Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) recently announced it is expanding its commercial testing program to the United States and will be held at the New York Griffiss International Airport UAS Test Site, beginning during the first quarter of this year and lasting until 2019.
DDC will test its Sparrow X1000 drone and utilize its FLYTE management software.
The Sparrow received Compliant UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) Status with Transport Canada in December.
U.S. testing will run concurrently with testing on DDC’s Beyond Visual Line of Sight system being conducted at Transport Canada’s UAS Centre of Excellence located in Quebec.
“We have very strong interest from multiple commercial customers in the USA that not only want to test our drone delivery platform in Canada but also in their own country as well,” DDC CEO Tony Di Benedetto said. “This pilot program will act as an extension of our primary Canadian initiatives and will expand our data collection ability. The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) approved Rome, NY, site was made available to us by the progressive initiatives of the FAA and provides an ideal testing environment to achieve our customers’ requests.”
The airport is one of six FAA sites for conducting research on UAVs for the national airspace system.