Date/Time: Friday, September 17 at 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Exercise in upstate N.Y. shows how flight could replace drives through downtown traffic. A team of more than a dozen COVID-19-motivated entities with expertise in public health, public safety and unmanned flight recently enjoyed a hard-won peek into the future of UAS in medical transport in upstate New York.

According to new statistics collected by DJI, drones have helped rescue more than 500 people around the world from danger. The milestone was achieved in mid-October, when a DJI drone with a thermal imaging camera was used to find a missing 93-year-old woman in a dark field in Missouri. “With more than 500 people now rescued by drones operated under basic rules, we can see how reasonable regulations with low barriers to entry literally save lives, and how useful expanded drone operations at night and over people will be when they are permitted at scale,” says Brendan Schulman, DJI vice president of Policy & Legal Affairs.

Parrot has partnered with professional drone lighting company FoxFury Lighting Solutions to enhance its ANAFI USA drone, which is designed for first responders and enterprise professionals.  The companies collaborated to develop a tailored system for ANAFI that allows professionals to attach up to three D10 lights modules on the drone. Made in the U.S., the intuitive saddle mounting system and the lights provide up to 40 minutes of continuous use in “High” mode and 80 minutes in “Strobe” mode, with self-contained LiPo batteries. This solution will allow professionals from the public safety and inspection verticals to extend crucial work in the most extreme situations, such as a search and rescue mission at night or traveling through dimly lit structures like tunnels.