Smart Firefighting Podcast

Episode 227: User-Friendly Software & Hardware: Innovating Public Safety Tech with Cole Fox

Published

Guests: Cole Fox

Topics: Drones & Robotics, Leadership

Featured partners: DroneSense

Episode notes

How can the customer help improve software functionality?

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 back 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:

DroneSense's critical role in enhancing public safety

Challenges in developing user-friendly drone software

The importance of collaboration in public safety technology innovation

Hear from Cole Fox - a Senior Solutions Engineer at DroneSense .

Cole talks about the importance of integrating DroneSense into public safety operations and the challenges of creating user-friendly software interfaces. We explore the process of crowdsourcing customer information and the need for communication and collaboration between end users and developers.

Cole also highlights the role of NIST and events like the Texas Robotics Summit in fostering collaboration and standardization in the public safety industry.

So click play now to hear what he has to share! And that's a wrap for our Mini Series! Stay tuned for the next weekly 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: episode 20 of the Texas Robotics Summit series
  2. 0:56 Cole Fox on Reveille Peak Ranch and the show
  3. 3:04 Lessons from the summit: does it integrate with DroneSense?
  4. 4:21 DroneSense as a software company
  5. 5:07 Making software palatable and easy to use
  6. 6:27 Crowdsourcing customer feedback: the Friday working group
  7. 7:33 Cole's time as a client at the Texas Railroad Commission
  8. 10:03 Raymond and Jordan join the conversation
  9. 10:45 Talking past each other: requirements from end users and developers
  10. 15:22 Telling useful research from academic ideas that won't work
  11. 17:13 How a PhD student should reach the fire service
  12. 18:51 The IEEE response robotics school and cross-pollination
  13. 20:08 Kevin on why the podcast exists and the role of NIST
  14. 21:54 How Cole found DroneSense through NIST
  15. 23:19 Final mic drop: see a need, fill a need
  16. 24:09 Engaging researchers through Google Scholar and arXiv
  17. 26:59 The NIST UAS working group and a curated source
  18. 27:53 Kevin as matchmaker and Smart First Responder
  19. 29:45 Closing thanks
  20. 30:48 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What does DroneSense do for public safety?

Cole Fox says DroneSense is a software company that focuses on first responder needs so they can fly and operate easily in emergency cases. The software lets commanders, chiefs, and others see what the drone is looking at in real time and have that information in their hands so decisions can be made accurately in critical moments.

Hear it at 4:26

How does DroneSense gather feedback from customers?

Cole Fox explains that DroneSense holds a Friday working group where all clients get together every Friday. The company tells them what it is working on and what is coming, and gets feedback on the product, issues, and how to make it better for users.

Hear it at 7:02

Why did the Texas Railroad Commission start using drones?

Cole Fox, who helped set up the program there, says the commission needed to gather information quickly at incidents like rig fires, pipeline fires, or spills, and deliver a live video stream to the main office in Austin so the executive team could see what was happening and make decisions about resources and road closures without relying only on phone calls.

Hear it at 7:56

What does Cole Fox say is key to developing useful public safety technology?

Cole Fox says it comes down to communication, sitting down and talking about requirements, testing to ensure the correct product is delivered, and making sure what is being built affects the entire community, not just one user. He adds that training and education are critical, especially when users do not yet know exactly what they need.

Hear it at 12:02

How can researchers connect with public safety to test new ideas?

Raymond from NIST suggests that public safety personnel can use Google Scholar or Archive to find research papers in their field, then email the authors, especially if they are nearby, to start a conversation. He says researchers almost always love to be contacted and it can lead to useful connections.

Hear it at 24:09

Transcript

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

Ep 227 transcript

User-Friendly Software & Hardware: Innovating Public Safety Tech with Cole Fox

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Cole Fox, Raymond (NIST PSCR)

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, WS Darling Company, for making this podcast possible. Enjoy the show. Officially podcast 20. Initially I said 30, that might be a bit ambitious, but we are at least at 20 with no other than Cole Fox, a solution engineer at DroneSense. Cole, what's going on?

