Matters of Ability, Questions of Trust

Skydio has debuted its latest Enterprise drone, the Skydio X10—a model embodying an eminently useful synthesis of cutting-edge data-capture cameras, autonomy, and versatile hardware conducive to applications within the defense, energy, public-safety, transportation, construction, and communication sectors.

The Skydio X10’s features include:

• A 48-MegaPixel (MP) zoom camera capable of reading automotive license plates at over a distance of eight-hundred-feet, a fifty-MP-wide field-of-view camera capable of detecting minute details the likes of 0.1-millimeter cracks in concrete, and a 640 x 512 Teledyne FLIR Boson+ radiometric thermal camera capable of locating missing persons in total darkness by means of measuring temperature differentials.
• An open and modular airframe designed for durability, versatility, and adaptability. The X10’s airframe features four payload bays, replaceable gimbal sensor packages, and an IP55 weather-resistance rating.
• Skydio’s Connect solution, which offers users a redesigned point-to-point link, a multi-band radio capable of functioning in contested and jammed environments, and a 5G radio for limitless range within areas covered by cellular service.
• Onboard Artificial-Intelligence (AI)-powered autonomy incorporating ten-fold improvements in computation power and custom-designed navigation cameras featuring optical fidelity ten-times better than previous camera generations. So equipped, the X10 may be navigated with increased confidence under more challenging flight-conditions.
• Skydio’s all-new NightSense technology, which facilitates autonomous flight in zero-light environments, and the all-new X10 Spatial AI engine, which enables real-time environment mapping and fully-automated modeling via 3D scan and onboard modeling.
• Backpack portability and deployment in fewer than forty-seconds.

Skydio co-founder and CEO Adam Bry stated: “The Skydio X10 combines the sensors customers need to get the data they care about, with the airframe and autonomy to put those sensors in the most important places at the most important times. It can do everything expected of leading manually flown drones, but it has the autonomy to enable a scale, scope, and impact that has so far been elusive for the drone industry.

Mr. Bry added: “X10 is a reflection of everything we’ve learned from our customers over the last three-years, a technology foundation with a decade of R&D behind it, and the work of an incredibly talented and dedicated team at Skydio. Our end goal at Skydio is not to build drones but to build successful drone programs. The journey is just getting started.”

The X10’s arrival at market coincides with the Western word’s fundamental shift away from Chinese manufactured Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS, colloquially, drone) platforms. As the use of UASs by government, military, police, and industrial agencies and organizations has grown increasingly common and comprehensive, concerns have arisen among end-users and lawmakers alike vis-à-vis the security of drones produced by companies owned by and/or beholden to the Chinese Communist government.

Founded in 2014 and based in San Mateo, California, Skydio is an American manufacturer of Unmanned Aerial Systems. The company comprises personnel possessed of expertise in disciplines such as AI, robotics, aerospace engineering, imaging technology, and electric propulsion.

In March 2021, Skydio became the first U.S. drone manufacturer to exceed $1-billion in overall value.

On 07 February 2023, following a three-year period during which the company’s resources and market share grew by a reported 2,900-percent, Skydio announced it had raised $230-million by dint of a Series E funding round, thereby bringing the company’s total funding raised to $562-million and its overall valuation to north of $2.2-billion.

Since 2022, Skydio has increased its personnel roster by some forty-percent. What’s more, the company’s new 36,000-square-foot, Hayward, California manufacturing facility has boosted Skydio’s drone production capacity by a factor of ten. To meet the projected future demands of its rapidly-growing global customer base, Skydio expects to create over 150 manufacturing jobs at its Hayward facility and other U.S. locations.

By virtue of their outstanding durability, maneuverability, configurability, and autonomy, Skydio UASs are eminently conducive to Battlefield Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); cinematic endeavors; law-enforcement overwatch; fire-fighting; search and rescue; bridge, power-plant, powerline, digital distribution, and cell-tower inspection; and job-site security and progress monitoring.

Mr. Bry concluded: “Drones enable the core industries that our civilization runs on—transportation, public safety, energy, construction, communications, defense, and more—to operate more safely and more efficiently, by putting sensors wherever they’re needed, whenever they’re needed, while keeping people safely on the ground.”

FMI: www.skydio.com