Drone News: Amazon Medical Deliveries, Aloft Wins Challenge, Drone Equipped With AI to Fight Fires

First up this week is Amazon, who has announce they will start
delivering medicine in College Station, Texas. Prime air aims to
transport medicine to homes within 60 minutes of ordering, and
includes over 500 medications for the flue, asthma, and
pneumonia. Amazon hopes to sameday delivery over 500 million
packages a year, and recently we’ve seen a number of lay-offs
suggesting their drone program was dying. We’ll have to wait and
see if this is a turn around or a last-ditch effort to make the
program a success. Next up this week is Aloft, who won the GENIUS
NY challenge for innovation. The win provides Aloft with an
additional $500,000, which will be used to expand their team in
NY. Josh Ziering said “Securing this win at GENIUS NY is not just
a testament to the innovation and hard work of the Aloft team but
also underlines the promise and potential of our growing
partnerships in the State of New York, With the support and
visibility that comes with this investment, we’re poised to
continue growing Aloft at an even faster pace.” If you’re somehow
unfamiliar with Aloft, they’re the largest LAANC provider in the
country and our preferred LAANC app. Aloft includes both fleet
management, flight tracking, flight planning, incident tracking,
and LAANC. If you’d like to learn more about Aloft, check out our
Aloft Deep Dive! Third up this week is a company called
DataBlanket, whose mission is to use AI to fight woodland fires.
This start up was launched last year, and their goal is to use
drones to determine where resources should be allocated to
effectively fight the fire. DataBlanket uses a drone manufactured
by Ascent Aero systems called the Spirit. The Spirit is a coaxial
drone capable of flying in extreme conditions, temperatures, and
weather including winds in excess of 40 mph, rain, and temps up
to 130F. DataBlanket has taken the Spirit and equipped it with AI
and a custom payload and swarming technology to map fires or
conduct search and rescue missions. DataBlanket hopes to conduct
pilot programs in late 2024 or early 2025, pending FAA approvals
for BVLOS. Your final story this week is Pilot Institute! We just
passed 80,000 people in our part 107 course, 80,000 subscribers
on this channel, 169,000+ TRUST certificates, and over 27,500
free stickers shipped! Here’s a big thank you to those who follow
us, your support makes this possible! We also just released the
DJI Air 3 Deep Dive and the DJI Mini 4 Pro Deep Dive, with the
Inspire 3 Deep Dive coming very soon! Last up, sorry about
missing our scheduled live event this week. We got busy around
the office putting out fires and when we finally stopped to
think, it was already 4:15. Have a great weekend, and we’ll see
you for the live next Monday!
https://dronelife.com/2023/10/17/this-ai-enabled-system-teaches-drones-to-fight-fires-datablanket/
https://www.aloft.ai/blog/aloft-wins-500k-investment-at-the-genius-ny-drone-accelerator-pitch-competition/