Skyward, a Verizon company, recently announced the preorder availability for Parrot ANAFI Ai, the only off-the-shelf drone powered by Verizon’s 4G network that is designed to deliver critical-grade video quickly to enterprises executing missions using the Skyward Connected Drone Solution.

Matt Fanelli, Skyward’s director of strategy and operations, said the Parrot ANAFI ai drone includes the capability to connect to Verizon’s 4G network, so video can be delivered back to the enterprise in real time, as opposed to users having to wait for the drone to return before processing images.

Notably, Skyward “enables mid-flight data transfer to begin processing imagery into 2D orthomosaic maps while Parrot ANAFI Ai is still in the air, anywhere within Verizon’s 4G LTE coverage area,” according to a Verizon press release about the announcement.

This approach accelerates informed decision-making by enterprise users by significantly reducing the time to begin viewing the video and reduce the number of trips that a drone needs to make because the needed images were not captured during the initial trip, Fanelli said.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Parrot to bring the first LTE connected drone to market,” Fanelli said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “This is groundbreaking in a number of ways, both in the present and the future. “This is a best-in-class advanced drone, in terms of obstacle avoidance, ubiquitous command and control, and faster time to insight.

“The ANAFI Ai brings together a lot of best-in-class technologies, adds Verizon’s best-in-class network and—through Skyward’s mapping and modeling, as well as our command and control using the Skyward in-flight app—it opens up a whole new world for those enterprises to be able to fly, plan and process faster than they were before. The efficiency drivers with this new technology are the things that we’re so excited about … We think that it checks off a number of those critical needs for our enterprise customers.”

Drone usage has grown in many key sectors—for example, public safety, utilities, mining and construction—as drone-captured video has proven crucial in a variety of use cases, from infrastructure inspection to search-and-rescue missions. However, implementing a drone program has proven to be challenging for many enterprises, because they have to procure the various technological pieces separately and integrate these components on their own.

Expected to be shipped early next year at a price of $4,000, the Parrot-Skyward offering is designed to simplify capturing video by drone for enterprises by including each of the components—the drone, LTE connectivity, as well as the Skyward mobile app and mapping software—in a single package, according to Fanelli.</…….

Source: https://urgentcomm.com/2021/12/23/verizon-owned-skyward-accepting-orders-for-parrot-drone/