Episode 209: The VTOL Evolution: A New Era of Rescue with Greg Lary

Episode notes

What's an affordable and safe alternative to traditional helicopters for public safety agencies?

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:

Pivotal's Helix: why it’s a game-changer in public safety

Insights about affordable VTOL technology for first responders

A look at Pivotal's commitment to innovation and safety

Find out from Greg Lary - Head of Sales and Customer Experience at Pivotal .

Greg introduces us to Pivotal's personal aerial vehicle, Helix , and its potential use cases in public safety. This conversation highlights Helix's affordability, safety features, and Pivotal's commitment to perennial R&D in perfecting electric VTOL flights. We also touch on future development plans, obstacles and challenges for Pivotal, and offer an invitation for interested individuals to get involved.

So click play now to find out what he has 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!

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn

Chapters

1. 0:00 Kevin's intro: the Texas Robotics Summit mini-series
2. 0:45 Greg Lary of Pivotal joins
3. 0:55 The energy at the summit
4. 1:41 What Pivotal and Helix are
5. 2:50 Is Helix a fully functioning product
6. 4:53 Pricing and affordability
7. 5:44 Perennial R&D and perfecting electric VTOL flight
8. 6:50 Deliveries and public safety use cases
9. 7:35 Weight, safety features and manned or unmanned flight
10. 8:57 Biggest obstacles: developing the market
11. 9:40 Demos and public events
12. 10:12 How to get involved
13. 10:24 Parting thoughts: look into the platform
14. 11:20 Closing

Questions answered in this episode

What is Pivotal's Helix aircraft?

Greg Lary describes Helix as a personal aerial vehicle and electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. It is fully electric, currently flies about 20 miles or 20 minutes, and has both remotely piloted and manned capabilities. The production version was announced publicly available on January 9th at CES.

Hear it at 1:59

What safety features does the Helix have?

Greg Lary says the aircraft has three flight computers that talk to each other but you only need one, three air speed indicators, three GPS units, two joysticks, floats for water landings, and a ballistic parachute built into the aircraft.

Hear it at 3:05

How much does the Helix cost and how much does it weigh?

The aircraft is priced from 190,000 to 260,000 dollars. It weighs 348 pounds and can carry a 230 pound payload, making it roughly a 600 pound aircraft total when loaded, according to Greg Lary.

Hear it at 5:03

Do you need a pilot's license to fly the Helix?

No. Greg Lary says the aircraft flies under part 103 ultralight rules, so you do not have to have a pilot's license. Pivotal trains pilots in about a 10 day process, weather and personal schedules permitting.

Hear it at 10:39

Transcript

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

Ep 209 transcript

The VTOL Evolution: A New Era of Rescue with Greg Lary

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Greg Lary

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, and 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. All right, it is day two of the Texas Robotics Show, and I'm sitting here alongside Greg Lary, head of sales at Pivotal. Greg, how you doing?

[0:53] Greg Lary: I'm well, thank you. Thanks for inviting us.

[0:55] Kevin Sofen: So for those of us not here at the Texas Robotics Show, Tell us what's going on around us.

[1:00] Greg Lary: First of all, it's a stunning day, and there's a lot of activity with public safety agencies all over the world, coming from Europe and all over the United States, both EMS, fire, police sheriff, just learning how to use technology in very unique ways.

[1:17] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, it's really a special energy. It almost feels like related to Christmas morning or Disneyland, you can see everyone like this energy and they're just kind of running off different schedules so it's they really the Granite Defense team and Preston and Tom they've really done a fantastic job pulling this together.

[1:32] Greg Lary: Yeah and you know kudos to all of Montgomery for allowing this group to use this ranch at least you know for the last five years he's a big supporter of public safety and kudos to him.

[1:42] Kevin Sofen: Yeah absolutely so for those of us who don't know pivotal and I didn't know pivotal until I was walking to the main stage and I see this it looks like a helicopter but it's a individual type quadcopter but I guess that's the best way to describe it without me butchering it. What is Pivotal?

