity to go wrong in ways that aren't going to be a catastrophe. And that's one of the reasons why I like to bring researchers out to places like this, where we have an environment that looks like what they're going to see, but if their technology goes wrong, it doesn't leave someone stranded, right? It's a pretend search scenario. It's a pretend rescue. They're allowed to fail. They're allowed to have things go wrong here so they can do that root cause analysis, figure out what's going on, so that when their technologies are integrated into systems that are used by those who save our lives, that they're they're not gonna go wrong in that way. So, you know, the whole contrarian, things going wrong, no, things going wrong is a source of information, but of course things going wrong also breaks down into many different parts.

[13:57] Kevin Sofen: So a lot of different ways we could take that, and I just appreciate that context in terms of, again, the contrarian mindset of things are going wrong, but then again, Raymond, you brought up a good point of it's actually great to be in these environments where we're pushing things to the limit, where we are breaking things and seeing things failed within safe, controlled environments to hopefully try and apply that to better outcomes for first responders. And I think a lot of what we want in this podcast is how can we continue to advocate, to use technology to create better outcomes, make better decisions, create better data creation and display opportunities to make more efficient first responders. I'd love to dive in, double click a little deeper into all of what you're doing. How is the work that you're doing, the ultimate end goal is what I just said, making first responders better, faster, safer, smarter, how is the work that you're doing accomplishing that and maybe what are some stories or nuances within your work right now that people should be aware of that maybe they aren't?

[14:53] Jordan Odell: Well, I think in a nutshell, primarily what I can say, my claim to fame is standards and measurement, right? And that's very much the NIST mission. And without either one of those, there's no way to mark progress, there's no way to mark failure. And so as we have these new technologies, it's pivotal, I think that we have benchmarks to test them, benchmarks to reach towards as we develop further with those technologies. And you have to have unbiased, unpolitical folks doing that. And so that's what I see as kind of the role I feel on a day-to-day. And maybe a good representation of that a little bit outside the robotics realm, unfortunately, for me, comms guys. But Advent of FirstNet, right? And that black sim for public safety to give them priority preemption on a network. all about providing tools with the latest and greatest technology for public safety, which often isn't on the bleeding edge and being able to maybe, you know, scrub the blood off so there's a little bit less risk as Raymond has talked about.

[15:54] Syed Izzat Ullah: Well, I don't have anything to say about this, but the thing is, I mean, the first responder has to, I mean, whatever resources they have, they just, I mean, as soon as the technology grows, okay, so they'll be having, you know, like more resources and more of these technological advancements. So yeah, I mean, just try their best, you know, something like this.

[16:17] Kevin Sofen: Doing the best you can with what you got.

[16:18] Syed Izzat Ullah: Yeah, exactly.

[16:19] Kevin Sofen: Raymond, what about you? You've only got your hands in a couple pots, but some ways of how something that maybe people aren't aware of the work that you're doing and ultimately the, you know, either story behind the journey or the ultimate end goal of some of that progress for first responders.

[16:35] Raymond Sheh: So one of the major sort of pushes I'm trying to do right now is actually not so much down in the technical level, right, I mean we do technical stuff as well of course, but where I'm most interested right now where I think we can have the most impact is actually looking back up the chain, right, and that is looking at how we can help those who are developing and updating rules, regulations, policies, procedures, and making sure that they are appropriate and at least aware of new risks, right? As technology changes, the way that you develop your policies and procedures to manage those risks, if you try and apply the old style, what ends up happening is that you spend resources and you take risks elsewhere in order to manage risks that maybe don't exist anymore, right? On the other hand, there are new risks that have come up that you may not have visibility over and that you're not managing. And a great quote that I heard recently is that risk is like a water balloon. You squeeze it in one end, it's going to pop out the other end. So my efforts are directed right now. A lot of that is towards how do we better inform those who are making these policies and procedures? From a technical perspective, but how do we help them to develop policies and procedures that are technically actionable and meaningful to the current state of technology. And part of the problem with that is, of course, that these rules, regulations, policies, and procedures, they move at a fraction of the speed of technology. Things are being made now that are going to continue to be in force one, two, three decades hence. Now, if you imagine how much technology has moved in the past 30 years. And all of the risks that don't exist anymore, or at least aren't as prevalent, but now all of the new risks. And you try and regulate them with the same thing. I mean, that's how we're getting some of the issues that we're having now in broader society in terms of risk management and the like. So around public safety, that's all the more important for a community that is used to managing risk explicitly, because you have to do risky things in your job. And you can't get away from that. So you have to manage it, and you have that culture. So this is why I think this is actually a great place to start. It's much easier to teach. It's very hard to teach people who aren't used to risk management how to manage risk. So whereas I think your listeners are much better tuned than most at how to manage risk. So I think this is a great place to start with this journey. So on that note, we need input. We need to know where are your risk management policies, procedures, guidelines, and so on, not keeping up. Where do you think they're not keeping up? What kind of guidance would help? Where do you need the advice from the propeller heads like us? Where do you need our guidance? How can you guide us to help you with that?

