Skydio團隊非常關注無人機的自主性，它可以在跟蹤目標和躲避障礙物的同時自行飛行。沒有自動機場支持的飛機要靠人起飛降落，帶回家充電。對于面向消費者應用領域來說，這不是什么大事。但對于工業界來說，因為人工昂貴，而且幾乎總是忙于做其他事情，需要全自動或在最少的人參與的情況下完成任務。Skydio 2無人機依托美式郵箱的自動機場，伸縮機庫能夠防風防雨，可裝在手提箱中運輸，在幾分鐘內即可完成安裝，你可以在幾乎任何地方設置它，并讓你的無人機可以長期獨立完成任務。
飛行軟件使無人機能夠使用其六個機載攝像頭建立一個360度的環境地圖，躲避障礙物，拍攝周圍環境，然后下來充電。無人機會降落在一個漏斗形小著陸平臺上，機場內的電動手臂將無人機和著陸平臺拉入機庫進行充電。無人機將需要大約一個小時的充電時間，然后它就可以再次進行23分鐘的飛行。
Skydio的自動機場是他們與DroneDeploy的第一個行業合作伙伴關系的一個組成部分，DroneDeploy是一個無人機地圖平臺。舉個例子：你可以讓一架skydio 2機場專用無人駕駛飛機駐留在一個建筑工地，然后它會在你需要的時候在工地上飛來飛去，并把一張工程進展的地圖發給你。由于無人機總是在現場，隨時待命，不需要專業飛手進行值守作業，它可以近乎實時地按需提供數據，作業數據的后處理也是自動化的，沒有人參與意味著收集數據的成本足夠低。美國聯邦航空管理局（faa）可能不允許這樣做。“根據現行條例，必須放棄超視距（bvlos）。我們認為，小型、輕型、安全的機場無人機具有先進的導航和防撞能力，是連續作業的最佳選擇。我們的總體看法是，我們有責任確保該系統滿足所有相關的安全和后勤問題，并與監管機構合作，負責任地推廣這項技術。”首席執行官亞當•布萊說。
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The word “autonomy” in the context of drones (or really any other robot) can mean a whole bunch of different things. Skydio’s newest drone is probably the most autonomous drone that we’ve ever seen, in the sense that it can fly itself while tracking subjects and avoiding obstacles. But as soon as the Skydio 2 lands, it’s completely helpless, dependent on a human to pick it up, pack it into a case, and take it back home to recharge.
For consumer applications, this is not a big deal. But for industry, a big part of the appeal of autonomy is being able to deliver results with a minimum of human involvement, since humans are expensive and almost always busy doing other things.Today, Skydio is announcing the Skydio 2 Dock, a (mostly) self-contained home base that a Skydio 2 drone can snuggle up inside to relax and recharge in between autonomous missions, meaning that you can set it up almost anywhere and get true long-term full autonomy from your drone.Obviously, this is something that you can only do with the level of autonomy that you get with Skydio’s drone, because there’s no human pilot in the loop. From launch to landing on that alarmingly small platform, the drone can fly itself, although a remote human can step in if they want to at any point. once the drone is safely back in its carry-on-size weatherproof box, the drone spends about an hour recharging (you’ll need to plug the box in for this), and then it’s ready to go again for a 23-minute flight. Conceivably you could have the drone in the air every hour and a half collecting data for you.Skydio’s dock is an integral part of their first industry partnership with DroneDeploy, a mapping platform for drones. One potential application is that you could have a Skydio 2 drone living inside of a dock on a construction site, and then it’ll fly around the site as often as you need it to and send you back a map of how much things have progressed. Since the drone is always on-site and ready to go and doesn’t need to coordinate around a human operator, it can give you data on-demand in near-real time, or even after the fact: Tell it to fly every day, and then if you want to know what happened a week ago, the data will be there—no human involvement means that the cost to collect data is low enough that there’s no reason not to just do it pretty much constantly.Well, there’s one reason not to just do it all the time, which is that in the United States it’s probably not allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). CEO Adam Bry said that:“Under current regulations a Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) waiver would be required. We think that a small, light, safe drone with advanced navigation and collision avoidance is an excellent candidate for persistent autonomous operation. Our general view is that it’s our responsibility to establish that the system satisfies all relevant safety and logistical concerns, and work with regulators to roll this technology out responsibly.”
The FAA does grant a fair number of waivers like these, and as Bry says, Skydio has a platform that they can (hopefully) show to be safe and reliable enough that the FAA will be cool with it. But this is yet another case where regulation is falling behind technology, and it means that you can’t just start using this system for your business without having to jump through some government hoops first. This is the problem with being a company that’s so far ahead of the curve, I guess—sometimes you have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.
Skydio also sees its dock system as being valuable for first responders, where real-time data from a drone can potentially save lives. Instead of someone on-scene having to devote their attention to drone management. In these cases, having a person intermittently in the loop to request specific views might be a more typical use case, but not having to worry about takeoff or landing or flying would make things much more efficient: you can just ask for the data you want and the drone will provide it, and it won’t bother you about anything else.
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