Video: What’s Actually Stopping Air Taxis from Taking Off

Host: Alex Brooker
Guest: Kraettli Epperson, Co-founder and CEO, Vigilant Aerospace Systems

Alex Brooker: Hi everybody, Alex Brooker here. Welcome to the Travel Tech Podcast. This week I speak with Kraettli Epperson, the co-founder and CEO of Vigilant Aerospace. We talk about air taxis, drones, how drones avoid each other, what rules are needed in the U.S. to unlock routine flying, what beyond visual line of sight means, and everything in between.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. This is brought to you by Airside. That’s AirsideLabs.com. And please don’t forget to like and subscribe to the channel. It really helps me out as this is a new project growing fast, and I really appreciate your support. Please comment below with your feedback. I love hearing comments and suggestions from viewers and listeners.

All right, let’s get into it.

Alex Brooker: Okay. Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Travel Tech Podcast. This week I’m joined by Kraettli Epperson, co-founder and CEO of Vigilant Aerospace. It’s great to meet you, sir.

Kraettli Epperson: Very nice to meet you, Alex.

Alex Brooker: Thank you for coming on the pod. I’m really interested to talk to you about lots of different things, but I was wondering if we might start with the pre-aerospace days. I’d love to know how you got started in your career, because I understand you are a bit of a serial entrepreneur.

Kraettli Epperson: Yeah, that is my background. I started out in college. I had some spare time and needed a part-time job to help put myself through school. I went to a company nearby in Houston, close to my university, where several people I knew from school were working. I took a reception job there, really just so I could do some homework.

After I had been there a little while and started supporting their marketing, they came to me and said, “We have this interesting problem. We need someone to write a web app to pull in SEC documents,” meaning financial regulatory filings and documents used by traders and others.

I had never done anything like that before, but I taught myself over a summer how to use the programming language that was suitable for their platform, and I wrote that application to automatically pull in a large number of SEC filings from the early internet. That got written up in PC Magazine, got them some national press, and I really got hooked on building early internet technology products.

I went on to found a couple of companies that hosted web applications. I ended up living in London for a couple of years, where I had a company doing encrypted database hosting for major manufacturing and shipping companies, really throughout the world, based in the U.K.

Then I came back and co-founded the world’s largest academic digital library. This started as Questia Media, and it was eventually acquired by Cengage. We had about 300 employees and offices in Manhattan, London, and Manila because we were scanning tens of thousands of books and journals and negotiating with publishers. We were providing license fees back to the publishers. That became a really big company, and I was able to exit that.

Then I started another company doing geospatial information systems for public infrastructure, rail companies, pipelines, wind farms, oil and gas exploration, and all kinds of things like that.

Later, I ended up investing in other companies. I was involved in starting and running a couple of seed funds associated with an accelerator. That did very well, and I was able to exit that. Some of the investors in that fund were the ones who ended up investing in this company, Vigilant Aerospace.

So that’s a brief encapsulated history. I’ve always been involved in software, product design, and development. I’ve done a lot of hands-on work, but now, of course, I also do a lot of product design and a lot of regulatory work, as well as technical standards work, which is really important in aviation. We end up working on the cutting edge of what can be done with aviation technologies right now, while also keeping track of industry technical standards. That’s how all of that translated into what I do today.

Alex Brooker: That’s fantastic. It’s so interesting to hear that journey, and particularly that you started out as a builder. A lot of the other people we’ve been talking to on the podcast also started out engineering, building, and solving problems for themselves.

I’m interested in that step from tech and the early internet into aerospace. What was the driver there to take that leap into a highly regulated industry, whereas the early internet was very different?

Kraettli Epperson: Sure. Yeah, it certainly was the Wild West. Honestly, a lot of what’s going on with UAS and drones is also a very open frontier. There’s a lot of pioneering work going on right now, so it’s fascinating. I’m driven by curiosity and learning new things, and that’s really how I ended up where I am.

But I would say there’s also direct technical overlap. For example, one of the companies I ran, the geospatial information systems company, worked with a lot of infrastructure companies, and that has very direct overlap with what we do technically here because we’re running advanced mapping systems for airspace management. A lot of the underlying technology overlaps.

More broadly, though, it has to do with democratizing access to advanced technologies. We’re really working to make drones more accessible and advanced air mobility aircraft more able to have an economic impact. We’re bridging a big gap there.

That’s really what I’ve always focused on, whether it was creating large-scale digital libraries to bring things out of the physical world into the digital world and make them available to millions more people, or building web-based geospatial information systems that anyone in an organization could use to access data that was otherwise locked away somewhere, literally in a basement in many cases.

