Freefly Systems Inc., an American corporation that designs and manufactures the world’s toughest drones, today announced a partnership with datalink provider Doodle Labs to integrate its mesh radios into the Freefly Astro UAS platform.
Astro is Freefly’s latest drone platform with high precision RTK/PPK, LTE cloud connectivity, tablet controller, smart batteries, onboard mission computer and more. The platform boasts an open ecosystem of modular payloads with quick release. Astro is designed, tested, flown, built and supported by the Freefly team in Woodinville, WA.
Doodle Labs, who produce industrial-grade wireless networking solutions, will work with Freefly to provide its Mesh Rider Radio as the onboard datalink for Astro. Integrating Doodle Labs’ radios will secure long range, high-bandwidth mesh capabilities, a more reliable connection for the drone and new avenues to global deployment.
Mesh Rider Radio makes use of Doodle Labs’ proprietary multi-band technology to capably cover up to six bands in a single radio. The radios are available in a variety of band combinations, including 900 MHz + 2.4 GHz for commercial use-cases, several Helix options in federal combinations (M1 – M6, L + S) for defense purposes and the capability to combine licensed and unlicensed bands for dual-use applications.
Development of the Mesh Rider Radio was sponsored in part by the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the datalink is fully compliant with DIU’s Blue UAS program. Astro is also Blue sUAS List-approved. Both Mesh Rider Radio and Astro are NDAA compliant.
Doodle Labs will showcase the Freefly Astro at its booth at AUVSI in Xponential in Denver, May 9-11. Xponential is one of the world’s largest events for uncrewed and robotic technology.
“We’ve long-admired Freefly for the quality of its drones, so to be able to partner up and contribute to improved performance and allow it to fly nto even more challenging missions with Mesh Rider Radio is very exciting for us as a company,” said Amol Parikh, VP of Marketing for Doodle Labs.
“It’s also great to extend our reach even further in the Blue UAS ecosystem and empower Astro to be established as a go-to for Defense agencies in need of UAV technology,” Parikh said.
About Freefly
Freefly Systems is an American corporation that designs, manufactures, and markets camera movement systems and camera stabilizers used in cinematography including unmanned aerial vehicles for aerial cinematography, gimbals, and remote-controlled vehicles. The company headquarters are in Woodinville, Washington.
