Drone Delivery Canada to develop improved drone technology with Bell Mobility

Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) will collaborate with Bell Mobility to develop products and services to improve technology as it relates to 5G network and multi-access edge computing in a bid to advance autonomous drones.

The three-year definitive collaboration agreement, effective April 13, will focus on the development of technologies that will evaluate, in a controlled environment, new capabilities to support Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), Command and Control (C2), Remote Identification (Remote ID), and Unmanned Aerial System Traffic Management (UTM), based on 5G and Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC).

This agreement supports DDC’s aim to drive further enhancements to its proprietary drone delivery platform and its Flyte software solution.

It is intended that any technical advancements that result from the collaboration with Bell will be adopted by DDC across its full fleet of delivery drones, including the Condor heavy lift drone, which is currently undergoing development and commercial testing.

Steve Magirias, chief executive officer of Drone Delivery Canada, said: “We are pleased to be collaborating with Bell to work on unique customer drone delivery projects, and also to further advance our solution to leverage the advanced technologies and know-how that Bell brings.

“Technological advancements like Bell 5G, multi-access edge computing, GPS-independent location tracking, computational offloading, IoT and smart grids will position DDC for the next generation of advanced and novel drone applications in logistics, as well as mobile real-time imaging & sensor data analytics.

“Our focus on a very broad range of drone applications fits perfectly with the wide-ranging capabilities of Bell. Market response to our logistics solution continues to be very favourable and we are pleased with our ongoing commercial progress and technology momentum.”

In January, DDC said development and testing of its new “Canary” cargo drone is progressing on schedule.

Rebecca Jeffrey www.aircargonews.net & Drone Delivery Canada