What we’re doing now is really about unlocking the airspace and making it available so aircraft can fly safely. I can tell you a little bit about the history of this company and how I got involved.

Alex Brooker: Absolutely. Please go ahead.

Kraettli Epperson: This might help answer that question. I was introduced to Ricardo Arteaga, who is a senior research engineer at NASA Armstrong in California. He’s a national avionics and aviation safety expert for NASA. Aircraft are flown into NASA Armstrong when they need new avionics installed, fixed, adjusted, or configured, and Ricardo is a national expert in doing that.

A little more than 10 years ago, he had the idea that the industry and the world were going to need a way to safely track drones and, most importantly, allow drones to track other aircraft and automatically avoid collisions and other conflicts. He began pioneering that work at NASA Armstrong and filed a couple of patents around how to do that.

Initially, that work used transponders, so ADS-B, the transponder aircraft in controlled airspace in the United States and many other places are required to use. It has very long range and great utility. Then he filed another patent that added radar to that capability.

We ended up meeting with Ricardo. He’s a really inspirational person. He grew up in Texas, became interested in aviation safety, pursued his pilot’s license, eventually became an engineer, and joined NASA. He had a very inspirational story and a clear approach to autonomous aviation safety.

We licensed those two patents, and that formed the basis for the product at this company. We built a commercial product initially, and now we also have what’s called a dual-use product. It can be used for defense or in the commercial space. It’s based on those patents, but just as important, it’s based on the algorithms and technical standards that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) publishes, which makes it more readily usable.

That’s really our arc. We started out working with Ricardo at NASA. I co-authored a couple of papers with Ricardo to help get us started, using the algorithms and patent claims to describe how you would do collision avoidance, or “detect-and-avoid,” as it’s called in the industry for drones, uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), or advanced air mobility. That gave us a strong launching point to get into the field and start actually building the technology. So that’s really the history of this company.

Alex Brooker: It’s an amazing story. I was wondering if we could dwell on the detect-and-avoid challenge for a minute. Why is that a hard problem?

Kraettli Epperson: Sure. It represents a major technical gap in the industry right now for both UAS and advanced air mobility. It is crucial for the industry to be able to grow. There need to be ready-to-use, standardized, compliant detect-and-avoid systems that allow drones to automatically sense where other aircraft are, track them, predict trajectories, and make a decision on an avoidance maneuver if that’s necessary.

That’s the gap that we fill. There are companies that have designed systems specifically for their own large drones, such as some defense companies, and there are companies working on this in advanced air mobility. But there are very few companies approaching it from an agnostic point of view. How do you put this on any aircraft that needs it? Any drone manufacturer, from small to large, has to solve this problem.

Before we got started, what many companies had to do was buy the equipment, write the software, integrate it, test it, get it validated, and then maybe be able to use it. It becomes a big science experiment. It’s expensive and risky.

We’ve invested the time and money to solve that problem. We are the leading independent provider. We don’t build it for one particular aircraft. We build it for your aircraft, whatever you might need.

Alex Brooker: I see. And that’s really what you’re focused on.

Kraettli Epperson: Exactly.

Alex Brooker: It’s a fascinating step forward because even in the U.K. right now, if you want to fly a drone beyond visual line of sight, or BVLOS, it’s a very big deal. We still need to have a temporary danger area or a restricted area. What’s the situation in the U.S., and what has your involvement been in pushing the boundary in terms of setting the rules of the road?

Kraettli Epperson: Yeah. We started this company in 2015 by licensing the initial patent from NASA. We were then very fortunate that in 2016 the United States published what’s called the Part 107 rule. The FAA published a new rule allowing you to fly small drones at low altitude commercially under that rule. You no longer had to get a special waiver or exemption. You didn’t have to get what was called the 333 exemption anymore if you were going to fly a small drone at low altitude.

That really revolutionized the industry and created the commercial drone industry in the U.S. But the rule required you to fly within visual line of sight. In other words, if you’re flying a small commercial drone, leaving aside defense operations, which tend to use air traffic control, are much larger, and involve more people, then you really have to fly within line of sight. You have to be able to see it.

You can get a Part 107 beyond visual line of sight waiver, but typically you have to have the safety system and the team to do that. We’ve been involved in operating under several of those waivers, including some of the early pioneering work in onboard detect-and-avoid.

