Keynote remarks made by AUVSI President and CEO Michael Robbins at XPONENTIAL 2024 on April 23, 2024:

 
Thank you, JC [John Coffey] for that introduction and for the recognition of the AUVSI chapter leaders and staff.
Great to see all of you here in beautiful San Diego, one of my favorite cities and a great Navy town.

I am energized by the opportunity to lead this growing organization and fantastic team to advance initiatives that solve our community’s challenges, shape the industry’s future, and deliver results for our members.

Our role at AVUSI is to create an environment where big questions can be explored, and great ideas can happen. My guidance to the team is to always be listening carefully and moving toward points of friction in the industry so that we can help to solve problem.

Our goal is to help kickstart the flywheel and get things moving faster towards integration, as we all recognize needs to happen.
One way we accomplish this is through educational and networking events, connect the industry, bringing together key decision makers to learn from one another, forge relationships, and solve problems.

Throughout this room, and the larger trade show floor, represents 8,000 opportunities to connect with your colleagues in the industry. XPONENTIAL, like all of AUVSI’s events, continues to grow and set records on attendance and engagement. We are absolutely delighted you are here with us, and we know it is going to be an amazing week for you, for your teams, and for your customers.

While AUVSI has traditionally been best known for its events, and most especially for this conference and trade show, at our core, we are a membership organization. More specifically, we are a trade association. With more than 9,000 individual members from over 20 countries, and over 400 organizational members across all operational domains, commercial and defense, air, ground, maritime, space, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity, it is a huge portfolio, especially as it relates to our advocacy work, which as 501c6, we at AUSVI are uniquely positioned to do at all levels of government, and that is what sets AUVSI apart from other organizations. Our advocacy work is a force multiplier for our members.

Our corporate members drive our policy and advocacy work to ensure we are aligned on priorities that move the industry forward and remove barriers to commercial and defense integration. That way, AUVSI is the tip of the spear for our growing membership. That is our core mission, as a trade association.

And oh yes, we are growing. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen AUVSI advocacy-level corporate membership grow by over 350%. Our work is getting noticed – and the relationships we are forging with lawmakers, regulators and industry partners, matter. Relationships matter.

And more importantly – we are finding success for our members. As JC noted in his intro, I prioritize movement over motion. A lot of people talk. A lot of organizations make noise. At AUVSI, we put numbers on the board.

What is the root of our success? As I said, we move towards friction. Solve problems. Kickstart the flywheel. That is AUVSI’s core mission. So, what does that look like?

One of the problems AUVSI is seeking to solve includes: Overcoming barriers to widespread commercial operations. In the air domain, AUVSI led the way on Part 107 rulemaking and implementation, and now we are shaping the future with the Part 108, Beyond Visual Line of Sight rulemaking.

We are actively working towards a draft rule later this year which will showcase the path forward for safely unlocking scalability and new, high-value areas, including drone delivery, inspection, agriculture, and public safety missions.

AUVSI wants to commend FAA staff – including many who will be on this stage tomorrow – for making significant progress over the last year – more than many previous years combined – with risk-based waivers and exemptions – which are safely laying the groundwork for the 108 BVLOS rule. We look forward to hearing more about this from FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker at the Drone & AAM Symposium in Baltimore later this summer.

AUVSI is also highly engaged at the local, state, and tribal levels – taking a proactive approach to our advocacy in all 50 states with our Drone Prepared and AAM Prepared campaigns. These campaigns – along with the forthcoming Robot Ready campaign next year – educate policymakers about the immense value uncrewed systems bring to their communities now, and the value the industries are poised to bring in the future.

Shifting to the ground domain, automation and autonomy has faced many challenges, as you know – including funding, opposition from labor, and public perception.

Our work in strategic communications and shaping public affairs, positions AUVSI to help overcome challenges for the ground domain. We have a playbook for this: We have steadfastly been enhancing UAS public perceptions by highlighting Drones for Good, especially for operations in public safety and with infrastructure inspection.

Ground autonomy remains an area of continued friction that AUVSI will be focusing more attention on in the future, along with related areas that require our attention, including the integration and acceptance of AI, global instability, and challenges with capital markets.

In addition to safety being a loadstar for AUVSI, security is equally important – especially in the age of Volt Typhoon and similar threats. Across all domains, we’re seeking to address the cybersecurity questions and demands of end-users.

The Cyber Working Group we established starting in 2022 from the XPONENTIAL stage is focused on ensuring that our industry’s value proposition is clear and that the cyber risk mitigation tools we pursue make sense. This Group has developed a framework for cyber standards for drones, uncrewed maritime vessels, and ground robotics.

