Skyward, a Verizon company, and UPS are collaborating on developing drones connected via Verizon’s 4G LTE—and even 5G — for delivery of retail products in The Villages in Florida.
UPS, under its Flight Forward project, has already been actively involved in testing drones for delivery in The Villages area after signing a partnership with drug retailer CVS last year. As such, the move to include Verizon in the project makes sense, expanding the project's ability to manage and support multiple drones, flying simultaneously, to multiple locations after leaving from a central location over a cellular network.
The announcement was made at CES 2021, which is taking place Jan. 11-14.
“The low latency of 5G and edge compute is ideal for monitoring air traffic in and out of a busy logistics hub, especially those using mixed fleets of autonomous vehicles like drones, trucks, and planes,” said Mariah Scott, president of Skyward. “This year, we’ll be taking the collaboration with UPS further by testing 5G Ultra Wideband integrations to connect the sky.”
To date, UPS has flown 3,800 successful drone delivery flights since UPS Flight Forward was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2019, which allowed it to test drones beyond the visual line of site (BVLOS). The use of drones to deliver healthcare items became a global trend with the outbreak of COVID-19 as it became a contactless, quick way to deliver pharmacy items and other goods while letting consumers, namely at-risk seniors, shelter-in-place.
While drones may be a key technology that helps fight future pandemics, the machines have already been used to fight COVID-19 by disinfecting public spaces, spreading information to break up large groups or warn users of potential social distancing violations and, of course, delivery of goods. It is likely that until the coronavirus vaccine is widely distributed, drones will continue to fight COVID-19 by helping at-risk and other groups receive goods to remain healthy at home.