What’s exciting is that a few years ago, the FAA, and really everyone in the industry, realized that if the industry was going to advance, U.S. operators were going to need to fly beyond visual line of sight routinely. If you want to inspect a pipeline, a large wind farm, large agricultural fields, rivers, or dams, or support search and rescue, fire response, or flood response, you really have to be able to fly BVLOS safely.

So the FAA put together what they call an Aviation Rulemaking Committee, or ARC. The ARC process brings together people from industry, subject matter experts, and regulators to create recommendations for how to write a new rule to enable something.

There have been rules for Remote ID, which is essentially a radio license plate on your drone. Now there is a draft rule for routine BVLOS operations, where you don’t need a special waiver and can fly beyond the visual line of sight of the pilot. I served on that ARC. I spent time in 2022 helping put those recommendations together. There were 89 people throughout the U.S. on that ARC.

Now the FAA has published a draft rule they’re calling Part 108, and there’s an accompanying rule for support systems, typically on the ground, called Part 146. Those are drafts now. Comments have been submitted on those drafts, and the expectation at the time of this interview is that by the end of the year they will be published and become effective at some point after that. That would allow the U.S. market for small UAS, up to 1,320 pounds and 25-foot wingspan, to fly beyond visual line of sight. It’s a really exciting rule. In the same way Part 107 created the commercial industry, Part 108 will dramatically expand it.

Alex Brooker: And in terms of that market expansion, it must unlock a huge number of those use cases you’ve started to describe, such as river surveys and dam inspections. But what level of autonomy are we talking about with the drone itself? Is it a mission plan that it flies autonomously, or are there remote pilots involved? How does that work?

Kraettli Epperson: The new rules are really an evolution of Part 107, where you had a pilot in command and a certificated pilot required to operate the aircraft. Under Part 108 and Part 146, there is movement toward more autonomy, with the idea of an airspace or flight manager, and an expectation that a lot of systems and automation will be involved, particularly under Part 146, which creates the idea of a data service provider.

Those rules are designed to allow much more autonomy. It’s expected that highly autonomous drones will be flying commercial missions over long distances under the new framework.

Alex Brooker: If we move toward longer wingspans, so these are not really quadcopters anymore and the range can get very high, what sorts of ranges are we talking about that these changes could enable?

Kraettli Epperson: It’s really going to depend on what the manufacturers are able to achieve. A lot of people are working on that. Certainly many kilometers. You’ll be able to fly aircraft for an hour or more under these rules, and eventually much longer than that. You are still limited by altitude, but once you get into larger sizes there is a matrix that determines what additional safety measures are required.

As you move into those larger aircraft sizes, there is definitely more safety infrastructure, both onboard and on the ground, that you would typically use. But yes, it could be many, many kilometers.

Alex Brooker: And what sort of altitudes are we talking about? Is there still a big separation between commercial air travel in controlled airspace and the altitudes we’re talking about here?

Kraettli Epperson: Yes. It’s still expected mostly to be under 400 feet. There will definitely be exemptions and cases where you can fly within a certain number of feet around a building, bridge, or other structure, which may take you above 400 feet. Those structures can help shield the operation. That is already being done under Part 107, sometimes with special waivers.

So this is mostly still low-altitude flying. It is still outside regular air traffic. But it is also a proving ground for larger UAS that will begin to move up into regular controlled airspace and eventually Class A airspace over time.

Alex Brooker: Enabling more routine flying, what does that unlock? How does that help the industry grow?

Kraettli Epperson: A lot of the change is that it creates certainty. It matters what the rule is, but it matters even more that there is a rule, and that you can build to the rule, invest to the rule, and build infrastructure that complies with the rule and with the relevant industry technical standards.

Rules often point to accepted industry technical standards. If you comply with those standards, regulators understand that you are complying with the rule. Once that framework is in place, you can invest in designing new aircraft, data networks, payload systems, and really build a business with confidence that you’ll be able to operate under those rules every day.

That certainty is absolutely necessary if you want to build a business around UAS.

Alex Brooker: So it gives you the concrete foundation to build a business case, make a pitch, secure investment, and do all the things that happen in conventional aviation.

Kraettli Epperson: Exactly. Those analogies can start to work in UAS.

Alex Brooker: Before we get to the big vision, I want to go back to detect-and-avoid and talk about the technology itself. I’d love to know more about what you and your team have been developing at Vigilant Aerospace and how you’ve approached some of the different data feeds and the challenge of detecting and avoiding other aircraft.

Kraettli Epperson: Sure. We have a product line called FlightHorizon, and we have both ground-based and onboard versions. We started out commercializing this technology with ground-based systems.

