Sony to develop drones for enterprises as part of IoT push

Sony Mobile has agreed to collaborate with a Japanese robotics company ZMP to develop drones for businesses. The companies are forming a joint venture, named ‘Aerosense Inc.’, which is slated to be incorporated in early August of this year.

The new company will develop and launch enterprise solutions using autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles for image capture combined with cloud-based data processing.

Under the partnership, Sony’s camera, sensing, telecommunications network, and robotics technologies will be leveraged alongside ZMP’s automated driving and robotics technologies together with their business experience in industrial fields.

Aerosense Inc. will combine these assets and develop comprehensive solutions that meet needs including measuring, surveying, observing, and inspecting. It will aim to roll out these services for enterprise customers beginning in 2016.

“Sony Mobile is proactively engaging in new business creation initiatives, with a particular focus on the Internet of Things (IoT) sector. This joint venture represents a part of this push into IoT, as Sony strives to provide its customers with additional value by developing and managing total package cloud solutions,” Sony said in its statement.