Botlink Excited to Announce Successful Rural Delivery Long-Distance Operations

FARGO — Botlink is proud to announce successful completion of long distance UAS operations as part of the UND’s Center of Innovation. This test project demonstrates the capability of UAS to deliver medical supplies to rural locations, an incredibly important use case for the state of North Dakota.

The flight operations took place on Sept. 29 in collaboration with UND’s Center of Innovation (a drone-control hardware and software company),  Utah State University’s AggieAir and Dunlevy Consulting. The team carried out two flights, each covering 53 nautical miles with approximately 63 minutes of airtime — surpassing the project goals of achieving electric vehicle (EV) flights beyond 40 minutes and more than 50 miles in distance.

As part of this demonstration project, the Botlink XRD2 was connected during this operation, transmitting C2 and video in real-time over the Verizon cell network, showing the flexibility of available cellular technology for UAS operations.

“Botlink CEO Terri Zimmerman’s leadership in North Dakota UAS has been great to watch, and our organization was pleased to partner with Botlink and Badland Batteries as we demonstrated endurance missions with North Dakotan UAS and North Dakotan energy storage systems,” said Matt Dunlevy of Dunlevy Consulting.

“Working with Amy Whitney and Jeff Barta of the UND Center for Innovation was also fantastic, as always. The success of this mission underscores North Dakota’s growing capability to lead the nation in energy-resilient aerospace operations.

“It also validates the strength of collaboration between industry and academia in advancing homegrown innovation that can compete globally.”