Kittyhawk Announces Automated Flights for Enterprise Drone Operations Platform

Kittyhawk Announces Automated Flights for Enterprise Drone Operations Platform

Consumer Electronics Show, LAS VEGAS – January 8, 2018 – Kittyhawk, the market leader in commercial drone operations software, today announced new features to its best-in-class platform. Kittyhawk is adding an automated flight system to its Flight Deck feature set to work in conjunction with its recently released secure live streaming feature.

The new automation features allow operators to plan missions in the Kittyhawk mobile application and then execute the entire flight from takeoff to landing with unlimited waypoints. Like all Kittyhawk features, great care has been taken to create a safe and useful user experience. The app has incorporated safety features to ensure that operators are not able to initiate an automated flight to a place beyond the range of the radio and drone; like trying to launch a mission in California when you’re currently in New York. The Kittyhawk software uses the geolocation of the operator to show only flights that are possible to complete — avoiding potentially expensive and dangerous mistakes.

“Enterprise customers are constantly asking the Kittyhawk platform to do more and more across the entire workflow,”  said Jon Hegranes, Co-Founder and CEO of Kittyhawk. “The addition of automated flights coupled with encrypted live audio and video streaming further validates our industry-leading market share.”

Working in conjunction with select enterprise customers, Kittyhawk’s automated flight system is the perfect compliment to their recently released multi-channel secure live video and audio streaming feature. For example, a law enforcement customer can set the drone to fly the perimeter of a scene and their entire team can securely access a video feed right from their mobile devices and give audio feedback to the operator in real time. A filmmaker can set a path perfectly parallel to a bridge and get that perfect shot with an absolutely consistent speed and altitude. The opportunities are endless.

“Automated flights are the first step in an exciting roadmap of new features for the enterprise team in 2018. We’ve been working closely with our industry-leading enterprise customers to really understand their challenges and we are excited about the solutions Kittyhawk is delivering to them.” Says Josh Ziering, Co-Founder and Chief Pilot.

These new features join the long list of industry-leading pre-flight, in-flight and post-flight features including weather forecasting, risk assessments, flight profiles, live air traffic, secure data encryption, secure domestic cloud storage and much more.

About Kittyhawk

Kittyhawk unifies the mission, aircraft, and data to empower safe and effective drone operations. Based in San Francisco, the company develops real-time flight operations and management solutions for professional pilots and fleet managers across a multitude of missions. Established industry leaders in media, insurance, oil and gas, rail transportation, as well as education, law enforcement, fire and emergency management agencies around the world all rely on Kittyhawk for their end-to-end drone operations. Discover more at https://kittyhawk.io

Joshua Ziering

Joshua is the Co-Founder and Chief Pilot of venture-backed Kittyhawk and a founding member of the Unmanned Aviation Safety Team. Josh is an FAA Part 107 certificate holder and has been flying all manner unmanned aircraft for 15 years. He has piloted everything from a 15 foot Taco Bell Chalupa Blimp to 40 pound 150cc aerobatic aircraft. As an accomplished flyer, Josh has flown professionally for the NHL, ABC Television and various manned-aviation airshows. Josh is a self-taught programmer and entrepreneur. After studying Poetry at Arizona State University, he started and sold several successful businesses. Josh writes regularly for DroneBlog, Drones360, Unmanned Aerial, sUAS News and is oft quoted in publications such as Aviation Today, CNN, Fast Company, Reuters, Rotor & Wing International, sUAS News and Vice. Josh eagerly shares his love of aviation and often-polarizing opinions on where it’s headed at industry conferences including Drone World Expo, Georgia Drone Summit, Public Safety Drone Expo and Xponential.