[0:56] Cole Fox: Oh, not much. I had a great time here at Reveille Peak. It's been a great show, we've had a good turnout with a lot of current clients and future clients that are coming in and showing and looking at all the different integrations we have here and how we can help connect everyone together in the field and in your EOCs. So we're here at Reveille Peak Ranch, like you mentioned, at the Texas Public Safety Robotic Show, and it's really been quite the sight to see. I've never been anywhere in my life like this place. I don't think there is another place like this. It is a wonderful experience every time I've came out here, and I'm happy to see it continuing and them carrying on doing the robotic stomach here, because it is a phenomenal spot to have it.

[1:39] Kevin Sofen: It is special. And then even yesterday, Preston took me up to the peak and seeing that up there at sunset. It's like this place is an institution of it on its own.

[1:47] Cole Fox: It really is. The peak is beautiful at sunset. Also, next time you're here, you got to go do the tower at sunset. It is beautiful because it puts you up at a level and you can see just everything and it really brings out the color.

[1:59] Kevin Sofen: I know there's like, there's all sorts of kind of like ATV'ers here. There's bikers here. And I know they're prepping for this big eclipse event that's happening in April.

[2:08] Cole Fox: Yes.

[2:09] Kevin Sofen: Supposedly like a hundred thousand people are gonna be here for four days.

[2:12] Cole Fox: Oh, I wouldn't doubt it. I would not doubt it at all. Everywhere that's in that path, everything is growing and being shown. And they're saying we're supposed to have three to four times the expected populace And I'm like, that's going to be a nightmare for a lot of our public safety guys.

[2:26] Kevin Sofen: I don't want to call receipts right now, but it's sort of like whenever I heard something like that, it just kind of rings in my ear about like Fyre Fest and these Netflix and Hulu documentaries. And I hope there's not one created here. I hope and think it will go off well. But it sounds like it's going to be quite the endeavor.

[2:42] Cole Fox: I agree with you. I think it's going to luckily out here, like him having this location with the relationship he has with a lot of the local first responders. first responders and the local law enforcement, everything. I think they'll be able to carry it out and be able to keep everyone safe and protected. I think it's going to go off with a hinge, but it's definitely, I'm curious to know how it goes.

[3:02] Kevin Sofen: Same.

[3:03] Cole Fox: Yeah.

[3:04] Kevin Sofen: So how has your experience been here at the Robotics Summit? And you mentioned earlier, kind of good to see a lot of friendly faces and customers and whatnot, but any sort of lessons learned and takeaways that you've had from the show so far?

[3:15] Cole Fox: Yeah, so great takeaway here is just the amount of support we've had for our company with DroneSense. I mean, I think it's been mentioned many times on your podcast and everyone coming up wanting to know. And one of the things that even some of the other aircraft and manufacturers here, a prime one that I've heard multiple times is, does it integrate with DroneSense? Does it work with y'all? And most of the time the answer is yes, or it's coming. If I had a nickel for every time that's been said, I'd be a rich man.

[3:44] Kevin Sofen: Oh, same. DroneSense, write that down. Take that to the bank. Yeah, well, it's been cool to learn about the different applications and use cases of DroneSense from end users, because it's really, it comes down to solving first responder problems so they can focus on the mission at hand, so they can focus on operations. And I think that's one thing I'm most impressed about, the work that you and your team and, you know, obviously I'm very close with Mike Monsterine and everything that he's told me about DroneSense. And I think that's a lesson for other companies to follow about really listening to your customer and designing, but in the end, DroneSense is a software company, correct?

[4:26] Cole Fox: Correct, we're a software company that has embedded ourself with first responders and we focus on the first responder needs in order for it to work for y'all in those critical moments, so that we can deliver and make it easy for them to be able to fly and operate in these emergency cases, or in any case that they're using us at, and the availability for your command office or your commanders, anyone, your chiefs, anyone you want to send that out to have the knowledge of what that drone's doing, be able to see what it's looking at and have that availability right there in your hands. And just having that makes a huge difference. And it gives you the correct information and critical moments so that decisions can be accurately made.

