Michigan’s fledgling drone industry takes flight (Episode 32)
Shift: A podcast about mobility
Automotive News
4.6 • 37 Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2020
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Shift is brought to you by Auto Data Solutions. |
| 0:05.0 | Auto Data Solutions transforms complex data into marketing and sales solutions for the automotive industry. |
| 0:11.0 | Learn more at Autoodetosolutions.com. |
| 0:15.0 | Hi, everybody. |
| 0:17.0 | Hi everybody. Welcome to Shift, podcast about mobility. I'm Pete Bigelow, your |
| 0:28.4 | host and reporter at the Automotive News. I am flying Solo today, emphasis on flying. Today we are taking a |
| 0:37.9 | break from our usual autonomous vehicle chatter and talking about the fledgling drone industry in the state of Michigan. |
| 0:45.8 | My guests today are Michael and Anna Helander, co-founders of a Detroit startup |
| 0:51.0 | that's looking to help create and solidify the rules of the sky. |
| 0:57.4 | And we're also talking to Jim Mikowski, who is the CEO of the Michigan Unmanned Aerial Systems Consortium, which is a nonprofit that's helping businesses |
| 1:06.4 | use Michigan as a base to test and deploy unmanned aircraft. |
| 1:11.0 | But first, a short history lesson here. |
| 1:13.0 | Though it's better known for being the automotive capital of America, the state of Michigan does have a notable and somewhat underappreciated role in the aviation industry. In the late 1800s, Octav Chinute, who is a Chicago |
| 1:28.4 | area bridge builder and sometimes collaborator with the Wright brothers used the dunes around Lake Michigan as a testing ground for some of the earliest aircraft concepts. |
| 1:40.0 | And in 1926, Henry Ford's Trimotor was introduced, and the Ford Airplane Manufacturing Division briefly became the world's largest manufacturer of commercial aircraft. |
| 1:52.0 | So flash forward to today, a recent Pricewaterhouse Cooper's report called Michigan the fourth best state in the nation for aerospace manufacturing and attractiveness. |
| 2:05.0 | Without further do, I'd like to welcome Michael and Anna |
| 2:08.7 | Helander from Air Space Link. |
| 2:10.8 | So there have been incidents with drones. We saw Gatwick last summer. We saw drones |
| 2:17.8 | flying where they shouldn't have been over Michigan football games this past fall. |
| 2:21.6 | Just last week there's drones where they shouldn't be |
| 2:24.4 | by the Golden Gate Bridge. You Michael and Anna Helander are building |
... |
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