Ribbit
Ribbit, a Toronto start-up founded in 2020, retrofits small aircraft with autonomous autopilots to run a pilotless cargo service for remote communities.
With 11 to 50 staff and about 1.07 million US dollars raised, it is testing on a Cessna 206 and says its system handles every phase of flight under remote supervision. It reports 1.3 million Canadian dollars of government contracts for autonomous cargo in northern Canada; the register has not verified them.
No verified deployments yet
Ribbit is profiled in the companies register, but no deployment has been verified against published evidence. Records are added as evidence is reviewed and graded.
Products & Solutions
1 productAutonomous Autopilot Retrofit System
A hardware and software package that retrofits conventional fixed-wing aircraft to enable fully autonomous flight from gate to gate, covering taxi, takeoff, cruise, obstacle avoidance, airport circuit entry, and landing.
Remote, rural, and coastal communities in Canada and similar regions lack affordable, high-frequency air cargo service because small aircraft operating costs, particularly pilot costs, make frequent deliveries economically unviable. Removing the onboard pilot reduces operating costs sufficiently to enable reliable next-day or two-day cargo service to these communities.
- Fully autonomous gate-to-gate flight including taxi, takeoff, cruise, and landing
- Remote pilot supervision from ground control station
- Scalable remote pilot to aircraft ratio (target 1:2 or 1:3)
- Retrofittable to existing conventional fixed-wing aircraft
3 more features
- Designed initially for ultralight and light general aviation aircraft, targeting 6 to 19 seat class
- Obstacle and traffic avoidance
- Operations designed for Transport Canada regulatory compliance
Technical specifications (5)
- Sensors, software, and electronics installed on modified conventional aircraft
- Initial deployment on Quad Challenger-2 two-seat aircraft
- Target scale: 6 to 19 seat fixed-wing aircraft
- Over 200 hours of hands-free flight completed as of July 2023
- Special Flight Operations Certificate issued by Transport Canada in 2022
- Transport Canada Special Flight Operations Certificate (2022)
Register notes
Notes held in the Aerostack register. Aerostack has not independently verified them.
Ribbit is building autonomous cargo aircraft to serve approximately 120 remote northern Canadian communities accessible only by air, where pilot costs make current service frequencies economically unviable.
Read the rest
Its retrofit approach, converting small aircraft (starting with Cessna 150s) to autonomous operation, follows a similar strategy to Reliable Robotics and Xwing but at much smaller scale and with a specific social mission.
The CA$1.3M Transport Canada contract for an autonomous flight trial is a significant regulatory validation milestone.
Profile data from the Aerostack companies register; deployment records from the verified register. Evidence grades: T1 first-party confirmation, T2 credible reporting. See Our approach for how records are graded.