[5:07] Kevin Sofen: So in the simplest way to describe it, the layman, like myself, software, it's just a bunch of ones and zeros, right?

[5:15] Cole Fox: Correct, but there's a lot of work that goes into making those ones and zeros, what's the word for it? Hum. Yes, but also palatable, so that you can understand it and easily use it. We have to create a deliverable that works well for a user, an end user, to be able to access it and be able to use it in the field.

[5:36] Kevin Sofen: I think about just my iPhone right here and being able to put my face onto it and open it up and just flipping around and going to devices and the idea of this palatable user interface.

[5:48] Cole Fox: Making sure that the UI UX and the design behind it fits what first responders expect it to be and to be easily usable, or as Coit likes to put it all the time, it has to be knuckle dragger safe. And it's just, we have to make it where no matter what you're doing, cause seconds matter, you know exactly where those buttons are. You know easily how to access it set up these mission events, drop markers, build out a flight plan, control the aircraft, notify others and be able to, you know, work together as a team, not only within your own environment, but with others that you're flying with and working with in that.

[6:27] Kevin Sofen: And within that context that you just talked about, you know, it's sort of the end user experience. What why is it important? And maybe what can you shed some light in terms of like really kind of listening to the FDMI's of the world, the Boston's of the world, the Austin's of the world, but then also the small being departments, you know, how they kind of listen and apply problems and kind of this is how we do and like to see this, how does, how do you kind of go about crowdsourcing customer information and translating that to, you know, tangible, palatable changes within a software experience?

[7:02] Cole Fox: So one of the things, and it, this is a different approach than I've ever seen many, I don't I don't think I've ever seen a software company do this. We have a Friday working group that all of our clients get together every Friday. We tell them what we're working on, what's coming. We get feedback on our product on that, things that they have run into, issues they've had, and how can we make this better for you? How can we iterate and make this a better experience for you? And that is a constant in DroneSense. As someone that came from, as a client, for four and a half years with them before I came to work here.

[7:33] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, you were a client, where?

[7:35] Cole Fox: At the Texas Railroad Commission. I helped send out the program there and develop that and send that out and trained everybody with Endrome since and built it out that way.

[7:41] Kevin Sofen: Oh, wow, it all comes full circle.

[7:43] Cole Fox: Yeah.

[7:44] Kevin Sofen: Tell me more about how, you know, what was the problem you had within the railroad and then ultimately how did you think, hey, I should implement, you know, X amount of, X type of drone, X type of streaming, like tell me more about that.

[7:56] Cole Fox: So it's a railroad commission, it's oil and gas, and it is the regulatory agency here in Texas over all of that. One of the things that we needed is if we have an incident, if we have a rig fire, or a pipeline fire, or contamination on the ground, or a spill into a river, or things of that nature. We needed to be able to easily gather this information, but also be able to deliver this as a stream to our main office here in Austin, so that our executive team could see it and be able to- Ah. Dude.

[8:28] Kevin Sofen: No worries, it's called Life on the Ranch.

[8:29] Cole Fox: Oh, man. There's stuff going on. Hey, I'm busy. I'm on the podcast, all right? All the time, man. All the time. Cole, I need this. Cole, I need that. It's a constant. I actually think I've done probably 12 coals in the last hour, but people just need help or wanting to know something, asking, hey, can we do this? Can we do this? Does it work this way?

[8:49] Kevin Sofen: That's common. Just control, delete, restart it, right? It's pretty easy.

[8:52] Cole Fox: Gosh. Can't do that. Nope. Unplug, replug.

[8:56] Kevin Sofen: It's pretty easy, right?