We integrated transponder receivers into our software, so we wrote software that gives you a display of the airspace. It’s a 3D display of your own aircraft and the surrounding traffic. We pull in telemetry from your aircraft, either onboard or on the ground, so we always know where your aircraft is according to its own systems.

Then we pull in information from ADS-B transponders. We use receivers, and in some cases build entire networks of receivers. We can also pull in FAA data. SWIM is one of the systems the FAA uses to publish that data. There are new emerging systems the FAA will also start using. We pull in private data feeds as well. We’ve done that with the defense industry, where they have their own additional information about where aircraft might be located.

In some cases, we also use large radars. Fundamentally, the system pulls all that data in and performs a correlation process. It says: we see this aircraft track, we see it on radar, we see the transponder, and we know it’s not us because we have our own telemetry. Then we track it.

We prioritize ADS-B when possible. If the aircraft doesn’t have ADS-B, then it’s non-cooperative, and we track it on radar. Then our system, in a fraction of a second, performs a trajectory calculation. It determines whether that aircraft’s path will intersect with what we call a “well-clear” distance around our drone or UAS.

That well-clear distance is the safety distance the operator is required by regulation to maintain from other air traffic. Based on the trajectory, if there is a potential conflict, the system provides what’s called a resolution advisory, which is an avoidance command. It can send that to the autopilot and to the pilot. It may say, for example, “Turn left, descend, and speed up” in order to maintain well-clear separation.

We write all the algorithms to do that. We use something called ACAS X, which is a successor to the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) work from the FAA. The FAA has published algorithms on what maneuver you should take, so we are not guessing about the appropriate avoidance direction or negotiating that with regulators. We’re using published, widely accepted algorithms, and those are embedded in our software, whether it is the ground-based or onboard version.

That’s fundamentally what we do. We have a team that specializes in software development, mission-critical software, algorithmic work, and some very complex geometry. We do the correlation work across all observed targets, determine whether each target is cooperative or non-cooperative, and predict whether it will encounter our well-clear volume, which is basically like a flat cylinder around the aircraft.

We perform that calculation continuously across everything we can see. Then, as I mentioned, we either send the recommendation to the autopilot, especially if it’s the onboard version, or to the remote pilot. The autopilot may create a new waypoint, such as a left turn combined with a descent. If the remote pilot still has final control authority, they can accept or carry out that maneuver.

That’s the foundation of what we do and how the system works.

Alex Brooker: I’d love to talk a little more about uncooperative airspace users. On this side of the pond, in the U.K., it has taken longer than perhaps we would want to establish full electronic conspicuity rules and cost-effective ways for all airspace users to be electronically visible. What’s the situation in the U.S., and what has it been like working with different airspace users on that?

Kraettli Epperson: A lot of the FAA’s work right now is about balancing the needs of different airspace users. That is always the case, but especially when you have new entrants, more autonomous aircraft, and eventually a number of autonomous aircraft operations that may dwarf the number of crewed aircraft takeoffs.

In the U.S., if you fly in controlled airspace, you’re required to have a transponder and interact with air traffic control through that system and other means. So there is a large group of cooperative aircraft that are relatively easy to detect and track.

There is also a smaller number of non-cooperative aircraft that never enter controlled airspace and therefore do not need to have a transponder. That includes some farm aircraft, ranch aircraft, and certain private aircraft that operate outside the usual airport environments.

In the Part 108 proposals and related discussions, there is the idea of having a very low-cost, low-powered, perhaps rechargeable vehicle-to-vehicle transponder. It would not be intended to interact with air traffic control, but it would provide conspicuity for smaller aircraft in uncontrolled airspace and improve safety. There is definitely work and discussion around that.

The FAA is trying hard to balance those needs, keeping in mind that Part 107 and the proposed Part 108 rules are focused on very low-altitude flying, in airspace where even many non-cooperative aircraft do not usually operate. They generally are not flying below 400 feet unless they have a specific reason, so the number of potential conflicts gets smaller.

We spent a lot of time on the ARC thinking through who needs to fly in that airspace. Many of those users are inspection aircraft, and in some cases those aircraft are likely to be replaced by drones because that work is dangerous and drones can do it effectively. There is actually a safety trade-off there: you improve national safety and reduce accidents by shifting some of that high-risk work to drones.

When we support operators that need non-cooperative detection, we typically use radar. We can use small, portable ground-based radars. For example, in western Oklahoma at Clinton-Sherman Airport, which is the Burns Flat Spaceport, we surveil thousands of square kilometers with a group of seven large, trailer-based radars.

