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Forget Xperia, Sony’s mobile team is working on drones

Sony’s mobile division has just teamed up with a robotics company called ZMP to work on new drone technology.

ZMP, which Sony already invests in, has been developing autonomous driving technology for a while now, but this marks the company’s first attempt to ‘lift off’.

The company’s mission statement reads as follows: “Robot of Everything: To create a safe, fun and comfortable lifestyle with robotics technology”.

The joint venture will be called ‘Aerosense’ and is due to launch next month off the back of a 100 million yen capital investment – that’s just north of £500,000/$800,000.

Sony’s statement reads as follows: “Sony Mobile Communications and ZMP Inc. have agreed to collaborate on the development and launch of enterprise solutions using autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles for image captured combined with cloud-based data processing.”

The rough outline of the plan suggests Sony will provide camera, sensor, and communications technology to ZMP.

ZMP will then handle the robotics side of things, in an effort to create drones that can take images and beam them to the cloud.

Related: 11 jawdropping videos that will make you want a drone

Unfortunately, the big caveat here is the word “enterprise” – Sony is targeting business clients with its drone efforts.

The drones will begin their journey “to the skies” with business customers in 2016.

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