[8:58] Cole Fox: That one I'm not worried about. That's one of my cousins, so I can put him up on the side real easy. But inside of the commission, we needed to be able to deliver a stream of video of what was being seen so that our directors and the operations side could see, hey, OK, well, so we have a rig burnout. And this is where an oil well catches on fire and lights the rig on fire and it burns down. Well, we have people making the decisions in the field, but it's only being relayed over a phone directly to our executives so they know what to do. Having that live stream sent to them where they could actually make a decision, OK, we're We're gonna need fire here, we're gonna need cranes, we're gonna need EMS to shut down roads because we have toxic gas and fumes coming off, SO2, H2S blowing across an area. So that needs to be addressed and having that availability to share that out to them directly, they can see where it's happening at, pre-plan this, design it, set up corridors, make sure all this is handled properly and efficiently and easily, and then be able to work with multiple agencies at the same time makes it. Very easy.

[10:02] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well, now we officially have a crowd, you know, with Jordan and Raymond here, going wild. Appreciate you guys holding down the fort while everyone's moved to the other side of the ranch. Raymond or Jordan, it's kind of an open audience question here, you know, from what you know or maybe don't know about Cole being a solutions engineer, I mean, kind of the dynamic of software within public safety. Any question you can think of that might be a good question that you would have for someone like Cole. You guys were talking for like an hour over there.

[10:34] Raymond (NIST PSCR): We were waiting for you, we were going for you, we were grilling Cole.

[10:37] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well okay, what did you grill Cole? I want to capture it on the podcast. Yeah, ask the question, ask the question.

[10:45] Raymond (NIST PSCR): So I guess the one of the big things that I loved about some of this discussion, right, is that it's all about figuring out where the communication isn't happening, right? There's those of us in academia, right, you know, I'm a research scientist, I have a PhD I used to teach students and all the stats and the others. And how do we talk to the end users? How do the end users and us talk to the developers, right? And we all speak different languages, right? We all come from different assumptions, different bases. It's not that one's right or wrong or anything, right? But the problem is that the more that people are talking past each other, the more that there's a problem. So I think that was the thing that I got most about that discussion was, how do we figure out where everyone is at? side of it, which I'm curious to hear what you think. You've been on both the end user side as well as now you have an insight into the developer side, is that no one knows how to do requirements, right? Now having been on both sides of it, what sort of comments do you have about how can the development side be better about deciphering and knowing when the requirements coming from the end users are stupid? And from the end user side, how can the manufacturers will be better about conveying when the capabilities are just expressed in ways just don't make sense?

[12:02] Cole Fox: That's actually a really tough one to do because it is stepping into new territory here and getting that feedback. That's what it's gonna come to is, you know, having discussions and sitting down and talking about, okay, the requirement that you're trying to meet, how do we address this? How do we get what you want in an applicable way in front of our engineers so it can be built out and then tested to ensure that we're delivering the correct product to you. And then on that, is what you're asking for as a requirement, is that gonna affect the entire community as a whole? Because it can't just be something that I want, it has to be something that we want and that we need as a community to work together. So doing a one-off is really hard to do, but doing something that affects the entire whole at once, that allows you to work together to build out and to gain and access knowledge So it becomes the basis of this, and that's how we can get those, is of course it all falls back to communication and just ensuring that we take the time to work together, listen to each other, test and iterate. And then as we said earlier, it's about not only contacting, reaching out and testing, but closing that loop and making sure that you do deliver what you were initially trying to design and make.

[13:13] Raymond (NIST PSCR): So as someone who's been on both sides, so what you just described is great when the end user has a fairly good idea of, or at least a fairly accurate idea of what they want, of what they need, even if it might not be a precise idea. At least they have a fairly accurate idea of what they need. How do you deal with the situation where the folks who are doing the requirements don't have an accurate idea of what they need? They might have a very precise idea, but it's wrong, right? For example, at the advent of the automobile, if you ask people what do they want, they say they want a better automobile, they'd say they want a better horse, right? You know, how do you deal with that situation, especially when we are dealing with what is a step function change in capability, but also a step function change in the way of thinking about these capabilities?

