Volansi to embark on new chapter in commercial drone delivery following new partnership

VTOL drone devel­op­er Volan­si has signed a team­ing agree­ment with the N.C. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to begin com­mer­cial, mid­dle-mile drone deliv­ery projects in North Car­oli­na, USA.

Both will work togeth­er with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA),  to gath­er data on drone deliv­ery pro­grammes and how they could be incor­po­rat­ed long-term into the cur­rent trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture and reg­u­la­tions. 

Han­nan Parviz­ian, CEO and Co-Founder of Volan­si, said: “We are excit­ed to have this oppor­tu­ni­ty to work close­ly with the FAA and the N.C. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to help shape how drones fit into our home country’s infra­struc­ture.

“We believe that one day, autonomous flight will be as com­mon­place and acces­si­ble as mail­ing a let­ter, and Volan­si tech­nol­o­gy will play a piv­otal part in this trans­port rev­o­lu­tion.”

Volan­si will ini­tial­ly per­form tests and VLOS car­go deliv­ery flights under Part 107 as part of the UAS Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (IPP) in North Car­oli­na, with the intent to scale to more projects with addi­tion­al waivers and per­mis­sions with the sup­port of the N.C. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and the FAA.   

Projects will ini­tial­ly utilise the VOLY C10- Gen 2, Volansi’s all-elec­tric, hybrid VTOL fixed-wing UAV. This enables Volansi’s drones to com­plete com­plex, two-way mis­sions with min­i­mal to zero infra­struc­ture needs. Because the drones ful­ly land at the deliv­ery point, they can deliv­er and return car­go such as sam­ples for analy­sis and diag­no­sis, or parts for repair. 

The drone flies autonomous­ly and can car­ry up to 10lb of car­go for more than 50 miles. Volansi’s in-house Flight Oper­a­tions Team han­dles all oper­a­tions of the VOLY C10, pro­vid­ing an end-to-end deliv­ery ser­vice to cus­tomers, and the air­craft has also per­formed oper­a­tions in Africa and the Caribbean.