Drone Collaboration Thoughts From Our CTO, Ted Miller
As a boy growing up in Detroit, I had two things that I was passionate about - music and all things mechanical. The former would lead me to pursue playing piano and the organ in church, where I would eventually meet the love of my life, Cathie, who then starred as the singer in our band - we played all around Michigan to help earn our way through grad school. But it was my second passion that manifested itself in many curious ways and formed the bedrock of my interest in the physical sciences. This would include acquiring and rebuilding my own “Whizzer” motorbikes, and a later passion for automotive restoration, focused on pre-1971 Mercedes SL “barn finds.” I managed to resurrect four of them, including a 1960 model that I sold to a future investor in MetiSense.
So, in many ways it was not surprising that after graduating with a physics degree from college, my career at DOW began with a focus on sensor systems pivotal to the effective operation of integrated chemical manufacturing facilities. Interestingly, what I learned in these past roles was to be focused on solving practical problems. That’s how you deliver a benefit to both internal Stakeholders and external Customers. I still believe in this, and it is a foundational principle for the sensor technology and company I co-founded in MetiSense! Indeed, it is the genesis of our “low size, low cost, low power™️” claim we highlight in our marketing.
Our patent on monitoring breath issued recently. But when we learned from SemTech, the inventors of LoRaWAN communications, that our base sensor is ideal for the IoT (Internet of Things), we hired a lab in Texas that showed how it nicely responds to methane. So, we realized that drone deployment could be ideal for spot monitoring within landfills or oil and gas distribution complexes where methane levels are of keen importance. The low size, low-cost features are certainly compatible with drones.
Based on their industrial emphasis and impressive growth, we contacted Scott Painter, CEO of BEAD (Birds Eye Aerial Drones) with our story. He was quick to agree to assess how best to deploy our sensor in nearby sites. Their San Diego California setting is well positioned to monitor the environmental hazards of methane.
Separately, while managing a sensor development department back at Dow, I had heard about a brilliant local science prodigy high school student and managed to hire him part time. Darrell Schlicker did amazing work with us, until he moved on to earn a PhD in EE from MIT. We’ve stayed in touch over the years, and he’s agreed that this is an exciting project. So MetiSense hired his LLC, SierraSciSTEMs, to create our prototype, now being assembled and calibrated.
Early in 2026, we plan to have BEAD deploy our totally new way to sense methane emissions directly from the ground. Unlike present methods (airborne open path NIR lasers, expensive ground-based stations) the drone will set onto the ground a small, closed container with our sensor. It will record methane or CO2 and other variables it sees during a brief time and then be moved on to a different suspicious spot for detection. Multiple trend graphs will be downloaded back at a base station. Unlike expensive open-air methods, accuracy and sensitivity will benefit from the constrained sample volume and versatile positioning made possible by drone deployment. The maiden flight will be dedicated to “Nicole,” an early investor into MetiSense!
I look forward to providing you with updates.
-Ted
CTO MetiSense