Red Cat Holdings, Inc., a leading brand in the drone industry, announced that Fat Shark, a wholly owned subsidiary, had partnered with Skypersonic, the manufacturer of the Skycopter UAV, to complete a long distance drone flight remotely. The flight consisted of a pilot, located in Orlando, Florida, controlling a drone flying in Detroit, Michigan. The flight integrated Fat Shark’s new digital technology, “Shark Byte” with Skypersonic’s Skycopter and remote pilot software system. The pilot’s flight instructions to the drone were transmitted through Skypersonic’s servers located in Italy. The companies believe this represents the first commercial completion of a remote flight similar to how drones are used by military forces.
“The ability to control the flight of a drone from thousands of miles away should accelerate the commercial adoption of drone technology, expand the number of business services that can be provided by drones, and lower travel and training costs for companies deploying drones.” stated Jeff Thompson, CEO of Red Cat. “The combination of our recently launched Shark Byte digital system and Skypersonic’s patent pending software platform provides video resolution that will enable pilots to navigate more safely and execute commercial flights that were not possible with an analog system.”
“We are upgrading our entire fleet to the new Shark Byte digital system,” stated Giuseppe Santangelo, founder and CEO of Skypersonic. “Global customers like Exelon rely on our drones to safely reach places that are difficult expensive and dangerous to inspect by manned teams. Shark Byte’s low-latency high-definition video, a significant advance from prior analog systems, will enable our customers to take their inspections and security applications to a higher level of performance and safety.”
“We were excited to work with Skypersonic to test the limits of our new digital technology,” said Greg French, founder and chief technology officer of Fat Shark. “The combination of our Shark Byte 720p HD digital system and Skypersonic’s latency-compensating flight assistance technology enabled the pilot to fly faster and more skillfully than expected.”