Vantage Towers, Staex, and EVA join forces to realize reliable and secure business drone corridors

2023-08-01

The collaboration aims to create the world's first Web3-controlled drone delivery corridor.

Vantage Towers AG (Vantage Towers), Staex GmbH (Staex) and Electric Visionary Aircrafts GmbH (EVA) have signed a cooperation agreement. The goal of the cooperation is to realize the first Web3-controlled drone delivery corridor in Berlin, which will also be the first of its kind worldwide. The cooperation and the underlying technology will enable secure, reliable drone use in a commercial environment, creating in particular the basis for a new generation of efficient, autonomous delivery services. The project represents an important milestone for the global delivery drone sector.

As a leading European tower operator, Vantage Towers will use this Proof of Concept to gain experience and know-how in order to provide its infrastructure and space for the take-off and landing sites, so-called vertiports, needed for commercial drone operations in the future. Berlin-based software company Staex will contribute its software and expertise to ensure reliable and secure communication between humans and machines. EVA, a leading developer of drone super highways on four continents, brings extensive expertise in creating advanced drone infrastructure.

As part of the collaboration, Vantage Towers will acquire the experience needed to allow drone ports to be installed and operated near radio towers on land provided by Vantage Towers. In addition, the drone ports provide the option to recharge the drone after it has landed. The proximity of the vertiports to the radio towers ensures connectivity of the drones, which is particularly relevant for functional drone highways within and between cities.

Delivery drones will change the way we think about logistics and play an essential role in future smart city concepts, where Vantage Towers' infrastructure will be a key enabler. I am all the more pleased that Vantage Towers will be at the forefront of shaping this exciting sector through its partnership with Staex and EVA. At Vantage Towers, we are always open to new business models that can share our infrastructure.

Juan de Miguel 
Head of Technology Strategy and Innovation
Vantage Towers

We are extremely excited to collaborate with Vantage Towers on this ambitious project. Vantage Towers' space offers exactly what drone corridors need: a dense network of sites with space for take-off and landing, power supply for charging the drones and connectivity. This makes Vantage Towers the ideal partner for us. Together, we will drive the evolution of sustainable & user-centric micro-transportation and shape the future of an autonomous machine-to-machine economy.

Prof. Dr. Alexandra Mikityuk 
CEO & co-founder
Staex

For the test flights and autonomous deliveries, a delivery corridor is planned in Berlin, which has its starting point at a station in the Ullsteinhaus (The Drivery). From there, the delivery drones can fly to two different vertiports on the grounds of the Tempelhofer Hafen shopping center. Leveraging the power of a mobile 5G Network, these stations will unlock a multitude of possibilities for drones, showcasing their advanced capabilities.

The project will demonstrate the importance of saved time and energy especially in locations that will be hard to reach. The project also addresses critical use cases by enabling the delivery of essential and urgently needed goods such as medicine, potentially saving lives.

Web3 control plays a central role in implementing the various practical use cases. There are different control methods for drones, such as remote control by an operator or autonomous flights through pre-planned routes. Web3 control, with the help of advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, could lead to improved autonomy of drones that can perform complex tasks without constant human control. The payment flows around logistics by drone could also be handled entirely via blockchain.

Following the successful completion of the project, the partners intend to continue collaborating on similar projects throughout Europe in the future.

Contact

For media inquiries and further information, please contact:

• Staex GmbH
  Paksy Plackis-Cheng, Chief Strategy Officer
  E-mail: @staex.io
• EVA
  Sid Venkat, Global Account Manager & MD
  E-mail: @eva.xyz
  https://eva-labs.com/
• Vantage Towers
  Robin Hagenmüller, Expert External Communications
  E-mail: @vantagetowers.com
  https://www.vantagetowers.com

About Vantage Towers

Vantage Towers is a leading tower company in Europe with more than 84,000 sites in ten countries, connecting people, businesses and devices in cities and rural areas. The company was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in Düsseldorf. Vantage Towers' portfolio includes towers, masts, rooftop sites, distributed antenna systems (DAS) and small cells. By building, operating and leasing this infrastructure to MNOs or other network providers such as IoT companies or utilities, Vantage Towers is making a significant contribution to a better connected Europe.

While already 100% of the electricity that Vantage Towers uses to operate its infrastructure is obtained from renewable energy sources, green energy generation is piloted directly on site with the help of solar panels and micro wind turbines, and also hydrogen solutions are under testing. This fits well into the overall strategy of the company to drive a sustainable digitalization in Europe and to support partners through technological innovation in decarbonization and achieving their climate goals.

About Staex

Staex GmbH is an award-winning software company based in Berlin. Established in 2019, Staex had been excubated from Deutsche Telekom and provides a unique software-defined infrastructure consisting of a secure overlay network and service orchestrator. Their solutions empower businesses to run software seamlessly, operate geographically distributed and fully decentralized infrastructure, and leverage the benefits of IoT and Industry 4.0 innovations. Staex's contributions have been acknowledged through prestigious awards such as the Deep Tech Award by the Berlin Senate, Winner Security in the Innovation World Cup, and runner up of Paris Blockchain Week.

About EVA

Electric Visionary Aircrafts (EVA) was founded in 2017 and has emerged as a global leader in drone infrastructure. With an extensive product line of over eight stations and the ability to transport payloads of up to 250 kilos, EVA offers a comprehensive range of services. These include edge cloud capability, quantum key encryption, on-time delivery, an e-commerce and logistics marketplace connecting businesses with drone operators, and the development of drone super highways on 4 continents.

Staex is a secure public network for IoT devices that can not run a VPN such as smart meters, IP cameras, and EV chargers. Staex encrypts legacy protocols, reduces mobile data usage, and simplifies building networks with complex topologies through its unique multi-hop architecture. Staex is fully zero-trust meaning that no traffic is allowed unless specified by the device owner which makes it more secure than even some private networks. With this, Staex creates an additional separation layer to provide more security for IoT devices on the Internet, also protecting other Internet services from DDoS attacks that are usually executed on millions of IoT machines.

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