Blog

Drones hold the potential to touch a myriad of industries, unlock new business outcomes, and deliver countless benefits. This is especially true when legacy methods involve heavy equipment that can be costly, inefficient, and disruptive or involve dangerous activities that can put professionals' lives at risk (e.g., industrial inspectors or first responders). Drone technology is continuously evolving, with a range of aircraft and sensors driving an opportunity that is forecasted to be worth $42.8 billion by 2025.

Professional drone pilots understand the difficulties of operating manual drones for enterprise applications: the ever-present risk of crashing, having to turn down drone applications that are lucrative but just too risky, and a steep learning curve requiring heavy self-teaching.

Skydio, the leading US drone company and world leader in autonomous flight, announced the general availability of Skydio Autonomy Enterprise Foundation (AEF), a broad set of advanced AI-pilot assistance capabilities for enterprise and public sector operators.

Solving the challenge of bringing drone operations to scale has been the holy grail for many in the industry. A lot goes into this process to get buy-in and funding from executives and regulatory institutions with a lot of that revolving around being able to demonstrate multiple levels of safety and security, value, and performance metrics. And all of this usually has to happen before a program even gets started.

Drones eliminate many of the pain points associated with snooper trucks and other legacy methods for bridge inspection. Drones are cheaper to buy (few thousand vs. 200k-500k for a truck), cheaper to operate (reduce cost per inspection by 75%), safer, non-intrusive to traffic, more environmentally friendly (no traffic jams)

In previous weeks, we’ve shared with you details on our new aircraft and autonomy solutions , and how they will upend a variety of drone use cases. This week, let’s dive deep into one of these use cases — Situational Awareness — to understand how Skydio autonomous drones improve outcomes and make everyone safer.

In last week’s blog, I shared with you some of the ways Skydio X2 was built to meet the needs of some of the drone industry’s most forward-thinking fleets. This week, I’d like to share some ideas about autonomy — what true autonomy is and why it matters, and how it will impact drone operations across the industry.

Skydio has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Next47 with participation from Levitate Capital, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, and Playground.

The Chula Vista Police Department’s new Close Proximity, Low Altitude (CPLA) waiver to enable Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) missions in emergency situations. This waiver is the result of months of collaboration on patrol drone operations, ground risk reduction, and policy innovation between the CVPD, the San Diego UAS Integration Pilot Program, and Skydio.