The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is thrilled to announce the next webinar in its Community Chat series: Computing on the Fly: Navigating a Vision for the Future of Drone Computing. During this exciting webinar and Q&A scheduled for November 3, 2026 at 2 PM ET, hear from the authors of CCC’s recent Computing on the Fly report as well as representatives from Purdue’s AirTonomy initiative and the U.S. Forest Service about the future of non-military drone computing and its applications for good.
Speakers at this event will include Kevin Butler (University of Florida), Christopher Stewart (The Ohio State University), Nils Aschenbruck (Osnabrück University), Ufuk Topcu (University of Texas), Deborah Silver (Rutgers University), Sabine Brunswicker (Purdue University), and Dirk Giles (U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service). The findings are a result of discussions at the CCC Computing on the Fly visioning workshop held December 1-2, 2025 in Washington, D.C. — generously supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and IEEE Computer Society — which convened 47 cross-sector experts to articulate a vision for drone development over the next ten years.
Register Here
A New Format for Computing on the Fly
In this webinar, hear from the authors of CCC’s Computing on the Fly: Navigating a Vision for the Future of Drone Computing workshop report. The authors themselves will present key findings from the report, as well as recommendations tailored to audiences in the research, industry, and policy spheres.
Specifically, hear about topics including but not limited to:
- How to scale to millions of non-military drones
- Standards, certification, and regulation in the drone space
- Workforce development and education
- Advancing AI technology to support a drone infrastructure
These recommendations push us towards a 2035 vision in which drones move goods, medical supplies, and information at a scale comparable to national infrastructure investments like highways and the electric grid. Applications include natural disaster detection drones, medical supply chains that bypass ground congestion to reach rural hospitals, and nationwide fleets that continuously inspect bridges and power lines.
Drone Testing and Wildfire Fighting
CCC is also excited to welcome two phenomenal guest speakers to this webinar and Q&A:
Sabine Brunswicker, Professor of Digital Innovation at Purdue University and a contributor to the Computing on the Fly report, will present on how we ensure the safety of drones. She founded Purdue’s Center for Artificial Intelligence for Digital, Autonomous, and Augmented Aviation (AIDA3), and in 2024 launched AIrTonomy, a cyber-physical infrastructure program for rapid experimentation and safety verification of AI-enabled autonomy for aviation.
Dirk Giles, USDA Forest Service UAS Chief, will share how one of the United States’s largest land management agencies puts drones to work. The thermal sensing in drone technology is a well-known use in fire management, but the agency also uses drones for aerial ignition during prescribed and wildland fire operations, particularly in dangerous conditions. Beyond wildfire management, the Forest Service also uses drones across a wide range of missions, including timber, hydrology, reforestation, forest health, and infrastructure inspection.
Join the Conversation
This event is open to the public. We encourage you to share it with anyone who may be interested in the future of drone technology.
Date: November 3, 2026
Time: 2 PM ET
Can’t make it? Register anyway, and we’ll send you a link to the recording afterwards.
We hope to see you there!
Register for Computing on the Fly
Tune in to the CCC LinkedIn Showcase Page for updates and more Community Chats like this. Stay connected with CCC for the latest insights, publications, and opportunities to engage by subscribing here.
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under Award Nos. 2300842 and 2619366. These awards support the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), a programmatic committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