[14:00] Cole Fox: Training, education, and the best thing is to allow this, especially drones and technology, and how rapidly this is changing, it is very hard to answer, well, what do we really want and what And what do we really need? Those are normally not always lined up with each other either. But how do we accurately take when someone who doesn't know that they want it, they see it, they see it's a nice pretty thing, but they don't know exactly what they need upon that. So how do we articulate what they are saying is a need for them into a deliverable? And it's going to come back to, again, they may not have a clear way to understand it, and it's going to go to educating them, giving them the information, teaching them, having general public views of it and doing what we're doing here, making this community where it spreads and more people get educated and we have this. And if we can all work together to make those baselines so we can educate the uneducated on this so that they're not, you know, I don't ever want to say that someone's making a stupid decision or something like that upon their ideas because a lot of it falls into an ignorance of knowledge of a device or product or something like that. So it's, again, just educating, getting that out there so that the information is easily accessible and it is a set flow so you know it's it's truth it's not false lies it's not you know falsification of information or like 90% of stuff you find up on the internet that is incorrect

[15:22] Raymond (NIST PSCR): so that and so i guess the for the next question then you're you're probably going to say the same thing and that is what happens when you look through the other direction that is to folks like us the researchers the academics we have this you know you know what they say the more you learn the more you know about lesson to you know everything about nothing you know so that's where we are and you know we have this really beautiful thing this beautiful theory this beautiful algorithm and we say yes it will be really useful for this and then you look at it and go you don't know what you're talking about that's stupid right that'll never work and you know and you know 95% of the time that's probably true and again as a developer in representing the developer you're kind of in the middle of the two worlds you know how what you know how do you know tell the difference between the that's what 95% of they say yes we'll be really useful for public safety and they're not versus Because the 5% or maybe I'm being, I'm being pessimistic, but you know what I mean? The percentage at which, you know, they would be used, they are useful. It's just that they don't quite know how to frame the, frame the presentation of where they think this thing is going to go.

[16:21] Cole Fox: So on that one, like, so coming from growing up and working like my last job, I worked with a lot of engineers. That's what I worked with for the last 10 years is very, it's engineers. That's all you work with. World application versus engineering applications, as we all know that have done anything in a lab, in perfect conditions, it's easy to replicate something. In real life, it's very hard to replicate that. So the best thing we can do is say, yes, you have this beautiful idea. Let's make sure it's going to work in the real world, and let's go from your idea, let's place that into a real world scenario to see how that's going to work. It takes down to testing. Whether it is a good idea or a bad idea, you still have to test it to make sure it's going to follow through and work because just because it's a wonderful, brilliant idea in a stale little environment does not mean it's a wonderful, brilliant idea in a chaotic, critical environment.

[17:13] Raymond (NIST PSCR): That's very true. And actually, at this point, I'm going to hijack your podcast. Fully understanding, of course, that you're editing this anyway. So whatever.

[17:19] Kevin Sofen: No edit.

[17:20] Raymond (NIST PSCR): Oh, no edits. OK. Very. You live a dangerous life. And that is, of course, that coming from the from the academic side and we're like, oh, we would really love to, you know, do this thing for this application. But you look in the phone book, well, I'm old enough to see, think phone book.

[17:35] Kevin Sofen: Same. It's okay.

[17:37] Raymond (NIST PSCR): Yeah. You're there. Yes. The young one here is laughing. Of course, you've got no idea if everyone gesticulating to it could be gesticulating it. Mr. Sirfin here for all we know. Anyway, you try and contact the fire department. I mean, you know, as a, as a PhD student calls them up and says, hey, I want to talk to you about a stupid idea. They're not going to know what to talk about. I mean, you know, if you're wanting to put that communication together and give, know, the PhD student who has this really great idea and thinks they can save the world with it, you know, how would you recommend that they, you know, engage with, you know, start that conversation and talk to these people?

