Heads up — drone technology is about to reshape your world.
Though many are familiar with its gimmickier applications — aerial cameras, light shows — advancements in artificial intelligence and drone hardware are creating new uses that can save time, money and lives.
“I like to think of this as the post-World War II change in our society, where people went from growing our food and the bargaining system to where we are today,” says Shaun Passley, CEO of Toronto-based AI drone maker ZenaTech. “That’s now going to change dramatically into a different phase — something more sci-fi.”
Founded in 2018, ZenaTech works with Fortune 500 companies deploying drones for tasks like indoor barcode tracking, military applications, emergency services for search and rescue, catching criminals and surveillance, farmers for precision agriculture and livestock management, municipalities for targeted aerial firefighting, and developers for land surveying and building inspection.
Measuring seven by 13 feet, the company’s latest product, the ZenaDrone 1000, is its largest, most powerful and most intelligent product yet, offering longer flight times and a carrying capacity of up to 40 kilograms.
“The first two production drones are off the production line, they’re being tested, and we’ll have another 10 coming out in April, and then we’ll be doing a minimum of 10 drones per month,” Passley says. “We’re hoping to start doing demos for the U.S. Defense Department, with NATO, with Canada’s Defence Department, with Canadian law enforcement, and with law enforcement around the world.”
The Chicago-born entrepreneur says he began toying with tech as a youngster after his brother was gifted an Apple II computer that appealed more to the younger sibling.
“I knew who Steve Jobs was when I was eight,” Passley says.
Passley started working as a computer technician in high school, while saving for his first venture.
Unlike his tech industry heroes like Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison, who all dropped out of college, Passley went in the opposite direction.
After earning a bachelor of science degree and a master’s in information technology, Passley completed a one-year MBA, a masters in product development, a PhD in business leadership and a masters in intellectual property law.
The Star spoke with Passley from the head office of ZenaDrone, ZenaTech’s subsidiary in Phoenix, Arizona, about how drones are poised to revolutionize a range of industries and services, how it can help save time, money, and lives, and why he isn’t concerned about tariffs — or an American invasion.
How did you go from making software for teachers to making drones for the military?
When I founded Epazz in 1999, colleges didn’t have a lot of services online yet.
Now you can easily register for classes, download the syllabus, upload your work, but those things weren’t taking place. So, we created a course tool, and eventually a campus portal for colleges.
The issue is it took me a year to develop it, and in 2000 the industry crashed; there was no capital, so there were no staff; it was just me. The good thing is I ended up with 100 per cent ownership, so I changed the campus portal into a business portal and was able to get a few clients and use the capital to acquire other companies.
I started to build Epazz through the acquisition of about 15 companies over the next 10 years.
Then in 2017 we developed ZenaPay as a spinoff of Epazz. This was right before Canada legalized cannabis, and we created a software package that would facilitate transactions using a bitcoin wallet. As we talked to customers, we learned they were concerned about black market cannabis entering the Canadian market, and they wanted a way to track products from seed to store.
We had a facial recognition software package that identifies key elements of a person’s face, and we wanted to use the same concept on plants. The initial idea was to use the program to distinguish between male and female hemp plants, and we went to Ireland in 2019 to test it.
The problem was we were using a third-party drone, which didn’t have the sensors to adjust for Ireland’s unique terrain. Where I grew up in Illinois the land is completely flat, but in Ireland they grow plants on the sides of mountains and in valleys, and it was raining multiple times a day.
In addition, there’s a lot of work that goes into learning how to fly a commercial drone, so it wasn’t something a farmer could do on their own. That’s where we came up with the concept for a drone that can scan different terrain and adjust automatically, without a human operator.
Why start the company in Toronto?
That had to do with the cannabis industry.
Epazz was a public company, which means it’s federally regulated, and cannabis is still illegal in the United States at the federal level, so we moved the entity to Canada.
We have offices in the United States and around the world, but ZenaTech is registered and headquartered in Canada.
We have 10 people in our Toronto head office and another small office in Vancouver, and we expect to hire another 20 or 30 in Canada in the next 12 months.
How many employees do you have total?
Over 100 in Canada, the United States, Ireland, Germany, Turkey, Taiwan, the UAE, and soon in India. We’re hiring a lot more this year.
What makes your drones unique?
DJI is the primary competitor, and what they’ve done is brilliant in terms of software integration, but they’re using a frame system with four motors that essentially hovers and moves like a helicopter.
Ours is more of a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) system that transitions into a fixed-wing plane, and we can add more attachments, more cargo, and you can switch out sensors, so it’s got a lot of potential applications.
What are some of the primary applications?
We have a drone that’s 10 inches by 10 inches, the IQ Nano, used primarily for surveillance. Then we have one that’s 20 by 20, and that’s mostly for indoor inventory. We can use multiple drones at the same time indoors to do inventory faster, and what makes our system unique is that people can be present.
Normally if you’re doing drone inventory you need to shut down that section of the facility, but we have object avoidance sensors that let you operate as normal. And if one drone is low on battery it will fly back to the home station and another one will replace it and continue scanning.
Then we have our ZenaDrone IQ Square, which is 41-by-41 inches, and that’s mostly used for land surveys. Right now, land surveys are done with just a person and a stick and maybe a camera system, and it can take weeks or even months, so we can save customers thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.
We’re also in the initial stages of using the technology for housing developments, so that our drones can generate construction progress reports, and even go indoors and create 3D maps of properties as they’re being built.
Using artificial intelligence, it could even do building inspection in the early stages of development.
Then the ZenaDrone 1000, the production version is seven feet by 13 feet. It can scan farmland to determine which areas need to be treated and treat those areas.
And right now, when you see a helicopter in an urban setting, hopefully in the next five years you’ll see a drone instead, whether it’s in law enforcement, conducting search and rescue operations transporting medical supplies, or putting out building or wildfires, which is one of our top use cases right now.
Why’s that?
Right now, they’re using airplanes and helicopters and basically eyeballing it.
They fly low and slow over a wildfire, which is very dangerous, and we are working on a Drone swarm of 200 ZenaDrone 1000s that can carry as much water as a $35 million airplane for a fraction of the cost, can get lower to the ground and use sensors to target the hottest spots.
What do you say to those who think this technology should not be used in law enforcement or military contexts?
In the United States and Canada, I believe we defend our countries responsibly, and if drones replace humans so that they’re not in the line of fire, we can save a life on our side. That makes war less harmful to our countries, and we’re only working with NATO-allied countries.
The same with police officers; if we can replace front line officers in dangerous situations with unmanned drones you can prevent the loss of life for police officers. We can also equip drones with less lethal ways of apprehending suspects and potentially save their lives as well.
Many Canadians would say the two countries aren’t as aligned as they used to be and may even fear military action across the border.
The notion of Canada becoming the 51st state won’t happen. It would be like adding another California and giving the Democrats tremendous political influence. We’re non-partisan, personally and as a company, but I don’t see this as a real threat or a long-term issue.
What about tariffs? Has that created a challenge?
We see ourselves as a helicopter replacement solution; a helicopter costs $5 million, and our ZenaDrone 1000 is $150,000 to $200,000. If you add another 25 per cent onto that — or 50 per cent, or 200 per cent — we’re still saving our customers a tremendous amount of money.