Aligning with the DoD's Defense Innovation Unit, last year we brought to market our first solution: Green UAS cyber certification for small drones, components, and payloads to assess and verify that they meet the appropriate levels of cybersecurity and supply chain requirements. Here at XPONENTIAL, you can learn more about cyber vulnerabilities and solutions at the Cyber City pavilion in the XPO Hall and in our Cybersecurity conference track.

In the defense sector, AUVSI is equally committed to being the tip of the spear for our members. From AUKUS pillar 2 to Replicator to our Pacific Pivot demonstrations taking place outside this convention center this week, AUVSI is ensuring our members are called upon to provide all-domain, autonomous platforms for our warfighters.

We have made tremendous progress in this area over the last few years. However, as multiple unclassified war games have demonstrated, the industrial base to support our warfighters with speed and scale is not there. 
 
This is another source of friction that AUVSI has moved to and is working to solve with our Defense Advocacy Committee, and our research on the defense budget, and our Uncrewed Systems and Robotics Database.
 
We’ve all heard a lot of buzz about DoD’s Replicator as one way to address this challenge. Replicator is not a program, rather it is an initiative or process to help us learn how to achieve rapid integration and acquisition goals, and to focus attention on key advanced technology manufacturing, starting first with autonomous technology.
 
We believe in Replicator. Even more so, we believe in the goals of Replicator.  We all look forward to hearing more about Replicator, and DIU 3.0, from our next speaker in just a moment.

Another way we are tackling the industrial base challenge is through our Partnership for Drone Competitiveness campaign, which launched last year. We are planning to build upon our initial success to expand our manufacturing-focused advocacy into maritime and ground domains, which also required attention and energy.

Our objective is simple: To support a strong and competitive industrial base and to build global leadership in this critical industry that is relied on by so many agencies and enterprise organizations, including our warfighters.

Our work in this area – to level the playing field for U.S. and allied nation manufacturers against subsidized, unsecure competition, largely from the People’s Republic of China – has made some in our industry uncomfortable. It’s made some people angry. I’ll say this to those that are uncomfortable – we are listening, and we’ve heard you. Candidly, our work to diversify the supply lines outside of China – which is a much broader issue beyond our industry and a whole-of-nation effort– isn’t going to stop. It’s the right thing to do.

That said, AUVSI will only support common sense solutions to level the playing field – including grant programs for public safety and other enterprise users – which will ensure public safety has the tools they need to do their jobs, and demand is generated for platforms produced outside the PRC, which will kickstart the flywheel for innovators and manufacturers. This is vital to reduce risk, and to build the industrial base that is sorely lacking – for all users, and most especially for our warfighters.

The challenge ahead for both commercial and defense integration is monumental. We are clear eyed about that. AUVSI is leading the way – and we encourage all of you to get involved with us if you are not already. Together, we will be successful. There is no other option. And as they say back in DC, if you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.
 
I’ve covered a lot of ground, but only scraped the surface of what AUVSI focuses on and works on daily. Our team – a group of mission-focused, hardworking individuals I am honored to lead – is committed to solving problems for our members and for the industry. We learn best about how to serve by actively listening to our community as a whole and welcoming everyone’s ideas.

With many stakeholders involved, not everyone will agree on every issue. That is ok – we are very fortunate to live in a democracy where the freedom to disagree exists. We respect the diversity of opinions. We listen very carefully to our stakeholders – even if we can’t always find 100% agreement, we still aspire for consensus. We are all collectively committed to the mission to safely and securely integrate uncrewed vehicles into our future.

I hope you will choose to take advantage of this week at XPONENTIAL – and the rest of the year – to get involved with the big-picture questions facing our industry and to engage with the AUVSI team.

About two months ago, we hosted AUVSI Defense in the Washington, DC region. We had a speaker fly to the event from INDOPACOM HQ in Hawaii. In his remarks, he noted he flew to this event because of the importance of the work being done in the uncrewed systems and robotics industry. He noted that the work being done in our industry will save American lives. We can extrapolate that to public safety, agriculture, logistics, and on and on. That is what drives us and motivates us to serve this industry.

Now, it’s my honor to welcome Doug Beck for a discussion on defense innovation. Doug Beck is the Director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense. Joining Doug on stage for the conversation is Courtney Albon, a reporter on emerging technology and space for Defense News and C4ISRNET. Please join me in welcoming Director Beck and Courtney.