[18:12] Cole Fox: Honestly, events like this, coming to an event like this, getting with NIST, getting with any of these events where you have that technology all coming together into one location, where you have end users, you have developers, you have manufacturers You can walk around and talk to them. We're all very approachable and we're all here to share our knowledge and try to educate. That's what we're all here for. So we can grow this community and make it a better place. It's all about communication here and making this work across the nation, across the world so that we have standards. So we have the availability to work together and build out our systems and know how to talk to each other so that this can build out and we can make this into something really great.

[18:51] Raymond (NIST PSCR): Perfect. And again, for your listeners who may be, I don't know if this was connected through, of course. So we are, of course, at the Texas Public Safety Robotics Summit. What you probably don't know is that we were co-located with this running an event, the IEEE RAS Response Robotics Seasonal School and Workshop. We couldn't call it a summer school because it's not summer, of course supported by the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers at Robotics and Automation Society. We had a group of PhD students here for exactly this reason. And in fact, Cole, you spoke with them at length under a tree while we were waiting for Kevin earlier. And the goal was to do this cross-pollination, to bring them out and to show them, hey, look, here is the environment, and here are the users who are going to be using your technologies. So that's certainly very true, is getting people together. What would it take to do this kind of thing, but on a smaller scale, right? Let's say, of course, not everyone can come to things like this. True. You know, are there, you know, organisations that, you know, like, I guess, what would be the public safety organisations at work that are forward leaning on this in terms of engaging the... engaging with academia and the like. Do either of you have any thoughts about that? I guess, Kevin, you would probably have some ideas.

[20:08] Kevin Sofen: Well, I must say it's been wonderful to be a visual observer of my own podcast. And Brandon, I want to continue to encourage other hosts of the podcast. This is a call to all of you about wanting to expand and hopefully be able to put out like a podcast today. So that was just cool. Thank you, Raymond and Cole and Jordan for that experience. But I think where I heard from your question, ultimately, that's why this podcast was started. The idea to create cross-pollination between .gov, .org, .edu, private, small, medium, large companies. I think a lot of it from certain podcasts earlier is checking your ego at the door and just trying to find ways to be a piece of the puzzle and bring value. That's sort of my ethos for how I live my life and in particular for this podcast, and I think this being the 20th episode, and if you listen to one through 20, you're gonna get a bit of police, a little bit of EMS, a little bit of fire, a little bit of .org, .edu, .gov. We've literally had all that in the gambit. And I think there's no sort of silver bullet, there's no right or wrong answer necessarily for this stuff. But I think a lot of this comes back to the importance of the gap that NIST is filling and helping pioneer is the standardization and testing. I think that is like a foundational thing to be able to make sure from Maine to California to Washington to Florida and everything in between that we're all sort of not just taking a part one or seven test and saying that we are proficient. You know, there's level of proficiency that needs to be hit. And then there's the matter of, you know, once you are operating and going to the best practices, it's are you creating data in the right way and displaying that data in the right way and sharing this information in the right way? And we've had some great contacts from different common operating platforms like TAK and kind of how that's coming to rise. And so I think there's a bit of all that. I think that was mostly the question you asked. That's my wild, rambling, circled answer, but I'll throw it to Cole. And, you know, what are your thoughts on that?

[21:54] Cole Fox: Well, actually, one of the ones that got us together, too, is I was recommended to DroneSense from a NIST proctor. That's how I found out about DroneSense when we were standing up our system, because we wanted to look into NIST, again, coming from a government agency. We used the NIST standards for a lot of our actual systems before. And y'all were just in development of actually building out your drone program. And the person that was proctoring that here, sorry, I'm terrible at names and I can't remember his name, Gene. He does the body farm stuff and Austin Community College. Not entirely sure, but Gene sounds right. He was working with NIST at that time. He recommended DroneSense and that was how we moved into our software that I'm with now. But using NIST is a great way to actually get that communication because y'all are everywhere. I mean, y'all have a very large impact in both the drone and industrial first responders in everything because of y'all's standards that y'all have created. So that is a way that we learned about it. And then of course, events like this and guys like you that are out here getting all this tied together, Kevin, because having that availability where you tie all that together and bring people together for these podcasts, it makes a huge difference.

