Drone News: DEXA Secures Nationwide BVLOS, DroneDeploy's Progress AI, Drone Pilot Finds Missing Girl

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Welcome to your weekly UAS News Update. We have three stories for you this week. First, DEXA secures a nationwide BVLOS waiver for drone deliveries, DroneDeploy launches Progress AI, and a drone pilot finds a missing girl in Wisconsin.

00:00 Introduction
00:16 DEXA Secures Nationwide BVLOS
01:41 DroneDeploy's Progress AI
02:48 Drone Pilot Finds Missing Girl

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First up, U.S. drone delivery company DEXA has hit a major regulatory milestone, securing a nationwide Beyond Visual Line of Sight, or BVLOS, waiver from the FAA. This is a huge deal because it allows the company to conduct autonomous delivery operations across the country without needing visual observers on the ground for every flight. This approval puts DEXA in an elite group alongside giants like Amazon Prime Air, Wing, and Zipline, who are all pushing the boundaries of commercial drone logistics.

In addition to this new BVLOS waiver, the company already holds a Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, which legally allows them to run a drone airline. They also have an airworthiness certification for their DE-2020 delivery drone. Having all three of these in place is the key to unlocking scalable, repeatable, and, most importantly, profitable drone delivery services. They're using their own U.S.-made aircraft and a direct-to-consumer app called DEXA NOW.

Next up, DroneDeploy has just announced a new tool that called Progress AI, and it's designed to completely automate construction progress tracking. Instead of someone walking a site with a clipboard and manually marking up drawings, this system uses AI to analyze data from drones and 360-degree cameras to generate fast and reliable progress reports. DroneDeploy claims the platform can deliver reports with 95% accuracy within minutes of the images being uploaded.

One of the coolest features is its natural-language interface. This works without needing a complex Building Information Model, or BIM, which lowers the barrier to entry for a lot of companies. Early users are already reporting great results, with one project engineer saying they caught a framing issue with a door install just by reviewing a walkthrough, saving them days of rework. Progress AI is currently in early access and is expected to be widely available in October as an add-on for DroneDeploy customers.

Last up, a real-world drones-for-good story! A volunteer drone pilot in Milton, Wisconsin, is being called a hero after he found a missing 4-year-old girl in a dense cornfield. The girl, Lou Easton, is autistic, nonverbal, and reportedly doesn't feel pain, which made her disappearance incredibly urgent. With sunset approaching, her family feared she had wandered into a nearby cornfield. That's when Rock County officials called for aerial support.

The hero of the day is Jeremy Harring-Spoerl, a volunteer with Wisco Aerial and Ground Services. He launched his DJI Matrice 30 drone and got to work. In just 40 minutes, he spotted Lou deep in the cornfield and was able to guide rescue teams directly to her location. She was found safe and unharmed. This is a perfect example of why drones are such incredible tools for search and rescue. A drone can cover a massive area far more quickly than a ground team, and thermal cameras can spot heat signatures that would be impossible to see otherwise. Stories like this are a powerful reminder that for every headline about drone bans, there are pilots out there using this technology to save lives. A huge congratulations to Jeremy for a job well done!

Alright, and the team will be back from Oshkosh next week, so no Live on Monday or Post flight this coming week, but we’ll pick back up the following!

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