Skydio
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Skydio's budget-friendly drone gets a battery and range boost
Skydio is updating its excellent 2+ drone with improved battery life and radio range.
Skydio 2 review: The best self-flying drone is now a great all-rounder
Around a year and a half ago, Skydio blew my mind. The then-unknown company presented the R1 drone to the world, and it was quite special. Typically, follow features and obstacle avoidance aren't very effective, or only work in certain modes (i.e. with compromises). Skydio's R1 put these features front and center, and it did them incredibly well. But there were still caveats. The R1 was prohibitively expensive ($2,499 at launch), large, clunky and limited in what it could do beyond all that following and obstacle avoiding. Enter the Skydio 2, the company's second take on a drone. It's cheaper, smaller and much more versatile. The hope is that it will be the much-needed DJI rival we deserve, and I'm excited about it enough to say right here that it is. But, and yes there are some buts, it still has some edges that need smoothing out. I'll get to those in good time, but for now, let's start with the positives.
Skydio's station lets self-flying drones work around the clock
Skydio wants to make its self-flying drone useful to companies who want drones in the air at all times. It just revealed a Skydio 2 Dock system that lets the drone charge itself and, ideally, run with virtually no human intervention. The robotic flyer uses inertial and visual navigation to touch down on a charging pad that extends from a box that both feeds power (from a wall outlet or vehicle) and transfers data through Ethernet or WiFi.
Skydio’s next self-flying drone is ready to take on DJI
When Skydio revealed the fully autonomous R1 drone, it was truly impressive. This thing could follow you like no other drone before, or since. You didn't need to wear anything (like AirDog), and its visual tracking system was smart enough to avoid almost any obstacle in its way, even at speed. But the R1 was kinda big (like a large pizza box) and at $2,500, prohibitively expensive for the majority. You also couldn't really control it yourself in a meaningful way, so it wasn't as versatile as DJI's cheaper Mavic 2 Pro.
Razer's mobile chief is leaving to join drone company Skydio
Razer's senior vice president and general manager Tom Moss is leaving the company for the role of COO at Skydio, a company that focuses on autonomous drones. The announcement, which Moss made via a Medium post, comes right after the mobile company launched the Razer Phone 2, the successor to its first large, gaming-optimized device which launched last year.
Skydio's follow-me drone takes commands from your Apple Watch
Skydio's highly autonomous R1 drone is already mostly hands-free. Now, however, you might not need something in your hands even when you do take control. It's releasing an Apple Watch app for the R1 that offers basic control in those moments when you'd rather not pull out your phone. You can tell it to follow one of the people it sees by tapping on a thumbnail, switch between cinematic modes and even turn the drone by spinning the crown. You won't be piloting the R1 with the same dexterity as on your phone, but it promises to be a lot faster for those moments when you just want to make a quick tweak to the flight path.
Skydio drops the price of its R1 follow-me drone to $1,999
Today, Skydio, the company behind the camera drone R1, announced new features for its autonomous photography and video device. These include new Skills which are focused on obtaining quick, easy video clips that are optimized for sharing on social media. They can also be used as a shortcut to obtaining different angles for longer videos. These One-Shot Skills include Dronie, Boomerang, Vortex and Rocket, and Skydio has added a Stabilize option to help streamline editing shaky video.
Skydio's R1 drone can autonomously follow your car, too
Skydio's AI-powered R1 drone can autonomously track subjects like a champ, but until now it's been limited to following humans. Now, the company has introduced a feature called Car Follow cinematic mode that can film you on four wheels and not just two feet. Skydio said it trained the R1's neural networks on large data sets of car images, helping the 13 cameras automatically follow your vehicle while ducking any obstacles.
Skydio R1 review: The ultimate follow-me drone comes at a price
In a park, perched on San Francisco's East Bay, I set down Skydio's R1 drone, open an app on my phone, click "launch" and do something I would normally never do. I walk straight under a tree, knowing full well that the R1 will follow me and that the branches are directly in its flight path; I am trying to make it crash. I fail. I repeat this task a few more times, even with the drone flying backward, but try as I might, the R1 slips right under (and sometimes over) the tree's canopy. I am doing nothing but walking, no controller or phone in my hand; the R1 is figuring this all out by itself. Should I be surprised at this? In theory, no. When drone newcomer Skydio recently revealed the self-flying R1 ($2,499), the main selling point was its superior ability to follow a target and avoid obstacles at speed. But drones have offered various versions of follow-and-avoid for a while, and in my experience, none has really nailed it. Hence my surprise at how deftly the R1 avoided Californian topiary, right out of the box.
After Math: Market fluctuations
It's been a volatile week for us all, what with the stock market's unpredictable undulations, the US Senate's DACA drama, the Olympics hacking and whatever other craziness that's sure to happen between the time I file this post and Sunday morning. It was pretty wild for the tech industry as well. Turns out that Apple's HomePod seemingly secretes wood-marking oils, Sony announced it'll cut the price of its VR headset by a third, and Netflix continued its spending spree, blowing $300 million on the guy who brought us "Glee." Numbers, because how else are you going to count stuff?
The Skydio R1 might be the smartest consumer drone in the sky
Autonomous features in commercially available drones are nothing new. Heck, I'm old enough to remember when DJI Phantoms didn't even offer follow-along technology. Shorter version: Most every drone worth its rotors possesses some level of autonomy. But then there's Skydio's R1, which ratchets things up a notch. Or two.
Watch an autonomous drone deftly avoid obstacles
Skydio, an aerial drone startup, recently released an impressive highlight reel of its first UAV nimbly avoiding obstacles as it followed a group of cyclists during their ride through Menlo Park, California. Unlike the new DJI Phantom 4, which will simply halt its forward progress and try to fly over an obstruction, Skydio's unnamed prototype barrels right through them.