[1:59] Greg Lary: It's a very, well Pivotal the company's been in existence for about 12 years and it has utilized its perennial R&D platform called Blackfly which we're very well known for on social media and the company has made a decision to take that platform. We recently renamed the company from Opener to Pivotal and Blackfly has now become Helix and that's what you see out there. It's a personal aerial vehicle that has also been used in remotely piloted and unmanned capabilities. So the reason why we're here is to just get feedback from public safety agencies centered around that platform and what their potential use cases could be for it and how it could apply in their daily lives and saving lives, putting out fires, using it for search and rescue. It's a platform that has many use cases and we're just seeking input.

[2:50] Kevin Sofen: I mean, so I was walking by it and was thinking like, would I put myself in that? And I'm like, well, I take commercial planes and I've been in a helicopter before. But so, is it a fully functioning product right now? Or where is it?

[3:05] Greg Lary: It is a fully functioning product. Technically it's an eVTOL, electric vertical takeoff and landing. So the aircraft is all electric. Currently flies about 20 miles, 20 minutes. And with Helix represents the production intent version that is currently for sale. We have sold several aircraft of several Blackfly aircraft under an early adopter program, and that's for us to study the process end to end. And so with Helix, we recently announced its public availability on January 9th at CES. And so deposits have been made. Those aircraft are slated for delivery to personal and private individuals in and around the June, July, August timeframe and as it relates to public safety agencies, that's a bit of a strategic vision that we have and looking for the feedback again from folks. And to answer your question in terms of would you get in it? Well, the aircraft was designed with several safety features built into it. You and I didn't have a chance really to go through it one-to-one, but this is a good opportunity to give you an idea of the insight and depth and breadth of what the organization has done over those 12 years and that there's three different flight computers of which all three talk to each other, but you really only need one. And it's for safety reasons, failover reasons. There are three air speed indicators, three GPS, pox on it, two joysticks, just a multitude of other safety features like floats. If you're flying over an amphibious, a lake or a river or wide open ocean in between island hops or something along those lines, if there is an emergency, you can let down in a steady sea state and have a successful outcome. And then there's also a ballistic parachute that's built into the aircraft, much like Cirrus does and several other aircraft on today's market.

[4:53] Kevin Sofen: So we're still early in the show and I guess you're still fairly early into this public safety foray, but what's been some of the feedback from police and law and EMS at the show so far?

[5:03] Greg Lary: I'm really pleased that where we price the aircraft has been very well received by them. publicly available now from a range of 190,000 to 260,000. But when you look at how the aircraft could be used compared to what's being used today in terms of helicopters and manned assets that go into perilous situations, you know, you're risking a very expensive asset, but more importantly, the lives that are on that. So this gives just a unique opportunity for an agency to take risk or mitigate that risk with an aircraft that's, you know, if it is a treadable, it's a very low-cost aircraft comparative to that and you don't put lives in danger.

[5:44] Kevin Sofen: And one phrase you said earlier that struck a chord with me was a perennial R&D. When you say that and kind of this whole, the backbone, the pivotal, like what does perennial R&D mean to pivotal?

[5:55] Greg Lary: Well, it just means perfecting the art of electric VTOL flight with a fixed wing configuration. It's unlike anything that exists today. So when you look out here at this ranch, you see a lot of quad copters and octocopters and a lot of personal aerial vehicles that are in development mimic those types of platforms. When you look at the Black Fly or the Helix, it's a completely different looking aircraft in that it has fixed wings. And that allows us to take or gain efficiencies and the motors work less hard in forward flight. So that's what makes it a bit unique. going back to that perennial state, it took us a fair amount of time to really perfect the art of that flight.

[6:38] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, just create that overnight. It takes some blood, sweat, and tears, and some trial and fail, I imagine.

[6:45] Greg Lary: We have an incredible crew doing all that work, still to this day, and that's ongoing.

[6:50] Kevin Sofen: So it's March 2024. I mean, you mentioned you got some deliveries coming out in the near future. What's on the horizon, I guess, besides that, or what are the biggest priorities from a R&D perspective, or kind of really customer exploration perspective?