[23:09] Kevin Sofen: Well, selfishly, it's fun, because I just like to be able to learn from people that are smarter and bring different aspects to the table. So I love just learning and hanging out with people like yourself. And I think what I'd love to, you know, kind of all three of us in sort of a closing dots here to kind of round it up of, I asked you guys in the pod before, and you know, if you got a new one, it's welcomed and encouraged, but for you, this sort of a final mic drop time moment where it's not necessarily, you know, dropping the mic, but of whether a quote that you live by or quote you could give us, a phrase or even a challenge to the listeners, or just a statement of any kind. And it doesn't necessarily have to be robotics related, but anything that you could leave us with here today?

[23:47] Cole Fox: So I've always actually lived by the standard of see and need, feel and need. If you see something that could be done better or if you have an idea to make it better, then to follow through and make it better, to put your passion towards that and do what you can to make it better.

[24:02] Kevin Sofen: Raymond or Jordan, you got any final parting thoughts? And maybe the last podcast of the mini series here.

[24:09] Raymond (NIST PSCR): So I actually do want to answer my own question a little bit. And I'm assuming that most of your listeners are on the public safety side. I don't know that we have so many research students on this side. But I have a thought to leave you with if you're keen to engage with the students who are working, or at least who think they're going to be solving your problems. And that is, engage with them, right? It's actually fairly easy to find students who are working in fields where they think they're developing technologies to help you, right? If you go on Google Scholar, you just can Google. You can use Google Scholar or Archive or any number of other places where you can look up research papers and just look for your area of public safety, hazmat, search and rescue, wildland fire, whatever. And you will find, because the people, the students publishing these and the research group publishing these will add these in as their keywords. You will find them. And you will find masses and masses of papers of stuff ranging from the applied to the highly theoretical, where the authors think that they might be helping your application. They almost always have a contact email address. These people always love to be contacted. Ping them, especially if you look at the author list and at the institutionalist and go, hey, wait, that's the school that's just down the road from the firehouse, right? Email them, say, hey, I looked on archive and saw you published a paper saying that this XYZ algorithm is gonna be really useful for wildland fire or whatever the case may be, right? And they say, hey, we might have a chat and saying hi and seeing what you're up to. you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it's done. But I mean, if it's a PhD student, I remember, I certainly remember when I was a PhD student, I'd love to get an email like that and have a chat with a firefighter, and make connections that way too. I mean, that can be really useful. And then it might be a fun thing to do at the very least, if you're looking for fun things to read, just some of it's a bit dry and full of equations and things and just because it's full of equations doesn't mean the equations are right, but. Or that the equations are understandable, but you know, they generally have some kind of statement. And especially if the statement is sort of almost but not quite correct. Right? You know, sometimes they're just drawing a really long bow because they're trying to get the funding. But you know, sometimes you can tell that they made an effort and they probably did a bit of research, but they weren't quite right.

[26:25] Cole Fox: They may not understand the application in the field.

[26:27] Raymond (NIST PSCR): Exactly.

[26:28] Cole Fox: That's the whole point. It would be really nice to have an archive is one in Google Scholar, but again, sorting through that, a lot of the times these first responders, these guys out here, they don't have time. They're doing 50 jobs and working 60 to 100 hours a week. Depending upon where you're at, a great way on this is if we could have a repository that has applicable ones where they could submit, if they think it's going to help first responders or something like that, and have a submittal area where that could be delivered at, that would be phenomenal.

[26:59] Raymond (NIST PSCR): Well, so that's a good pivot into the working group that we're putting together. So of course, I'm at NIST, Public Safety Communications Research Division. I'm the UAS research lead. And we're standing up a working group on cybersecurity and AR risk management for UAS and public safety, where we are collating. We are putting together who's doing research in this, that, and the other for this area and putting together reading lists and the like. So there is a curated source, of course. Because as you say, of course, this is a fairly specialized area. It's not across everything. And so I fully realize that no one has time. We're all being pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed. So it is hard, but yeah, no.

