The two notorious hurdles drone technology has to overcome before it becomes a part of our daily lives are public acceptance and government regulations. And, as with most emerging technologies, it is difficult for anyone to fully understand what a drone brings to the table until they see it in action. This is why Portland-based SkyWard announced on Tuesday the Urban SkyWays Project – to demonstrate how drone technology, in full compliance with government and insurance regulations, will deliver packages and provide on demand emergency response.
In the ultimate marriage of keys players from the commercial drone space, SkyWard has brought together NASA’s Unmanned Aerial Traffic Management System (UTM), hardware from 3D Robotics and DJI, and software from Pix4D and Drone Deploy to show people exactly what is possible with UAV technology today and tease the imagination about what will be possible tomorrow.
“We are living a fascinating part of the history of robotics. It’s like we are on the eve of release of the iPhone or Apple II,” SkyWard CEO Jonathan Evans told Dronelife. “A lot is still on the drawing board, but we have gotten a lot of the infrastructure done and tested many base scenarios such as first response robotics, fire department response, delivery infrastructure and industrial inspection. Now the Urban SkyWays Project is ready to be the entity that brings UAV technology into a commercial environment.”
Demonstrations are in the works to be held in Las Vegas, London, Vancouver and Portland, OR.
SkyWard is currently in the process of securing all the proper certifications (COAs from the FAA, SFOCs from Transport Canada, and special permission from the UK’s CAA) so Evans didn’t say which location would be first, but hinted that he would like to debut the project at CES 2014, which will be held this January in Las Vegas.
Check out the intro video below and learn more at skyward.io
Urban Skyways – from SkyWard from SkywardIO on Vimeo.
Alan is serial entrepreneur, active angel investor, and a drone enthusiast. He co-founded DRONELIFE.com to address the emerging commercial market for drones and drone technology. Prior to DRONELIFE.com, Alan co-founded Where.com, ThinkingScreen Media, and Nurse.com. Recently, Alan has co-founded Crowditz.com, a leader in Equity Crowdfunding Data, Analytics, and Insights. Alan can be reached at alan(at)dronelife.com
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