Virginia is for lovers, but it is also the place to be for innovation when it comes to all things unmanned, according to speakers during the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) Autonomous Technology Summit on Thursday, Nov. 7, in Fairfax.

“I absolutely believe the potential for autonomous vehicles, whether in air, on land, in sea … could be as much of a revolution as wireless was,” said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, an early investor in the cellular telephone business and cofounder of the company that would become Nextel.

As noted by speakers during the summit, Virginia doesn't pull in investments to the same level as California and other West Coast states, but that has not stopped it from creating an ecosystem that fosters the launch of startups and attracts companies from other states to establish headquarters or conduct pilot projects within the Commonwealth.

“The state has been good to us. CIT [Center for Innovative Technology] has been good to us. The governor’s office has been good to us,” said Tom Walker, founder and CEO of Virginia-based DroneUp, which provides end-to-end aerial data collection and processing services to a variety of organizations through its verification platform known as Mission Match. “They have recognized what we’re trying to do and have supported us, not just financially, but in terms of making connections and offering us opportunities to meet with the right people.”

Distinguished company

The type of support that Walker spoke of has led to a variety of companies that work in the world of unmanned systems to either call Virginia home or settle in Virginia to test or launch services using their respective technologies.

Just a few weeks ago, Wing, headquartered in California, in collaboration with FedEx Express, completed a scheduled commercial residential delivery using a UAS to a home in Christiansburg, Virginia, marking the launch of the first scheduled, commercial residential drone delivery service, and the first scheduled e-commerce delivery via drone delivery trial in the United States.

The delivery of the FedEx Express package was conducted as part of the UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP), in which the state of Virginia participates.

On the autonomous vehicle side, several companies are making their marks on roads throughout the state of Virginia. Virginia-based Perrone Robotics (PRI) recently wrapped up a three-month trial period of free public demonstration rides on the Autonomous Vehicle, Neighborhood Use (AVNU) shuttle in Albemarle County, Virginia.

Classified as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV), the shuttle is based on a Polaris GEM e6 vehicle, and is equipped with PRI’s TO Navigate You (TONY) autonomous transit kit.

During the trial, the AVNU shuttle transported riders around the Old Trail residential development in Crozet. It also transported riders from Old Trail to Downtown Crozet, and from Downtown Crozet into a different neighborhood and adjoining park.

PRI and Albemarle County will look to identify new trial areas going forward, and they will also look into the possibility of retrofitting larger transit vehicles with this technology. The entities will also look into increasing the number of operational units to provide Albemarle County residents with a regular service featuring the technology.

Earlier this year, Daimler Trucks acquired a majority stake in Torc Robotics, headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia. Torc is now a part of Daimler Trucks’ newly established Autonomous Technology Group. The companies announced in September that their automated trucks have begun operating on highways in southwest Virginia.

During these operations, an engineer oversees the system. A highly trained safety driver with a commercial driver’s license that has been specially trained in vehicle dynamics and automated systems and has been certified by Daimler Trucks and Torc Robotics, is also a part of these operations.

Not to be outdone by companies doing work in the air or on the ground, Dominion Energy, which has been using UAS to conduct inspections, has also thrown its hat into the autonomous vehicle arena. The company has partnered with Fairfax County to develop an autonomous electric shuttle that will take passengers from the Dunn Loring metro station to the Mosaic District.

As Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said during his remarks, “in this industry, good things are happening in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Public acceptance

With so much innovation taking place in the state of Virginia, companies realize this innovation is only beneficial if there is buy-in from the public.

Nicholas Devereux, who works in the Policy and Government Affairs division at Wing, says before the October flight was conducted in Christiansburg, the company did its due diligence to ingratiate itself within the community so that members of the community were comfortable with these types of operations.

“Something that is incredibly important for Wing, and for the industry at large, is community acceptance,” Devereux said. “One thing that is a real barrier is if the community does not accept these kinds of flights, this kind of business model, then it’s simply just going to be incredibly difficult for us to be able to operate.”

With this in mind, Wing, which has also conducted UAS operations in Australia and Finland, began integrating itself into the community months prior to the October flight in Christiansburg, with the goals of listening, educating and adapting. Wing participated in community festivals, actively engaged with elected state and local officials, and made itself available to the community so that they could express any concerns regarding the operations.

From its engagement with the Christiansburg community, Wing learned that people’s primary concerns surrounded privacy, safety and noise. But the company was, and is, confident that it can properly address those concerns with communities such as Christiansburg.

“We feel that we have very good answers for all three of those [issues],” Devereux said, noting that the company was able to educate the community on what its technology is, as well as what it isn’t. “We feel that through a lot of that education, we’re able to get people comfortable on that side of things.”

Out of the concerns that Wing has received feedback on from communities, noise is the one that is an “ongoing conversation,” Devereux said, and an area where the company has had to adapt.

When Wing first started operating in Australia, the company didn’t do as much community outreach as it did in Christiansburg, and it set up its base of operations in close proximity to a quiet residential neighborhood. As it turned out, people who were interested in the service were located further away, but those who really didn’t have much interest in the service happened to live closer to the base of operations. Wing received complaints from people who were seeing and hearing these flights but weren’t actually benefiting from them.

As a result, Wing’s engineers went back and looked into how they could redesign the company’s Hummingbird drone, which led to the development of custom-tailored, custom-designed propellers on the aircraft that have dramatically reduced the overall noise volume, as well as the frequency and pitch of the propellers in hover mode.

When settling in Christiansburg, Wing also decided to put its base of operations in the middle of a commercial district, as opposed to the middle of a neighborhood, so that noise wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

“Today, we’ve gotten overwhelmingly positive reactions, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that these in person conversations are simply the most effective way to go about changing minds, and getting people to buy in too,” Devereux said.