Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) has announced that it is expanding its commercial testing program to the United States.

DDC is bringing its testing program to the Griffiss International Airport UAS Test Site in Rome, New York during Q1 of this year, and the company anticipates that the program will run through the “balance of the year.”

“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,” says Tony Di Benedetto, CEO.

“This pilot program will act as an extension of our primary Canadian initiatives and will expand our data collection ability.”

One of just seven FAA UAS Test Sites in the U.S., the Griffiss International Airport UAS Test Site is designated to conduct research that is important in the process of integrating UAS into the national airspace system (NAS).

Di Benedetto credits the FAA for providing DDC with the opportunity to bring its testing program to the Griffiss International Airport UAS Test Site.

“The FAA approved Rome, N.Y. site was made available to us by the progressive initiatives of the FAA and provides an ideal testing environment to achieve our customers' requests,” Di Benedetto says.

“We now look to put Canada on the forefront of commercial drone delivery technology on a global stage with our first expansion occurring south of the border.”

This new initiative expands DDC’s testing program to include geographies in the U.S. using DDC’s Sparrow X1000 UAS. For testing, DDC will use its own proprietary FLYTE management software, which is designed to support semi-autonomous flight, and BVLOS flights designed for commercial UAS deliveries.

The testing initiatives in the U.S. will complement DDC’S extensive Canadian testing program scheduled for this year, which is set to include testing of DDC’s beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) capabilities at the UAS Centre of Excellence located in Alma, Quebec.