[gentle sanguine music] - Flying a drone, it's on a different level.

Just knowing you can fight about 15 to 20 mile winds and have your drone stay steady and with a camera, stay at a steady shot, it's honestly an amazing feeling.

Just to know that you can see your drone, that you're moving, moving the way that you want it to go, it's unreal.

- As you know that northeast North Carolina has large infrastructure projects like solar farms, wind turbines.

We have miles and miles of coastlines.

And then we have large farm land in North Carolina.

Drones have application in all these regions.

So, we are now preparing students to learn more, not only about flying the drones, but also how to gather data from these inspections or precision agriculture or monitoring shorelines, but also take this data and then process the data that could make sense to a general public.

- Cool thing about North Carolina is leading the way in drone technology.

But drones have just opened up new doors.

I mean, you could see DOT out there working with drones.

Now, you can actually see the police force, criminal justice, if you wanna see graphics of doing a wedding, or you just wanna go out and have fun.

There's so many applications that drones would bring.

And these kids know that.

- This is a LiDAR system.

It actually sends out a 10,000, - [Man Behind Camera] Hundred thousand.

- 10,000, a hundred thousand pulses per second down to the surface of the earth.

And when these reflected signals comes up, it's trapped in the scan card.

And when we download the 3D mapping, it actually gives a very precise picture of how that topographical surface terrain looks.

- As your dreams mature, you really hone in on what you really want.

And my dream said, I want to be a drone pilot.

From my experiences from high school up to the college level, and follow your dreams.

I said, drones are my dream.

And it really worked out.

I'm here at Elizabeth City State University.

I couldn't be happier.

[bright music]