North Carolina-based Lucid Drone Technologies has chosen T-Mobile to provide IoT connectivity and management for its growing fleet of industrial spraying drones that provide commercial cleaning services.

Maintenance teams that wash exterior windows and perform exterior cleaning of commercial facilities face risk of injury and high insurance and equipment fees. Drone technology, paired with T-Mobile’s network, has the power to help keep these people safe and save money.

Lucid and T-Mobile are collaborating to put maintenance teams and exterior cleaning companies out of harm’s way using drone technology for high-risk facilities maintenance work such as exterior soft-wash cleaning and high-rise window washing. The companies also plan to leverage T-Mobile’s 5G network in the future to fly drones beyond line-of-sight and power more data-intensive capabilities such as video streaming.

Commercial property management firms and developers make significant investments to keep maintenance teams safe. Expensive liability insurance premiums and equipment fees have facilities leaders looking for new and cost-effective technologies. This is where the partnership between industrial spraying drone pioneer Lucid and T-Mobile come in with drones equipped to clean exterior building surfaces and windows.

The industrial spraying drones powered by T-Mobile can perform exterior washing for commercial building surfaces and windows, including outdoor stadiums and arenas, hotels, and university structures. That means maintenance teams can steer clear of some high-risk tasks, keeping them safer and focused on other mission critical work.

T-Mobile’s network powers critical capabilities for the drones such as real-time sharing of flight data, battery use information, hardware diagnostics, and delivery of firmware and software updates. Additionally, T-Mobile’s control centre will give Lucid the ability to view and manage the connectivity of its industrial spraying drones.

With the automation and provisioning capabilities of T-Mobile’s IoT platform, Lucid can accelerate deployment of its growing fleet. It will have near real-time visibility to all its industrial spraying drones with the ability to monitor network conditions and device behaviour.

Initially, T-Mobile will deliver 4G LTE connectivity to the industrial spraying drones, providing a reliable connection nationwide. Lucid expects to use the 5G network in the near future for use cases such as network operations centre access, live streaming video and remote piloting.

T-Mobile says it is paving the way for new drone applications that rely on low-latency, high-speed data, and real-time location and proximity-based services.

“At Lucid, we are committed to providing robotics that allow our customers to complete jobs that were once dull, dirty and dangerous in a safer, faster and smarter way,” said Andrew Ashur, CEO of Lucid Drone Technologies. “T-Mobile not only allows us to provide our customers with the highest quality of real-time support and connectivity today, but they also have impressive 5G capabilities that allow us to push the frontier limits of responsible robotics.”

Callie Field, president of the T-Mobile business group, added: “Lucid Drone Technologies is a great example of a customer using originality and new technology to solve complicated problems. It’s not very often that you get to collaborate with these kinds of thinkers, and we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to offer our technology to help bring their vision to life.”