[19:41] Kevin Sofen: So we're here at the Texas Robotics Show. And right here, you see a bunch of red clay on the ground. There's drones buzzing in different distances. And there's a lot of different technologies. You see all these different robot dogs walking around. But what are you three doing here the next couple days? Are you involved in any exercises, and is there any? in particular that you're you're really excited about either here or just excited about with you know the technology here in general?

[20:07] Syed Izzat Ullah: I think there are a lot of you know cool robots, the aerial robots, the dogs that you mentioned the spots so it's really fun you know I'm looking forward to see and explore you know more robots. I had the opportunity to control you know like to play with one robot dog for like some time and it was fun yeah so I'm looking forward to be learning more and to explore more cool things here.

[20:32] Jordan Odell: Largely, we're looking forward to the UAS challenges that we're hoping to put on in the future. And so it's really important, in my mind, to understand the state of that technology currently, how it's being implemented, and the challenges being faced by the community at large so we know how to design our challenge and what we should most focus on, what we should maybe get rid of, and how we can direct challenge going forward?

[20:57] Raymond Sheh: I'm looking forward to making connections between people who haven't connected, right? I'm looking forward to the spark of, wait, I didn't know that. From any side, right? Doesn't matter who, where it comes from. I'm looking forward to people seeing the posters that we've hung up that have a lot of information about our research projects and staring intently at them, thinking about the possibilities going forward. You know, I'm really looking forward to how these connections build things in the future. At the end of the day, you know, these students that we brought, their technologies are going to have to be transitioned out, right? I remembered when I first started back during my PhD, when I first started coming to events like this and I was looking at problems that were facing your listeners and going, wait a minute, this is a problem that's been solved in academia 30 years ago, right? This is a textbook thing. Why is this still a problem? And you go to the manufacturers and you go, well, why isn't this thing in your product, You know, I wouldn't even set this as a final year project, right? This is too simple. What's going on? They say, well, no one's asking for it. There's no commercial case for it. And then I talk to the end users, the, you know, the public safety folk, the firefighters, and I go, well, look, this is a technology that could stop you from, you know, losing all of this time, energy, or so on, or, you know, helping you save lives. Why aren't you asking for it? And they go, what, huh? We've never heard of this thing. So making these connections means that folks who can make use of these technologies learn about them. It means the manufacturers can realize that there's a demand. And by the way, it also makes a good hiring opportunity, right, because these folks can just employ these students when they graduate and have them help develop these technologies. And it helps the students get their things transitioned out, right? it makes a much stronger case when they're going for their rounds of funding and investments and all this, that's in the others to understand that. So I'm looking forward to these connections being made and I am looking forward to seeing when your suit comes out.

[23:03] Kevin Sofen: It's gonna be some kind of suit, whether it's the formal suit, the birthday suit, no, I'm just kidding, or something.

[23:10] Raymond Sheh: There is both the lake and the quarry, so we could also see you in your swimsuit.

[23:13] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, swimsuit, that's probably the most.

[23:15] Raymond Sheh: This will be the Smart Firefighting Podcast swimsuit edition.

[23:17] Kevin Sofen: I did bring this swimsuit, but I hear at the safety brief and they were talking about all the different things that could unintentionally kill you.

