5Q: Klever Freire, drone aficionado

Klever Freire is on cloud nine.

Not only did the 30-year-old CEO and founder of drone maker DreamQii Inc. just ink a deal with the Henry’s camera store chain for 500 of his unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with cameras attached to them, his crowdfunding campaign raised over $1 million, far surpassing his $100,000 in 60 days goal.

But, true to his engineering roots, he’s mostly stoked about the user data collected during the campaign.

“I don’t have too much doubt that if I look back at this time ten years from now the $1.5 million will have played out and been used developing and manufacturing,” says Freire. “But really understanding your customer and getting this data early on will be much more valuable in the growth of our company.”

The entrepreneur and former aerospace engineer at Bombardier seems to sport a permanent grin. His answers always come out like he’s processed and reworked them in his mind.

But DreamQii will probably prove to be his biggest gamble yet. Although he started tinkering with drones in the last two years of the six he spent at Bombardier, it’s not the technical side that will be a challenge. He’s going to have to sell his four-propeller PlexiDrone to a public understandably weary of hovering cameras.

We sat down with Freire to chat a bit about arming drones with personalities not bombs, flying over downtown and Drone Valley.

The first time I chatted with you, you were wide-eyed with the thought of using these drones as farm aids, to keep an eye on crops or even check on fields of solar panels. It seemed like an interesting crowd to market the drones to.

The number one market that came to us without having to go out and search has always been filmmakers and photographers. We did a study two years ago where we looked at all the production houses and film studios around Toronto and how many of them were actually using drones at the time. It was about two out of ten. Now, it’s about eight out of ten. So it’s becoming a competitive tool and it’s low cost enough that people who want an aerial shot, before they had to pay $20,000 dollars to rent a helicopter for the day, the crew, insurance and fuel. Now for under $3,000 you own that equipment and you can have that shot.

It was $2,000 last time we spoke.

Well, there are options under $2,000 too. 

It does offer an interesting perspective though. Did you see Edward Burtynsky’s WATERMARK? The shots he was getting with the drones were unreal.

No, not that one, but he's been using drones for a while. They were very difficult to use back when he started using them so he actually hired a company out of Los Angeles to go and film with him. We’re trying to bring something to market that anybody could use for filmmaking and photography just like a camcorder.

Except camcorders don’t talk to you.

Very early on we realized this is a personal robotics device. Even your cellphone has a personality. SIRI sold how many 4S iPhones, right? There’s a stronger connection between the user and the piece of hardware if it has a voice, it seems to have its own personality. All of these are pre-programmed, people know that, but as soon as we put a voice on the PlexiDrone people felt bad turning it off.

Really?

Yeah. It’s this weird casting of a persona, of an existence, some sort of consciousness onto something that obviously doesn’t have a consciousness at all but it creates a stronger connection. It’s telling you what’s going on with it “I have GPS availability, I’m ready to fly.” Whatever it is that it needs to tell you, it’s telling you in its own voice – which is customizable.

A bit of a departure from our common view of drones that we see on T.V. – silent assassins in the sky, void of personality. Wasn’t that kind of the problem with drones? People mistrust them because they’re used for spying and dropping bombs.

If it's cold and machine-like, people can say whatever they like about it, but if its… well, a lot of the issues are people think technology is capable of more than what it is. They only fly for fifteen minutes to half an hour maximum on a single battery charge. The GPS accuracy is not good enough that you can send it to the condo on the lakeshore and be able to go into a specific window and peer into it and spy on a neighbour. You can’t do that.

Can’t?

One it’s not legal and two the technology can't really support it. You have to be very close by to it to get that kind of precision and there are much easier ways to spy on somebody than taking the effort it would require doing that.

So this is how we let our guards down.

Exactly. So you kind of know more what it’s all about and you’ve put your own personality into it and decided to customize it in a way that makes it personal.

It feels a bit like popular opinion is evolving. CNN just got approval from the Federal Aviation Association to use drones for newsgathering. What’s Canada’s take on using drones?

Transport Canada and the FAA tend to work together on many projects. Sometimes they’re disjointed but in this case Transport Canada has its own mechanism for allowing people to apply for commercial usage of drones and it’s been in place for a couple of years now. You fill out forms that ask you your safety concerns, what obstacles are in the way, who do you have there that’s going to be looking out, spotting the drone. You’re taking a look at all the precautions that you should be taking a look at in order to fly safely and take into account the geographical area, the population and what is close by.

PlexiDrone

Could you fly over downtown Toronto?

If you had the right approval you can. I mean you can apply for it and they'll let you know what you need to demonstrate in order to do that. The very first time you apply for one of the approvals at the beginning of your flight you have to take off, prove that you can hover still, go forward, back, go left, right and then be able to do a complete circuit. You have to be able to demonstrate that you can control it safely. Once you demonstrate that, then you say okay, I’m going to be flying within this 800 square foot area and I’m going to be taking aerial shots at 200 feet.

Do they have someone from Transport Canada there with you flying them?

Ah, they don't.

So it's kind of just an honour system then?

It is very honour-system based. But it’s the same as a private pilot, it’s honour-based that they’re doing all those proper safety checks before they go into the airplane right? It’s still up to the human operator.

So we don’t know for sure then, how do you quash those worries about safety?

We try to do it through software. So our software takes into account your geographic region based on GPS location and then if you’re not allowed to fly above 400 feet in this particular area or you can’t fly at all because you’re near a hospital or an airport then the software will let you know that.

I guess that dampens the worry a bit.

We went to a drone expo in Los Angeles and we met companies much larger than us with over 30 people just working on software programming. But there’s nobody on their team with experience in the aerospace community, they’re of the belief that they’d just be able to go to the authorities later and say “Hey this is how we're going to do this safely.” That’s not how the authorities work in the aerospace world, or the FAA, or Transport Canada. You have to work with them from the very beginning to understand what their requirements are and educate them about what the potential applications are of your device and how you’re going to address their safety concerns.

When you were in L.A. were there a lot of drone companies?

There were at least 30 companies doing something related to the drone space, whether they’re building them, selling them, reselling them or designing software.

Canadian companies?

North American. There’s always going to be fewer Canadian companies than the American equivalent. I mean, the money for development and startup companies is in Drone Valley, which is very close to Silicon Valley in San Francisco.

Is there a Drone Valley in Canada yet?

Where we work, at Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone incubator might be as close as you get. There are several other Canadian drone companies, there’s Draganfly Innovations and Aeryon Labs based in Waterloo. They’re probably the oldest one, maybe ten years old. They put out their product about eight years ago. They entered the space in a weird time when there weren’t off the shelf components. Think about it, eight years ago there were no tablets or smartphones.

So what’s next?

We have tens of thousands of users data we collected from our crowdfunding campaign like what they’re using it for, what industries they work in, where they’re using it. It’s going to allow us to make much better decisions about the type of software to develop and other drone options.

Maybe someone wants a stronger one or something?

Sure, stronger, more durable.

Like for ramming things, robot army style.

(Laughs) Well, maybe not for ramming things. I was thinking about bigger cameras and things.

Good. You passed the test.