Calgary’s Denvr Dataworks and Ottawa’s Dominion Dynamics have announced a partnership to develop a sovereign simulation environment for unmanned drones that fly alongside crewed fighter jets.
“We believe Canada can be a world leader in building autonomous systems that operate in extreme environments.”
Denvr provides purpose-built, high-performance AI and cloud infrastructure. The partnership will see Dominion leverage Denvr’s Canada AI Platform (CAIP)—a fully sovereign AI platform based entirely within Canadian jurisdiction—to develop a simulation environment to train these autonomous collaborative platforms (ACPs).
“We believe Canada can be a world leader in building autonomous systems that operate in extreme environments,” Eliot Pence, CEO of Dominion Dynamics said in a March 25 statement. “By partnering with Denvr, we will create a secure, Canadian-owned simulation environment to train and validate an autonomous wingman for the Canadian Armed Forces and our allied partners.”
That simulation environment is designed to assist the Royal Canadian Air Force in testing concepts of operations against different types of ACPs, according to Dominion. During simulation, operators can test things like propulsion speed, altitude, and endurance across different types of mission objectives to evaluate how the ACP systems perform.
“We can iterate and test far faster than we ever could in the real world,” Pence said in an email to BetaKit.
The simulation is already under development, and Dominion estimates it will be ready for use in approximately three months. From there, the defence company expects operational drone capability to come online within 24 to 30 months.
Geoff Gordon, the CEO of Denvr, said the company’s platform was tailor-built for a partnership like this.
“Dominion Dynamics is building something remarkable—an autonomous wingman capability from the ground up, by Canadians for Canada’s security,” Gordon said in a press release. “The Canada AI Platform was built for exactly this purpose: a sovereign AI platform, designed to Canadian defence standards, operating entirely under Canadian jurisdiction.”
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Once operational, the simulation system will be integrated with the Canadian Armed Forces, which Dominion and Denvr are working with throughout the development process.
“Integration with the Canadian Armed Forces is core to how the system is designed, tested, and ultimately operated,” Pence said.
The partnership between the two companies comes on the heels of Dominion’s announcement of a $50-million investment toward developing autonomous drone capabilities. The joint simulation environment will aid in the development of those capabilities and contribute to NORAD modernization, arctic defence, and Canadian Armed Forces readiness, according to Dominion.
Pence said Dominion is designing its ACPs primarily for use in the Arctic, where the unmanned aerial vehicles will need to contend with high altitudes, long distances, extreme cold, and limited infrastructure. With that type of high-north security in mind, Pence said Denvr’s sovereign infrastructure is crucial for training purposes.
“[It] allows us to train and iterate on these systems domestically, with full control over the data and infrastructure, which is critical for defence applications,” he said.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Feature image courtesy SaaS North.