george moe of fliteworks

Member Highlight for march

Tell us about yourself

I'm the CEO at Fliteworks, which is monitoring critical infrastructure at scale using autonomous drones. I studied Computer Science & Philosophy at Harvard and helped start the undergrad competitive drone team. In my free time, I love tinkering with fun projects and joining hackathons and innovation challenges.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?

I started small, and I started early! My first projects as a kid were made of tape, cardboard, and aluminum foil - DIY projects like those found in Popular Mechanics, including a solar oven, rain barrel, and small wind turbine. Gradually, I picked up more and more advanced concepts like programming and electronics, which introduced me to the world of robotics. As soon as I could, I joined my high school robotics team, and that was my first experience with a full machine shop. I've been making ever since, and now I do it full-time as a startup founder!

WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

We're entering an era of great physical uncertainty as climate change brings extreme weather and aging infrastructure struggles to keep up. The success of our modern world was built on the supply networks laid down last century - and if we want to keep growing, we need to step those up to an entirely new and much more sustainable level. And while software has held the spotlight and gotten us very far for the past couple decades, it has to go hand-in-hand with hard-tech innovation to continuing bringing progress to the real world. That's why I've joined the fight with other makers to infuse technology into the way we run our physical world and prepare it for the 21st century.

Do you have any upcoming projects you can tell us about?

Yes! I'm excited to share that Fliteworks is starting widespread deployment of our Palletized Drone Systems (PDS) at solar farms across the country. Our PDS are home bases for autonomous drones which can be built quickly and shipped to distant locations for long-term remote operation, allowing us to monitor far-away places that would be hard for people to inspect in-person. This is helping to run existing solar farms and speeding up construction of new ones, because when before people had to slowly walk around these massive thousand-acre sites and find problems one-by-one, the drone can fly every day and help them diagnose issues across the entire site. We want to bring this broad-scale visibility to all infrastructure - from highways, to pipelines, to the electric grid - to help prevent disasters and keep everything running more smoothly than ever before.

  HOW DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT MAKERSPACE?

Google Maps - I've been looking for a local MakerSpace in NYC with the right tools to develop the Palletized Drone System, and I saw from the website that MakerSpace NYC had it all.

What is your favorite tool at Makerspace?

Don't laugh, because they're really the unsung hero the workshop: the tables! From woodworking benches to welding tables to work desks, we might take them for granted but they are literally the foundation upon which all projects are built. Before I found the Makerspace, I was working out of Home Depot parking lots on a folding table, and I have to tell you: I cannot overstate what a difference it makes, having a solid sturdy table that doesn't jump around or flex when you saw, drill, and build.

WHERE TO FIND fliteworks:

https://fliteworks.com