Aircraft developers use Burns Flat. Training takes place there. Increasingly, there are spacecraft programs announced there as well. Those are autonomous vehicles too, and it is exciting for us to be able to track those.

When you need to account for safety, and really our business is crewed aircraft safety, you typically add radar to the system. That is the standard right now. As the rules and regulations develop, we do expect that to become more of a shared responsibility, where crewed aircraft have a higher degree of electronic conspicuity and can be seen without needing a radar pointed at them.

That’s where we are right now in the industry, and with the publication of Part 108 and Part 146, those issues are expected to be balanced in the final rulemaking.

Alex Brooker: On the radar side, I’ve never seen a small radar that would fit onto a drone. When I think of radar, I think of big, spinning systems. How small can they get, especially if we’re talking about putting them on the vehicle itself?

Kraettli Epperson: For onboard use, we typically use a model of radar called EchoFlight from Echodyne. There are two or three companies developing small radars. EchoFlight is widely used, so that is often where we start if you need an onboard radar.

They’re about the size of a few stacked cell phones and weigh about 1.8 pounds. We literally have them flying on drones down the hall. We’ve done that under FAA contract and for the U.S. Air Force.

They’re typically used for what we call Group 3, 4, and 5 aircraft, so somewhat larger drones. There are some systems for Group 2, which is more like a large but still relatively small drone, perhaps around coffee-table size or a bit smaller. We do fly those small radars on larger Group 2 platforms, but below that size the radar is generally not very viable right now because it is still too large and heavy.

There are other technologies emerging, but for small radar that is what we use. The other side of the equation, of course, is ground-based infrastructure. Larger radars with longer ranges are also coming down in cost and becoming more sophisticated.

What you described earlier is closer to an airspace surveillance radar, the kind used for air traffic control. Those tend to be larger and more expensive. We have integrated with some of those, but they do not typically see all the way down to the ground. They are not really designed to provide safety coverage in the 0 to 400 foot range. They are good for en route traffic and terminal operations, but to cover that lower-altitude area for drone safety, you typically need a different kind of radar.

Alex Brooker: Is that low-altitude coverage going to remain a key requirement for years to come? Will there still be an ongoing need for small ground-based sensors?

Kraettli Epperson: I can’t tell you exactly what will happen, but based on the ARC discussions and what is evident in the draft Part 108 material the FAA has published, there is a requirement for active detect-and-avoid with some form of non-cooperative detection in higher population density areas. That is one of the criteria written into the draft.

Anything with greater risk to people on the ground, buildings, or higher airspace classifications with more traffic is going to require more detect-and-avoid capability and more non-cooperative detection capability. In other places, though, the draft suggests that ADS-B-only approaches may be allowed under certain circumstances.

That is very enabling for the industry because it lowers the technical requirement significantly. We have a system about that size that can go on a Group 1 or Group 2 drone and provide that full onboard functionality. It is one of the things we specialize in. We developed a military version, and now we’ve developed a civilian version that we have contracts for demonstration and testing.

In situations where you do not need non-cooperative detection, meaning radar, camera, or acoustic sensing, those lighter systems can work. People do use all three of those methods to detect other aircraft. Our systems tend to be radar-focused because we typically support fixed-wing aircraft that need to fly a maneuver and therefore need to know exactly where the other aircraft is.

If your drone is simply going to descend and hover until the aircraft passes, then you may be able to use other sensing approaches because you do not need the same exact precision on the intruder aircraft’s position.

That’s an overview of what is happening right now. We are really at a pivotal point in U.S. regulatory development. There is huge interest in enabling this industry. Electronic conspicuity is part of that, and very low-altitude routine enablement is a major part of the overall goal.

Alex Brooker: It’s fascinating. I didn’t realize acoustic sensors were involved as well.

Kraettli Epperson: Yes, there are companies using acoustic sensing. It gives you more of a vector. It says, “We believe there is an aircraft over there, so we may need to go down, land in a safe place, and wait for it to pass.” There has definitely been a lot of research and development around those kinds of operations.

Alex Brooker: Let’s get to the future vision, the big vision, the flying cars and air taxis. I suppose what we’ve been talking about is one step toward that. In your view, what are the remaining steps before we see a large airliner, a news helicopter, and a small drone all operating safely in the same general airspace?

Kraettli Epperson: We think a lot about integrated airspace. In the U.S., the FAA and the industry have said that trying to segregate all these aircraft types is not a good long-term strategy. They need to be able to interoperate, communicate, and deconflict with each other.

