Baltimore’s Global Air Media Seeks to Spark Children’s Interest in UAS Through
DRONE
by Brian Sprowl
RACING LEAGUE On April 1, Global Air Media, a drone mapping and cinematography company in Baltimore, and its partner Open Works, which is a local “makerspace” in Baltimore, hosted the Baltimore Drone Prix 2017, the first race of their newly cemented Baltimore Drone Racing League. Before a crowd of several hundred enthusiastic children and adults, the professional Maryland Quad Racers flew their UAS in an enclosed course right outside of Open Works. Amateurs also got the opportunity to showcase their skills as well, with some performing just as well, if not better than, some of the professionals. The successful turnout for the event, and overall excitement from those in attendance, left Eno Umoh, one of the co-founders of Global Air Media extremely satisfied at the end of the day. “I think it’s been amazing,” Umoh said on the day of the race, when asked by Unmanned Systems about the overall response to the event from the community. “We’ve had a lot of good feedback; even people coming up to me asking ‘when is the next event?’ or ‘how can I get signed up for workshops?,’ so I think when you get feedback like that, you can call it a success.” When asked about the most exciting part of the day, Umoh said it was undoubtedly the kids. As he spoke about the youth turnout, audible “oohs!” and “woahs!” could be heard in the background from children as they watched the UAS navigate through the course and in some cases, crash into the nets or the ground. Austin Brown, the other co-founder of Global Air Media, says he hopes that the Baltimore Drone Prix 2017 was just the beginning, with the goal of being even bigger by this time in 2018.
We want to share our excitement with the community, so hopefully we can partner with some companies and find even bigger sponsors to take these events to the next level. - Austin Brown 30
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Racers remove their drones from a net, which is where many of the vehicles ended up during the Baltimore Drone Prix 2017. Photo: AUVSI
“This time next year, we are hoping the league has taken off! Pun intended,” Brown tells Unmanned Systems. “We want to share our excitement with the community, so hopefully we can partner with some companies and find even bigger sponsors to take these events to the next level.” In 2015, Umoh and Brown co-founded Global Air Media. The impetus behind the creation of the company stemmed from a trip that Umoh took to Nigeria earlier in 2015. While on that trip, Umoh saw an aerial photography company taking footage of an event using a UAS, which left him blown away by the versatility of these machines. Once he got past his initial amazement at what UAS were capable of, Umoh began thinking about all of the potential business opportunities that UAS could offer, and upon returning to the United States, he began researching the technology, and quickly realized that unmanned systems were going to be the next big thing. Umoh began talking to Brown about UAS, and during these talks, he learned that Brown had already purchased a UAS that he was flying as a hobby. Through these conversations, Umoh and Brown determined that it was smart to strike while the iron was hot when it came to drones. “We knew that even though the concept of use was just being explored, we had to get in on the ground floor,” Umoh says. “We discovered that in industries from construction, to agriculture, to real estate, there were countless applications being explored, and we wanted to do everything we could to establish ourselves in this emerging industry.” With that in mind, the two founded Global Air Media, and since launching, the company has received nothing but positive feedback from the Baltimore community. “The community has really embraced us from the very beginning,” Brown says. “Eno and I both attended the Gilman School in Baltimore, so our roots are deep here.” Brown notes that Global Air Media was founded shortly after the riots that occurred in Baltimore in 2015. Less than a year after the riots, Global Air Media hosted its first drone camp at “Penn-North Kids Safe Zone,” which is within a short walking distance of the corner where the riots began.
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During the camp, Brown says that the kids thoroughly enjoyed learning about drones, as well as the jobs being completed using them, and people in the community took so much interest in the camp that they even stopped by to ask questions. “It was around then that we knew (we) had something special,” Brown says. “So I would say that in addition to being paramount to our efforts, the community reception has been phenomenal!” While Umoh and Brown were more than satisfied with the impact that they were having on children and the community as a whole, they soon began wondering what was next. Umoh says that while watching the World Drone Prix in Dubai last year, he was amazed that a 15-year old won the entire competition, and he was confident that the children in Baltimore could achieve the same accomplishments, if they were given the opportunity to do so. “I knew there were and are kids with similar, underutilized talent right here in Baltimore, and it would be activities like this that could help create a much-needed spark for participating in a STEM-related activity,” Umoh says. The educational component involved with teaching kids about UAS is extremely important for both Umoh and Brown, as they hope to get kids interested in STEM-related fields for potential future careers. Races and workshops hosted by Global Air Media and Open Works could allow kids to learn about motors, flight controllers or the physics of flight in general, which could pay dividends down the road. “These are all things that you learn in the world of drones, and we know that it can take you beyond drones,” Umoh said during the Baltimore Drone Prix. “It’s bigger than that, it can lead to careers.”