[7:05] Greg Lary: Yeah, again, for this particular group, we're deeply interested in looking at how we can adapt. You know, we look at Helix as a platform, not just an electric VTOL, but truly a platform that can be built upon. Currently we're flying under part 103, ultralight, the FAA's rules under ultralight for individual aircraft, or I'm sorry, individual pilots. So we can go beyond that. The aircraft is intended to have a 230 pound payload, which is pretty significant, given the fact that the aircraft only weighs 348 pounds. So some of the-

[7:35] Kevin Sofen: By how much does it weigh?

[7:36] Greg Lary: 348 pounds. Wow. Yeah, so you take the aircraft under part 103, they limit aircraft weights to 248 with a ballistic parachute and the flow seg. That gives us a 100 pound give from the FAA and that gets us up to 348 pounds. So with a 238 or a 230 pound pilot, you're looking at roughly a 600 pound aircraft that's extremely lightweight and capable. And so you take that platform and what the aircraft looks like and how it can be configured in both manned and unmanned mission sets. The feedback that we're getting is, well, let's now look at, can we get two people in it? Can we get four or 500 pound payloads and can we take those capabilities further and further distances? So those are the challenges that we look forward to solving going forward.

[8:26] Kevin Sofen: So the way it's set up now, it could be manned or unmanned?

[8:28] Greg Lary: It is, yeah. So the aircraft is in its R&D processes, leading up to the development of Helix has been predominantly flown remotely piloted. And manned flight and manned flight testing and female flight testing, quite frankly, because we have a lot of female pilots that are spectacular, have worked on the development of the human interface and experience, you know, the personal experiences of in the joy of flying and bringing that to the public today.

[8:57] Kevin Sofen: So what are your biggest obstacles and challenges that Pivotal is facing as a company today?

[9:02] Greg Lary: I think just developing the market. We are one of the tip of the spear type companies and bringing a product that is very unique to market. There's a lot of people that have been following us for many years and the feedback and reception that we've got is extremely heartening. We have several pioneer owners that have already received the aircraft and are actively flying the aircraft today, giving us incredible feedback on how the aircraft can be perfected even more. And so it's a very early stage in market development and we can't wait to see what the future brings, both for us and our future customers.

[9:40] Kevin Sofen: Right on. Are you doing any demo of sorts here at the Texas Robotics Show or is there any sort of interactive experience that's going on here?

[9:50] Greg Lary: We have a full slate of public events that are in the process of being developed back in Palo Alto, where we're based. We made a decision not to fly here just for the simple fact that we're not flying. that our test assets are super busy. We're in the process of training customers. We have a brand new customer in this week. So we wanna make sure that those assets, that asset was available to those folks.

[10:12] Kevin Sofen: And if people wanted to get involved, learn more, contact, what's the best way to do that?

[10:16] Greg Lary: Call me or email me at greg.lary, greg.leri at pivotal.aero.

[10:24] Kevin Sofen: Cool, and I guess final things, if you have been kind of doing this of a mic drop of sorts of a comment, a question, a challenge, a favorite quote. Doesn't even need to be necessarily related to pivotal or drones for that matter. Any parting thoughts you could leave us with here today?

[10:39] Greg Lary: I just say look into the platform. It's a very unique and very fun and engaging way to fly. Under part 103, you do not have to have a pilot's license, but we do train our pilots in a very detailed manner to the procedure, not to the person. And it's very doable. If you've ever wanted to fly, this is the platform to do it. We're saying it's about a 10-day process, give or take, personal schedules and weather, but it's very doable to the common person.

[11:09] Kevin Sofen: Right on. Well, Greg, really fascinating to learn about Pivotal. I'm excited to stay in touch and see what's in store for Pivotal next.

[11:15] Greg Lary: Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks so much for having us.

[11:17] Kevin Sofen: Of course, take care.

[11:18] Greg Lary: All right, bye.

[11:20] Kevin Sofen: Thanks for tuning into this mini series 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'd you like? What'd you think? Drop us a comment on social media and let us know your favorite quote. Thanks for all that you do. Have a great day ahead.