At the Drone Thought Leadership Summit, hosted by the University of Virginia’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies Center for Public Safety and Justice in collaboration with Droneresponders, public safety leaders talked about how Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs are changing the way agencies respond to emergencies. One issue that is paramount in urban environments: connectivity. To solve this problem, new approaches are making it possible for drones to keep working even when RF connections fail. One example is Skydio Connect Fusion, which lets a drone continue flying if it moves past the range of the controller, shifting seamlessly to a 5G or LTE network to keep streaming video and data. Ryan Kao, Director of Public Safety Strategy and Legal Counsel at Skydio and a former officer with the San Francisco Police Department, explained why this is so important. “This feature is what makes it possible to fly in an urban environment like San Francisco,” he said. Kao commented that for Skydio, the functionality is a combination of their autonomy platform – which allows them to automatically fly a mission – with the assurance that when that mission takes the drone out of RF range, the 5G/LTE platform will take over.

Full report : Overcoming Connectivity Challenges in Urban Drone as First Responder Programs.

For more see the OODA Company Profile on Skydio.