[23:25] Raymond Sheh: I'm from Australia. Yeah, you're right. You're being pansies, come on.

[23:29] Kevin Sofen: I live in Chicago where it's like, you know, the biggest fear you have is hitting the deer when you're driving a car.

[23:35] Raymond Sheh: Yeah, we've got kangaroos for that.

[23:37] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. It's definitely, I don't really have many fears, but little insects that can just kill you with one little bite.

[23:46] Raymond Sheh: At least here you don't have drop bears.

[23:48] Kevin Sofen: Drop bears?

[23:49] Raymond Sheh: Yeah, drop bears.

[23:50] Kevin Sofen: What's that?

[23:51] Raymond Sheh: Well, they said they look like koalas, but they're carnivorous.

[23:53] Kevin Sofen: Oh. Yeah. Is that a thing?

[23:56] Raymond Sheh: It's totally a thing. I mean, they're especially adept at going after American tourists.

[24:01] Kevin Sofen: Okay, so I should never go to Australia.

[24:02] Raymond Sheh: Especially the ones who run podcasts.

[24:03] Kevin Sofen: Oh, okay. I'm definitely not going to Australia. But maybe Tasmania. I'd go there. They don't have drop bears, they're right here.

[24:10] Raymond Sheh: They have Tasmanian devils.

[24:10] Kevin Sofen: Oh, okay. Those are sweet. So final parting thoughts. Mic drop, you could say. Kind of, I guess, I'd love to know any sort of favorite quote of yours, a question, a comment, really any sort of or a suggestion to someone. It doesn't even have to be necessarily related to technology or Texas robotic show. Really, any sort of final thoughts, comment, question, quote that any of us could leave us with here today.

[24:37] Jordan Odell: All right, I'll try to open up here. I think I'll mirror what Raymond's already said in that being a science communicator is incredibly important. I'm much more technically focused myself and it's what I get most validation out of, but being able to bring your ideas and your inventions to the mainstream public and public safety folks is just as important as being able to have technical skill to make the widget, I think.

[25:05] Syed Izzat Ullah: I would say whatever you are doing is a good job. Just keep doing that and informing the people, especially the first responders. And, yeah, that's it.

[25:17] Raymond Sheh: So the final thing I want to leave with is actually now I'm going to mirror what Jordan said, was if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. But I sort of want to use that as a thing to keep in mind, but to unpack it a little bit, and that is if you're trying to compare things, be it new products to old products, new procedures to old procedures, you need to have a way of measuring that change. Otherwise, you're potentially taking on additional risk or making change that's not necessary or not helpful. And measurement science doesn't have to be exactly accurate. A big chunk of measurement science is knowing when you can be inaccurate and get away with it or when it's still meaningful. But the whole, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it, I think, is the quote that I would want to leave with that I've found very useful more generally.

[26:13] Kevin Sofen: Well said. Well, Syed, Raymond, and Jordan, you're all doing such fantastic work. And I appreciate what you're doing. So just keep going strong. I look forward to collaborating more this week and in the future and hopefully seeing you again in regular suits, swimsuits, or whatever suit it may be.

[26:29] Raymond Sheh: I did bring my swimsuit.

[26:31] Kevin Sofen: OK. You know what? We're going to go swim with those gators over there.

[26:34] Raymond Sheh: Sounds good.

[26:35] Kevin Sofen: What's the worst that could happen?

[26:36] Jordan Odell: We're surrounded by public safety.

[26:38] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Someone could, you know, the guys from NYPD, MYFD could drop us one of the rescue tubes and save us. We'll be fine.

[26:44] Jordan Odell: Yeah.

[26:45] Kevin Sofen: All right, guys, till next time. Thank you so much.

[26:47] Raymond Sheh: Thank you.

[26:48] Kevin Sofen: Thanks for tuning into this miniseries created at the Texas Robotics Summit hosted by Granite Defense. Make sure to put this amazing event on your calendar for 2025. For this podcast episode, what do you like? What do you think? Drop us a comment on social media and let us know your favorite quote. Thanks for all that you do and have a great day ahead.