New SKYDIO 2 ANNOUNCED with crazy good obstacle avoidance!

no comments? good, bad or indifferent? like i said im not sure about IQ yet and im a skeptic but damn, the obstacle avoidance system appears to be a game changer compared to anything out there at the moment and very accessible for the price. yes / no?

david
 
mcgeedigital said:
IQ is everything, so I'll reserve judgement until then.
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i am with you 100%. on most of the videos ive seen there is quite a bit of smearing and pixel smudging. since this drone is moving & tracking "in tight" to the subject and changing directions at a much more fierce pace than your average DJI drone im wondering if it just youtube falling apart because of so much motion dramatically changing vs typical drone flying that tend to be a little higher up and a bit more sedentary.

a Skydio response i saw on their FB page stated the drone shoots at 100megabit which is basically what the phantom 4 pro is i think.

david
 
Seems like this is more about exploiting features in a "set and forget" style of shooting. I saw a motorcycle vlog YT channel where the guy was riding in remote areas while filming himself with the drone. You could see him on the bike controlling the drone (and not riding properly). It was in no mans land - neither riding the bike nor controlling the drone well. I imagine there are countless cases where people would rather be doing their activity than worrying about operating the aircraft/camera.

So while this looks like a fantastic option for go pro type shooting/people actually outside doing things, on the pure IQ front it looks very average IMO.

The controller looks awesome though, I'd be all over a DJI controller that had more of a gaming joystick feel vs. the sticks.
 
Unfortunately I never heard of this company .....and I just bought a Mavic Air 2 months ago!
Ouch
 
Never understood, what you can't easily just get it to follow/track the controller (which is GPS located via the phone connection)
 
My Yuneec Q500 can follow the controller, but the controller is huge compared to a little beacon. They all work by comparing the GPS position of the quadcopter to the GPS position of the controller/beacon. In an ideal world, you still have a spotter that can control the device with a remote while it tracks the beacon. Then if it gets into trouble, the spotter can save it. I don't think this is set up that way, and is a problem when the controller is used as the beacon because the person doing the activity should not worry about the copter (because it is dangerous).

The FAA pretty much shoots this follow the beacon mode down. You are not in direct line of site control. You are not in control through FPV with a spotter (direct line of site) to take over if things get bad. Since this is a USA company, I'm surprised it is even coming to market with these kinds of features. I think the features are great, but they are counter to the FAA rules (unless they have made a radical change).

Speaking of rules, has anyone that hobby flies in the USA reviewed all the new stuff that the FAA needs us to do? My quad has been in storage for a long time, kind of afraid to fly it based on all the hysterics lately. Certainly not going to fly it without going through the new process.
 
I went ahead and put a deposit down on this last night. I have a sUAS remote Pilot certificate and fly with a visual observer. The feature set/price on this looks good- hopefully I will know for sure in November.
 
American company and apparently these guys went to MIT together.

https://www.newsshooter.com/2019/10/03/skydio-2-0-a-dji-mavic-pro-2-competitor/

This is not Skydio’s first rodeo. They have made drones in the past, including the autonomous Skydio R1, which is no longer available.

The company’s founders met as grad students at MIT in 2009 where they pioneered autonomous drone technology. After MIT they helped start Google’s drone delivery program, Project Wing. Skydio was founded in 2014, and in 2018 they launched R1 which was widely regarded as a breakthrough in autonomous drones for consumers and as a platform for commercial development.

Skydio is an American company and they claim that the Skydio 2.0 is the easiest to fly, least likely to crash drone on the planet and we’re proud to be building it right here in America. Our customer support team sits in the same building with the engineering team that designed the product. We manufacture and repair Skydio 2 across the street. If you have any issue, we’re here to help. And we stand behind Skydio 2 with a simple promise: if you’re operating your Skydio 2 within our Safe Flight guidelines, and it crashes, we’ll repair or replace it for free. It’s that simple.
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That somg finally made me turn off the video, but i am still sold! Take my munnay!
 
ive had somewhat mixed feeling about the IQ of the Skydio 2 from much of the videos ive seen but there have been a few that have looked pretty good to me although maybe {not quite} as good as the DJI P4P or Mavic 2...? this video though for some reason looks better than anything ive seen so far. my complaint about some of the other videos rendered much of the trees / brush parts of the image are on the mushy side obviously the codec is falling apart.

this particular video for some reason looks like the quality i get out of my P4P. i wonder if lots of the uploads to youtube are really reliant on getting the perfect export from whatever editor. i cant say i know the perfect formula but i usually upload from my PRHQ master file. maybe some of these more crappy looking videos are being exported with something less pristine which maybe explains the lower quality and variance ive been seeing.

THE BAD: the distance the Skydio 2 can fly is not good. about 1/2 mile seems to be it then it starts breaking up and loses signal. argh! also there is no "telemetry" on this thing. huh! that really sucks but they sort of say they might add it. would be good to know how high you are at least. i dont see this as a replacement for my P4P but it definitely is very strong where the phantom is not.

i gather the Skydio is not a hot item on DVXuser but id love to hear some feedback and impressions of this thing especially from an IQ POV. there are a lot smarter people here on this site than me and i have always enjoyed what people have to say.

this video represents the very best that ive seen so far. if i can get this id be very happy considering how cheap it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOn0pBdcrsw

david
 
I have one, but haven't flown due to two snowstorms in the last few days.

Exceedingly well built vehicle. The beacon is also well built. The controller is a repurposed Anafi controller from Parrot, and is disappointing as far as build quality is concerned. Hopefully, Skydio will engineer its own.

in addition, the software is simply not as robust as any of the more professional UAVs from DJI. DJI as well, owns the long range game with Occusync. However, given the FAA restrictions on LOS, the range is adequate.

Skydio was upfront in announcing early on that telemetry would not be available as the initial release, but would be added later in a firmware update. The footage I've seen out of the drone is hit and miss, and that can be attributable to user error, upload compression, and the time of the year. Given the smaller size sensor, some of it is pretty darn good, and rivals the MP2 with its one inch sensor.
 
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