Janry “Warthawgg” Burns of the Maryland Quad Racers, who also competed in the drone prix.
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Ben “Wreckn” Phelps, a member of the Maryland Quad Racers, who took part in the first Baltimore Drone Prix. The plan for the league is for it to be recreational-style, where the youth can come out on a weekly basis to practice and prepare for competitions throughout a season. Each competition will involve score/time tracking based on a number of heats, and overall standings and placement for end of the season championships will be developed based off the tally of those scores. Umoh says that they are in talks with local parks to hold a series of events throughout Baltimore. In May, Global Air Media and Open Works hosted a drone workshop to teach children and adults how to build their own UAS from scratch. The workshop is described as “pay-what-youcan,” and there is a special reasoning behind that description. “We wanted to eliminate that barrier by offering discounted workshops, so that more folks would have the opportunity to learn about everything happening in this emerging industry,” Umoh says. Children will have the opportunity to race their UAS when Global Air Media and Open Works launch their youth drone racing league, which they plan to do in June. Global Air Media and Open Works also plan on holding another drone race towards the end of the summer, most likely in August. For those interested in learning more about UAS, and/ or potentially joining the Baltimore Drone Racing League, visit http://globalairmedia.com/ or send an email to info@ globalairmedia.com.
I knew ... it would be activities like this that could help create a much-needed spark for participating in a STEMrelated activity. - Eno Umoh
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Drone Racing League Set the Template for Others to Follow Drone racing made its way to Baltimore on April 1, 2017, through the Baltimore Drone Racing League and its first Baltimore Drone Prix. But the sport of drone racing has been around for a few years. In the United States, drone racing has been most noticeable with the professional Drone Racing League. The Drone Racing League was founded by Nick Horbaczewski. In 2015, Horbaczewski saw his first drone race behind a warehouse in Long Island, New York. In an interview with Business Insider, Horbaczewski explained how that race influenced him to create the Drone Racing League. “There were moments of greatness, there was a moment of excitement where all the tech worked for four seconds in a row, or one drone overtook another one, or someone was trash talking someone else, overtook them, and won a race,” he said. “And those moments of greatness are what you see on TV today in the professional league.” You can see these races on TV today thanks to a deal signed in 2016 between the Drone Racing League and ESPN. The agreement signed between the two allowed ESPN to broadcast the 2016 season of the league, a season that was won by pilot Jordan Temkin. At the time when the DRL and ESPN agreed to the deal, Matthew Volk, ESPN’s director of programming and acquisitions, said, “coverage of DRL lets us merge storytelling, technology and competition into compelling weekly content that we believe will appeal to a growing audience.” ESPN will broadcast the 2017 season of the league this summer. When the season starts, the Drone Racing League will have Allianz Insurance as its title sponsor, after the two reached a multi-year agreement in February. Six races, which will occur in different cities across the world, will be used to determine the winner of the 2017 Allianz World Championship from a field of 16 pilots. The Drone Racing League has had the financial help of some enthusiastic parties, as it received an initial investment of $1 million from the owner of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, Stephen Ross, through his investment arm RSE Ventures. As of last year, when the Drone Racing League and ESPN reached their agreement, backing for the league totaled $12 million, with money also coming from Courtside Ventures, which is backed by the owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, Dan Gilbert. More entities have begun to catch on to drone racing as well. In April, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which is responsible for sanctioning air sports competition internationally, and Freedom Drone Sports, an Australian-based company that develops drone sports, training, education and safety regulation in the country and across the world, signed a memorandum of understanding to develop drone racing in a responsible and safe way.
To see Brian Sprowl’s interview with Global Air Media’s Eno Umoh, scan this QR code with your smart device.
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Through their partnership, the two entities hope to achieve a number of goals for drone racing, including licensing pilots, developing the rules for drone racing and providing accredited training to all parties participating in drone racing. With so much activity surrounding drone racing taking place locally and internationally, it won’t be long before it becomes a regular fixture of sports society and culture on a global scale.