Drone delivery service in Vaughan?

Municipality enters into partnership with Drone Delivery Canada

Yorkregion.com
April 21, 2016
By Adam Martin-Robbins

The skies over Vaughan could be buzzing with sound of drones in the next couple of years.

Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) announced Wednesday it has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the city and its Vaughan International Commercialization Centre (VICC) for a drone delivery service pilot program, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada.

“It’s a great partnership,” Tony Di Benedetto, CEO of Drone Delivery Canada, said in an interview Thursday. “We’ve been working on developing this technology for three years with our partners at the University of Toronto and Waterloo (University). We’re partnering with the City of Vaughan to explore where this technology can be utilized within the municipality.”

The company hopes to have a fleet of delivery drones - able to carry mail, books and parcels - taking flight within Vaughan’s central business district by 2018 “if not sooner,” according to Di Benedetto.

He said the company’s core focus right now is on opportunities to service rural and remote communities in Canada.

“Simple medical supplies is a big challenge for a lot of these remote communities,” Di Benedetto said.

“There was an incident last week that we heard about where a little child died because receiving simple antibiotics would take about a day or day-and-a-half with traditional transportation means. With this type of technology, we can hit them within an hour. So it’s a just-in-time delivery solution.”

The pilot project is being carried out through VICC’s Test City pilot program, which creates opportunities for entrepreneurs to test, demonstrate, and prove their products in real-life settings by working with other companies within the VICC network such as PowerStream, and the Kortright Centre.

“As an innovation and research-based city we welcome this opportunity to collaborate with Drone Delivery Canada through our Test City program at the Vaughan International Commercialization Centre. We believe that this cooperation will bring about successful results,” Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua said in a news release.