Veterans Elite Drone Training Services (VEDTS) selected Draganfly Inc. (NASDAQ: DPRO) (CSE: DPRO) (FSE: 3U8A) to teach Canadian Veterans how to fly drones.
Draganfly announced on Tuesday it will supply its drone technology to VEDTS, providing veterans with hands-on experience as part of the training program. This opportunity will allow them to become familiar with the equipment and gain valuable flight experience.
Veterans enrolled in VEDTS will have access to an immersive online virtual ground course.
The course covers the areas mandated by Transport Canada, and includes in-depth instruction on topics such as air law and air traffic rules and procedures, RPAS airframes, power plants, propulsion and systems. By completing this course, veterans will acquire the necessary knowledge and skills required to meet the regulatory requirements for operating drones commercially.
“Veterans are excellent pilot candidates. They’ve got pre-training, they’ve got demonstrated discipline and they like to be hands on,” said Cameron Chell, CEO of Draganfly in an interview.
This course will enable veterans to obtain their advanced Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) license, which is certified by Transport Canada.
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Courses offer specialized training courses for industrial applications
The industry in North America is expected to require approximately 100,000 drone pilots within the next six years, according to Chell, and each will require specialized training.
Participants in the VEDTS program will have the opportunity to enroll in specialized training courses tailored to specific use cases, such as industrial applications. These courses will offer focused instruction on various services including LiDAR, thermal imaging, inspections, magnetometer applications.
“Somebody flying a drone mission in a fire area has highly specialized training that’s very different than a drone pilot that might be flying and marine mission, delivering supplies to an offshore rig,” said Chell.
“This might might be entirely different from responding to a 911 call, where you’ve got to understand crowd management and have a different set of medical capabilities and an eye on how to communicate with people and or knowing what other equipment to bring in.”
In Draganfly’s first responder scenarios the company has what Chell calls a true drone system. The first drone on site has both audio and visual and other sensors that the pilot working at the 911 centre can use to assess the situation.
The drone needs to be able to collect data like crowd patterns and if anyone on scene has medical capabilities, which it relays back to the human first responders which are still working to arrive on scene.
“We’ve got drones that we built for an organization called promo drone that’s put out for crowd management, doing things like parades or natural disasters, and again that’s a very different mission than somebody that’s flying a drone that’s doing agricultural spraying and needs to know all the different types of herbicides that are being used and wind conditions,” Chell said.
These pilots will serve various roles, including on-site ground flying, which may involve beyond visual line of sight operations, as well as pilots operating from network operation centers.
Shares of Draganfly rose 1.9 per cent to $1.59 on Thursday on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
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