[27:36] Cole Fox: But having one location where that, you know, again, as you said, timing, having that where we can easily go through and find ones that we're looking for. And, you know, more than likely you're gonna have something upon a podcast on there. You're gonna have something as, you know, videos or feeds or discussions that have already been had and it makes it very easy for us to digest and get into.

[27:53] Raymond (NIST PSCR): I think what really needs to happen is Kevin here needs to put together, have some kind of central place hosted for where we can put all this stuff, right? and then he can, you know, interview all of these authors. You know, he, Kevin has plenty of time, right? It's not like he's doing anything. I mean, all he does is sit there and talk, right? See, all he does is sit there and talk and look good while doing it. So, you know, but no, but I mean, I wonder whether it's worth you actually reaching out to someone, you know, again, Googling, Google Scholaring, archiving, and again, emailing some of these students and say, hey, I run a, you know, I see you're, I see you're developing an algorithm for this, that and the other, that claim, that and you think it's gonna be good for public safety, I'd love to get you on the podcast and explain how. You know, put them up with a, you know, with a, with a someone in public safety irrelevant. Maybe you can play matchmaker.

[28:35] Kevin Sofen: Well, of a matchmaker type thing. I agree. And I think we have started to try and do that. I think we pivoted just because we had lack of resources within the community to just focus on content creation. But I think one of the biggest things is evolving it from Smart Firefighting to Smart First Responder. Still keeping the Smart Firefighting brand. But then also what are the ways if you're in the .gov, .org, .edu private industry entrepreneurship type bubble, whatever it is this is who you are. This is what you're working on. These are some of your specialties. And not quite a LinkedIn job board, but you are interested in X and you can provide Y and finding a way to cross pollinate with one another. So I think that's a huge need. There's a couple other gentlemen I'm working with, Kirk McKenzie and Stefan Truthan, on kind of filling the gap on some of the VC side, but then also some of the kind of the marketing, business development, consulting, implementation side, but then kind of a who's who's doing what, and then using a podcast and video to kind of pollinate it all and bring it to life. So that's definitely, I guess, a hope and a vision for mine. I appreciate you all kind of bringing that to life. And I guess if I could have a final mic drop, you know, actually the battery is blinking at me, about to die in maybe the next minute or two. So, you know, one final thing from either Cole or Raymond and myself, I'll let Cole, you go first.

[29:47] Cole Fox: Sure. I just want to say thank you all to everybody for hosting me here. Thank you, Kevin, for bringing me on here. This is wonderful. I very much appreciate it. I look forward to actually hearing all the podcasts and actually listening to this. So thank you.

[29:59] Kevin Sofen: Right on.

[30:00] Raymond (NIST PSCR): I think, I think, you know, you're making the connections, you're getting this, getting the word out and I think that's vital and I'm underappreciated and I really appreciate it. Of course, I appreciate it more if you showed up in that wonderful suit that you wore last time I saw you.

[30:10] Kevin Sofen: Next time.

[30:13] Raymond (NIST PSCR): Okay. Well, I guess we get to see you and you're offering to put your swimsuit on in the last podcast, so maybe we'll get there instead.

[30:18] Kevin Sofen: Swimsuit on the bottom, suit on top. It's going to be wonderful. I can't, can't wait for it. And so to the Texas Robotics Summit and maybe the last one, it's 2.30 on day three. I think we're going to call it a wrap. It's been a wonderful 32 minutes and 10 seconds so far in this pod, and I've really enjoyed it. So thank you, Cole. Thank you, Raymond. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you to Granite Defense. Thank you to Reveille Peak Ranch, just to all the people that have been on the pod and listened and supported. Let's keep it going and much love. Until next time. 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 and have a great day ahead.