Reinforcing its long-term commitment to make camera drones a safe and integral part of the many vertical markets served by its network of more than 11,500 AV dealers, Stampede (www.stampedeglobal.com) today announced the formation of a strategic alliance with Phoenix, Arizona based Unmanned Vehicle University (www.uxvuniversity.com) to develop certification programs for manufacturers and customers seeking to incorporate camera drones into their businesses.
“This partnership is a breakthrough for the ProAV community, one that marks the first step in a long-term relationship to provide the growing market of commercial camera drone buyers with an approved educational path to being certified to use camera drones in a safe and sanctioned way,” explained Stampede President & COO Kevin Kelly. “We will work closely with the university to utilize their current degree and certificate programs and work with their team to develop customized courseware for specific vertical market applications.”
According to Unmanned Vehicle University Provost John Minor, “UVU is the world’s best provider of unmanned systems education and training and Stampede is the world’s best provider of system and support solutions to the ProAV industry. Together, we are going to help commercial camera drone owners and operators safely integrate drones into their businesses and profit from an enormous and ultimately unstoppable market opportunity.”
Minor emphasized that Unmanned Vehicle University is prepared to design and deliver dedicated manufacturer based product training that is customized to show vertical market specific dealers how to integrate unmanned aerial vehicles into their product offerings to customers. “We can educate dealers on how to integrate drones into their commercial offering and then provide the necessary training to both their employees on the category and their customers on how to operate the drones, providing a complete turnkey solution. What’s more, the dealers will profit when they resell UVU’s unique training courses. Furthermore, we can provide training guidance and counseling to all students to help them start a career in this rapidly growing and expanding field.”
Amplifying the importance of the complete solution offered by UVU, Stampede’s Kelly noted that it has been estimated that the size of the commercial drone market will grow to be 12% of the $98-billion in cumulative global spending on aerial drones over the next decade. “We actually think the growth could be even faster if regulatory agencies finalize their rules concerning licensing and training. This partnership with UVU will help our customers to be ready to go when these licensing and training regulations are finalized. It will also allow our dealers to offer UVU’s training courses to their end-users as part of their camera drone offering and profit on every class they sell. This is another example of how Stampede helps customers to stay ahead of the herd.”
Kelly emphasized that the biggest challenge lawmakers face is to evolve the laws to protect the public airspace while not preventing the ongoing development of the technology. “The good news is that there are nations outside of North America that have allowed the commercial use of drones and our lawmakers will learn from those ongoing developments. I believe that our demonstrated history of removing obstacles in a safe way will win out again on this issue. Already, specialized schools like UVU are developing educational programs to train operators as agencies rapidly develop safety standards for all owner-operators to follow.”
About Unmanned Vehicle University
Unmanned Vehicle University (UVU) is the first University in the world licensed to grant Doctorate and Masters Degrees in Unmanned (Air, Ground, Sea, and Space) Systems Engineering and a Certificate in UAS Project Management as a totally online curriculum. The University’s primary focus-area is on Unmanned Air, Ground, Sea, and Space Systems education and training. Most of the faculty at the school have PhDs in engineering and combined experience of over 500 years. The schools UAV instructor pilots have combined experience of over 60,000 hours in Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, Hermes, Heron, Aerostar and many small UAVs. UVU is located in the heart of downtown Phoenix. The University is located at 1 East Washington Street, Suite 500, Phoenix, Arizona 85004. For more information about courses and degree programs, call (602) 759-7372, email [email protected], or visit www.uxvuniversity.com.
About Stampede
Known for its value-added distribution, Amherst, New York-based Stampede is the leading distributor of presentation equipment including LCD/DLP projectors and flat panel displays. Stampede provides a complete range of brand name presentation equipment to a variety of audio/video, computer, and home theater resellers and integrators in the United States, Canada and Latin America. These resellers rely on Stampede for value-added services in distribution, marketing and solution- based sales. Stampede annually produces the “Big Book of AV,” a 1000-page catalog and companion website (www.BigBookofAV.com) providing hundreds of sales, installation and spec tips for Stampede’s dealers in addition to product details on more than 5,000 SKUs. For more information on Stampede, log onto www.stampedeglobal.com.
