A look inside self-flying drone startup Skydio

TL;DR

Startup employees at Sky Do are working on fully autonomous drones that use software systems to track and capture people's activities.

Transcript

what's up temperatures we are at sky do HQ where we're gonna chat with a group of startup employees who are building autonomous drones that can track your every move we're gonna chat with their CEO and see what they're up to let's check them out the basic idea for what we're doing is we think fully autonomous drones are really the future of the ind... Read More

Key Insights

• 🥃 Sky Do believes that fully autonomous drones with advanced software systems are the future of the industry.
• 🛃 The company started with limited resources and evolved their prototypes to the custom hardware platform they have today.
• 🧑‍🦽 The drones are designed to capture unique and exciting content of people doing activities without the need for manual control.
• 🎥 Cameras are an integral part of modern life, and Sky Do sees drones as the next evolution of camera technology.
• 👯 They emphasize capturing scenes involving people, as they are the most interesting subjects.
• 👶 The company aims to create a new category of drones with tracking capabilities and expects it to have significant market potential.
• 🤪 The prototypes and final product went through multiple iterations to ensure reliability and performance.

Questions & Answers

Q: How did the idea for autonomous drones with tracking capabilities come about?

The CEO and co-founders of Sky Do always believed in the potential of fully autonomous drones. They started with basic prototypes and concentrated on building their software systems from the beginning.

Q: What were the challenges in the early stages of prototyping?

In the early stages, the company used off-the-shelf quadcopter frames, media center computers, and USB cameras. The prototypes were scrappy but allowed them to develop the core software system.

Q: How did they improve their prototypes over time?

As the company evolved, they built more sophisticated rigs with multiple cameras, enabling advanced software development. They later developed custom hardware platforms to achieve their desired product goals.

Q: Why did they choose to prioritize stereo pairs of cameras looking in every direction?

Sky Do aimed to create trustworthy autonomy, allowing users to trust the drones to fly without constant attention. Having stereo pairs of cameras in every direction was crucial to achieving this, despite the associated challenges.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Sky Do believes that fully autonomous drones are the future of the industry and has focused on building the core software systems.

• The company started with scrappy prototypes using off-the-shelf quadcopter frames and media center computers, eventually evolving to develop their custom hardware platform.

• The drones feature multiple cameras for trustworthy autonomy and are designed to capture unique content of people doing exciting activities.