Beyond the Build - Skydio X10: Connectivity
Skydio Connect enables seamless communication between the Skydio X10 drone, controller, and web browser through three differentiated connectivity options: SL, MH, and 5G.
- Connectivity is, is probably the second thing everyone asks
- for.
- The camera and the connectivity. I need range.
- Um, certainly in urban environments, the high RF means that even
- though you may not wanna go 12 miles, you need a signal that's strong enough to
- do
- that because you're gonna be flying in RF rich environments.
- You'll fly behind trees, behind buildings, and that's not only important for flying
- by hand with tactical operations, um, but that's also important for advanced
- operations like drone as first responder.
- Rather than just focusing on the, the single radio link between
- the, the controller and the drone, we, we took a, um,
- a approach where we want to sort of enable a, a, a suite of connectivity
- options. And, and between those three connectivity
- means, we have a rich
- fabric that allows crisp video and responsive controls and seamless
- connectivity, no matter how complicated of a mission you
- throw at the X10.
- We kind of started over from the ground up with new hardware that was optimized in
- terms of its sensitivity and antenna performance to provide
- maximal coverage in all directions.
- We added, uh, capabilities that, that improve performance in a
- congested environment by sig- significantly improving the
- link that transmits from the controller to the drone.
- We have an asymmetric link. The command and control that is
- used from the controller to the drone is very, very narrow.
- We don't send a lot of data to control the drone.
- The downlink is actually standard.
- It's a meaningful and significant benefit, and it sustains the
- link further out and make it much more robust.
- The multiband radio on the X10 offers a wide range of flexibility,
- allowing users to select specific frequencies tailored to their operating
- environment. This was an important design consideration for
- optimizing radio
- performance in support of global government and international customers.
- With this next generation, uh, uh, drone, the one feature that I'm most
- excited about is the maximum range that we're gonna get.
- So in our case, we basically use, uh, do a lot of, uh, innovations in the
- materials that we use, in the type of PCB materials
- that we choose, the type of
- wires we actually put into our system for better shielding, better, uh, noise
- immunity, and, uh, better noise rejection from the
- environment around it.
- The X10 has a 5G cellular modem directly
- integrated in that allow you to sort of hand off seamlessly between a
- controller and, and a remote operator in a,
- in a web browser.
- Being able to pilot,
- uh, from anywhere to anywhere is really the next generation of,
- like, where drones need to go. You need to be able to put them on a,
- a wide area network, like a cellular network,
- and give access to the
- video stream. And so we, you know, really thought about a lot of the use
- cases for
- streaming, for direct connection, for remote operation,
- and, you know, we're like 5G cellular has to be in our
- next generation
- product.
- You can now have this one tool that has so many incredible
- innovations inside of it, and a wireless system that allows you to
- extract all that information in real time wherever you
- are, whether you're right next to it flying it
- manually, or if you're sitting
- somewhere in your office and you're flying it remotely.
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3 Mins 14 Secs