Google Says Titan Drones Will Make First Flight in a Few Months

(Source: theverge.com)  

At Mobile World Congress this morning, Google’s Sundar Pichai said that Titan, the drone company Google acquired in April of 2014, would be conducting is first test flight later this year. Google bought the company after it was widely reported Facebook had made an offer. Both were interested in the drone’s ability to stay aloft for long periods of time with little energy and to carry a payload capable of providing internet connectivity to people down below.

Pichai says Titan is about where Project Loon, Google high altitude balloons, was a couple of years ago. The Titan team is building a new type of super lightweight solar-powered airplane that would be capable of hovering in one area of the stratosphere. This could provide a way to beam Internet down to a targeted area on the ground below, supplement existing services with extra bandwidth, or providing access in an area that’s suddenly offline, like after an earthquake or other disaster.

Loon and Titan could complement each other, Pichai said to think of it as a mesh of flying cell towers circling overhead. While the balloons cover a wide area, Titan aircraft could be maneuvered to provide capacity to particular areas based on demand. In both instances, Google’s plan is is to partner with carriers to provide overlapping service to people on the ground so that they don’t have to worry about exactly where it’s coming from.

Continue Reading at theverge.com…

Alan Phillips

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