Timing just right for 'Robots to the Rescue'

by ROB McMANAMY | June 18, 2015

Think all this talk of drones and unmanned vehicles is overblown? Then just take a quick look at these Google News search results for the term "unmanned vehicles" on June 18:

Unmanned aerial vehicles catching cities' interests, TheNewsTribune.com (WA state);
Unmanned vehicles could track trains to provide phone signals, The Telegraph (UK);
Commercial drones taking off in Iowa, DesMoinesRegister.com (IA);
Community college offers course in unmanned aerial vehicles, WKYT.com (VA);
Congress wants undersea unmanned vehicles, just in case, Federal Times (DC);
BuiltWorlds, AUVSI to host 'Robots to the Rescue' during Chicago Techweek!

Okay, that last one may not have been on the first page of the search results, but you get the idea. Drones and unmanned vehicles seemingly are in the news every day this spring. Just last week, for instance, Dallas police successfully used a drone to search the militarized van of a shooter who claimed to have booby-trapped the parked vehicle outside police headquarters.

Not every application is as critically life-and-death, of course, but the prevalence of UAVs is clearly on the rise and will be for the indefinite future. As the FAA issues more temporary waivers, in lieu of definitive regulation (which is still many months away), creative project managers and AEC team leaders from coast to coast are finding more and more ways to get their feet wet with this emerging technology. How this all applies to the built environment is the subject of our next special event.

On June 23rd, BuiltWorlds and the Heartland Chapter of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), in conjunction with Techweek Chicago, will host Robots to the Rescue: The Evolution of Unmanned Vehicles.

Three special guests will present at the event: Thomas Haun, VP Strategy & Globalization for PrecisionHawk; Goran Zeravica, Distributor Operation Development Manager, Komatsu; and David Hillman, General Manager, Vocational Product Line, Navistar.

PrecisionHawk has been at the forefront of drone technology and related regulation, so in addition to demonstrating his product, Haun is expected to delve into how certain regulations have hindered aerial UAV growth throughout the U.S. and around the world, and how the future looks considerably brighter on that front.

Equipment giant Komatsu is thinking globally about all of these issues and Zeravica will focus on the Big Data that his firm is collecting from UAVs on job sites around the world and how it is managing and analyzing it. Komatsu already is using that data to bet big on more and more intelligent machinery, so his insights should have considerable weight behind them. If your projects rely on equipment -- and whose projects don't? -- then this will be of interest.

Navistar's David Hillman. — **Navistar'**s David Hillman.

Trucking leader Navistar will then bring us back to earth with Hillman's discussion of where we all are on the road to driverless vehicles and that major play will change almost everything about shipping by truck.

For tickets to Robots, click here. For more insights about our robot future, see below...