Startup to test autonomous aircraft in remote Canada

A startup will test autonomous aircraft in an isolated region of Canada. Ribbit has the weapons to stand out from the competition.

Unmanned test flights will be conducted by the Canadian firm Ribbit to distribute to far-flung regions of the nation. The business has agreed to a $1.3 million deal with Innovation Solutions Canada and Transport Canada to carry out its autonomous flying experiments "on the next 12 months."

Startup to test autonomous aircraft in remote Canada

“Many rural and remote areas are delivered by larger aircraft that fly without regular frequencies,” said CEO Carl Pigeon in a press release. “Ribbit uses a smaller device that uses autonomous piloting to completely change the entire economy of this aircraft. This allows us to deliver reliable delivery in a day or two and improve supply chains.”

The company starts “small” with a two-seater. It plans to remove the seats to increase the payload and finally to make the device fully autonomous thanks to a complete remote control system. Initially, a simple project of students from the University of Waterloo, including co-founders Jeremy Wang and Carl Pigeon. Ribbit explains that his aircraft will use remote pilots to monitor progress, communicate with air traffic controllers and take control if needed.

Ribbit has already signed contracts with resellers and wholesalers, including local businesses that serve the province. The goal is to meet the demand for food, medical and other products. The main objective is to attempt to make this transportation link better so that these people can get food and other perishable items, time-sensitive products, medical supplies, etc. at a lower price up to the end consumer in a more reliable and frequent manner,” said Wang.

Ribbit has the weapons to stand out from the competition

There is already competition in this market, including Xwing, which has already successfully flown independent commercial cargo door-to-door. This company uses much larger aircraft, Cessna Grand Caravan 208B modified to use Xwing’s Autoflight software. Another competitor, Reliable Robotics, founded by former engineers from SpaceX and Tesla, has also successfully completed test flights of remotely piloted aircraft.

Ribbit does not have the scale of these two companies, but it knows the customers and the region. “Whether it’s air delivery, asset tracking or maritime patrol, we’ve identified several applications for this technology,” Wang said. Customers value our capacity to deeply comprehend their processes and autonomously rethink them.