The agreement will see 300 Nokia Drone-in-a-Box units deployed to enable emergency response, perimeter protection and infrastructure inspection, with the aim of helping to keep public safety workers safer.
This is the second nationwide Nokia Drone Networks project after Belgium's Citymesh deployment.
For Nokia it is a further demonstration of its abilities to help modernise digital infrastructure projects, utilising mission-critical industrial edge computing (MXIE) with the support of 3GPP technologies for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) autonomous operation.
The drones, which will operated remotely, are intended to gather relevant information within the first minutes following an emergency, enhancing first responders' situational awareness and public safety agencies in Switzerland can tap into the nationwide drone network by simply requesting a drone flight, similar to a ride-sharing service, from Swisscom Broadcast.
This collaboration is a major step forward in providing Drones-as-a-Service at a national scale and in the further development of large-scale projects.
The deployment will facilitate reliable Drone-as-a-Service operations at scale in Switzerland with Nokia Drone Networks, a turnkey Drone-in-a-Box solution that integrates the drone, a docking station, a ground control station, a payload with video and thermal cameras, related software, and service components.
The solution also supports interfaces and APIs for easy third-party integrations, such as traffic monitoring systems, video management software, dispatch solutions, and industrial inspection and process monitoring systems.
This collaboration will also enable the advancement of industrial use cases, automation, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, and the expansion of 3GPP technologies for drone use in Switzerland.
Dominik Müller, CEO at Swisscom Broadcast, said, “Together, we can speed up the go-to-market of our Drones-as-a-Service offering to our customers in the industrial and public safety landscape in Switzerland. The integration of our existing People Density Tool and our Drone Operations expertise with Nokia’s industrial grade hardware in combination with an open and future proof Software architecture is an important key to support such large-scale projects.”
“Nokia Drone Networks solution enables large-scale projects as it incorporates our mission-critical industrial edge (MXIE) technology to power its advanced computing functions and software,” added Raghav Sahgal, President of Cloud and Network Services at Nokia. “It will undoubtedly help Swiss enterprises gain access to a superior Drones-as-a-Service offering to enhance worker and public safety.”