We are very excited about advanced air mobility. We’ve worked with companies developing air taxis and larger cargo drones. Part 108 and Part 146 are stepping stones, but the FAA is also making progress toward enabling those larger aircraft. They have started developing rules and protocols for how they will be controlled, how they will interact, how they will land, and how they will recharge. There is also a great deal of thought going into sound, noise, environmental factors, electrical infrastructure, and other systems needed to support those larger, higher-autonomy aircraft.

Here in Oklahoma City, where we are based, the Mike Monroney Center has the new VPAR, which is an FAA investment in developing a vertiport model for operating those electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft.

There is a lot of work going on around all of that. We have been engaged by both civilian and defense organizations to model and develop detect-and-avoid systems, mostly using multiple small radars, to enable those aircraft to operate with highly autonomous deconfliction.

Those aircraft will likely be flying in the space from around 400 feet up into higher controlled airspace, in that middle layer used for things like air taxi service, medical supply delivery, air ambulances, and movement of critical parts. That too is going to involve a high degree of autonomy. The FAA is moving toward that, with Part 108 and Part 146 as stepping stones into what advanced air mobility will look like.

Alex Brooker: That does answer my question. It’s super interesting. Just coming to my final couple of questions: imagine we are in 2035 and a tourist is visiting Oklahoma City. If they want to take an air taxi tour of the city, would they notice your technology? Is it part of the invisible infrastructure? What do you imagine their experience would be like?

Kraettli Epperson: I’ll pull out my crystal ball and you can tell me in nine years whether I was wrong.

One of our mottos is that there is no autonomy without autonomous safety. You can design an aircraft that does a lot of things, whether it’s a drone or an air taxi, and it can have a high degree of autonomy. You push a button, it goes where you want it to go. But right now, one of the big gaps is doing that safely.

That’s what we think about all the time. It is relatively invisible technology. It is not supposed to be noticeable. It is built in. It is baked into the process and the operation. It is part of the operating system, always watching for you and for the other aircraft around you.

With our focus on highly autonomous detect-and-avoid, the idea is that it is constantly monitoring whether you are thinking about it or not. That is the big leap going on in the industry as you move from detect-and-avoid systems that require multiple people looking at screens and talking on radios, to a system where it is all onboard, happens in a fraction of a second, and communicates across a single connection between systems.

Scaling that up means those functions become available seamlessly across the whole system, whether you have access to ground infrastructure like radars and networks or not. The idea is that you carry just what you need to be safe in the place where you are flying.

That is the future. Our goal is to be embedded wherever we are needed, as quiet background safety that is just running all the time. When you turn the aircraft on, it boots up. It self-checks. It makes sure it can see what it is supposed to see. If it cannot, it stops you and says you need to reset something or have a technician look at it.

That is literally what our systems do now. They self-check as soon as they are powered on. They make sure they have the connectivity they need, that they have access to the sensors, and that all sensors are returning heartbeat signals.

Ten years from now, that should be fully embedded and effectively invisible, but omnipresent, as part of how the aviation system operates.

Alex Brooker: It sounds very cool, and certainly like an exciting time. To finish off, are there events coming up for Vigilant Aerospace Systems? Can people see you at exhibitions or shows? How can they reach out?

Kraettli Epperson: Absolutely. We will be at AUVSI XPONENTIAL in Detroit this year, which is just a few weeks away. It’s a very large show and a lot of people attend, both domestically and internationally. We will be there and would be happy to meet with people, show some of our technology, and talk about how it might be helpful to what they are doing.

That is probably the next biggest opportunity to see us. We also maintain a list on our website of other smaller shows we are attending throughout the year. It is typically pinned to the top of our blog, easy to find, and we update it every couple of weeks.

So wherever we are going to be, we list it there. But the next really big one that many viewers may be involved with would be XPONENTIAL. We just went to Verticon, the helicopter industry show, and we attend a lot of events like that. But the next major one is XPONENTIAL.

Alex Brooker: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me on the pod, Kraettli. It’s been great talking to you, learning about you and your business. I wish you every success in what looks like it’s going to be a very exciting year as these new rules and unlocks begin to enable more routine flying.

Kraettli Epperson: Yes, absolutely. We’re really excited about what we do. We really enjoy it. We get all the best toys, and we love talking to people about it. Thanks a lot, Alex, for having us on.

Alex Brooker: It’s been awesome. I really appreciate it.