It’s ironic that a pilot would be the one to come up with an idea to put pilots out of business. Alexander Harmsen laughs at that irony, as his business is growing and doing exactly that. Harmsen always loved flying, wanting to be a pilot. He started pursuing his pilot’s license at the age of 17, even before he started college. “I got my pilot’s license before I got my driver’s license,” he says. However, his path went a different direction than he originally thought.
In college, Harmsen met James Howard, and they both became drone pilots. Right away, they noticed problems with drones. In addition, they also saw the many benefits drones could have should these problems be solved. The problems were rather large, so they set about solving them. Drones can’t pilot themselves, they rely on a human operator. This imposes many limits and regulations on what drones can do. A drone can only do so much as its handler knows how, and its range and motion is limited to a remote control. In a business or military system, this is inefficient and has a much higher cost.
So Harmse
n and Howard asked, “What if drones could pilot themselves?” They thus created the business Iris Automation. It utilizes the same technology used to create driver-less cars, and they are in the process of testing just how much this innovation can accomplish. They use cameras to asses the different environments, then focused on creating a collision-avoidance program. Making an algorithm to detect foreign aircrafts and objects and thus react accordingly, Iris Automation is revolutionizing the drone industry.
This technology continues to expand as the folks at Iris Automation explore it more. They’re developing a system that allows the computer to learn and adapt to different situations. Harmsen also made certain that this technology could be utilized in non-professional drones. However, Iris Automation isn’t satisfied with what they’ve accomplished, and they continue to push the boundaries of smart 
transportation technology.
Three years after being founded, Iris Automation is gaining momentum. It’s still a small business, with only 19 employees and $50,000 in revenue in 2017. They’ve raised $10 million, continuing to find funds to expand their business. The world is watching Harmsen and Howard as they push a new perspective on seeing the future in drones and transportation.
This is an insane idea and just more proof that we are in fact living in the “future.” The fact that the airspace is being occupied by completely autonomous flying craft is something that many people would only believe in sci-fi movies. I believe it is great to be able to take artificial intelligence to an industry where it can be practically effective. This can have a huge impact on the shipping and transporting goods as our culture moves more and more to instant satisfaction being a necessary and required aspect of life. The more reliable and efficient this technology gets the greater the impact it will have on how transportation is viewed.