Make it

About Us

Artificial Devices was founded on the simple premise that the more timely and accurate information you have, the more successful the project.

It all began with Rich, an electrical engineer with over 30 years of project management experience, wanting a better way of collecting and presenting project information. When things got rolling Mike, a retired police officer, was brought in to manage the fleet. Once Dabe, a retired teacher, brought his video and photo editing skills, a great team was born.

Our Story

The early days had us spending lots of time in the garage fighting firmware updates that didn’t quite “update” as expected. Or staying up late putting the final touches on a clients marketing video to meet our deadline. Even trying to keep up with the ever-changing rules that the FAA would announce (at midnight… the day before a major project).

Since then, Rich developed a process that allows us to collect, analyze, and execute jobs efficiently. Mike has his teams working on evaluating and testing software updates (we’re all thankful!), and Dabe’s team have edited thousands of hours of video and terabytes of images.

We’re son’s of military veterans, childhood friends, and fiercely determined to achieve our goal of finding a better way to successful, cost-effective reporting.

Our Future

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a much larger part of our process recently. When we started, our aircraft were manually controlled with very little automation. Now drone flights are pre-programmed and our pilots focus mainly on safety and process management.

We see clear opportunities to use AI in areas like parking and traffic analytics. Instead of someone with a clipboard counting cars, we could capture that data and have the AI accurately report the findings.

  • Most of our clients are located in Westchester, but we’ve done missions in Long Island, Putnam/Rockland Counties, Upper NJ, etc. We’ve even done a few in Florida. If really comes down to travel expenses. Since our data is in the cloud, we can operate from anywhere.

  • Yes. All our pilots are fully trained, FAA licensed, and insured. Even though it’s not a requirement by the FAA we never take off without an additional person acting as a visual observer (VO). Our pilots take primary responsibility for the aircraft, but our VO’s are invaluable for situational awareness. They allow our pilots to stay focused on the working airspace.

  • Satellite imagery has definitely gotten better over the years. I’ve seen some great software offerings that have leveraged satellite images for planning. What satellites cannot do is give you a near real-time report on your project. If you’re digging a trench to lay pipe in the morning, you’ll know by the end of the day if that trench is in the wrong spot. Only a drone can capture the entire project site and report back the same day.