Skydio Dock for X10 Engineering Q&A | Skydio Ascend ’24
Skydio product and engineering leaders follow the introduction of Skydio Dock for X10 with a deep dive on the technology and an open Q&A session with customers.
Learn more about Skydio Dock for X10.
- I'm Brian Richmond, senior director of product management here
- at Skydio.
- The keynote presentation just wrapped up here.
- We hope you had a great time, and we're excited to have you here with us
- virtually.
- All of our R&D teams have been working hard to prepare our products,
- including many
- of the prototypes that you saw today for this moment,
- and we're excited to give you
- a look under the hood during this session.
- We've got two of Skydio's most senior R&D leaders here to answer some of the most
- common questions we get about this technology.
- Do you two wanna go ahead and introduce yourselves?
- Sure. I can go first. Uh, good afternoon or good morning, everybody.
- My name's Alden Jones. I lead customer success
- and product here at Skydio.
- I'm working on year number five. And one of the things that's great about
- leading
- both those teams is I get to spend a lot of time in the field talking to customers,
- hearing about what's going well and what's not,
- and then I get to come back to the
- office and work on those problems.
- So excited to be here today, and I'll pass it off to Ryan.
- Great. My name is Ryan Redding. I'm VP of software engineering here at
- Skydio, uh, and I just crossed my four-year mark here
- at Skydio.
- Um, I've been working in spaces like this for
- over twenty years now.
- Uh, I started my career, um, in technology act- actually after,
- um, September 11th, and I was, uh, doing, uh,
- technology work to support folks that were out there supporting our,
- our national
- security missions and, uh, and then, uh, move
- into, uh,
- uh, supporting, uh, enterprises and digitizing physical
- operations, um, and then joined Skydio here, um,
- with everything that you're seeing
- today.
- Great. Thank you. So Ryan, Alden, and I were watching the chat during the
- keynote,
- and we've been aggregating your questions to figure out which areas are gonna be
- the most interesting to you. But as we go along here,
- please feel free to keep on
- submitting questions in the chat, and we'll get to as many of them as we
- can.
- And as a reminder, for questions relating to technical specs
- and s- things like
- product data sheets, uh, you'll be able to find those at
- skydio.com.
- For purchasing and sales questions, please email sales@skydio.com.
- But our goal here is to use this time to focus on some of the product details that
- are not as available to you unless you're here with us now on this virtual event.
- So before we jump into product questions, uh, can you both talk a little bit about
- why you joined, joined Skydio and what drives you now?
- I can take that first. Uh,
- so I started my career in the Army, uh, and then moved on
- to heavy industry like trucking and, and critical infrastructure like telco.
- Um,
- and one of the things that I feel very fortunate to have as an
- experience but
- was very formative was the feeling of what it means
- to rely on a piece of technology to keep myself
- safe, to keep my friends and my team members safe, or
- for our livelihoods, to do our job.
- Uh, and if you can imagine things like GPS
- or night vision,
- um, a lot of people had to work really hard,
- um, to give
- us those technologies and for me to be able to use them
- reliably, reliably in the
- field. Uh, and, and our customers are doing really
- sometimes dangerous and, and, and always critical work.
- Uh, and so every morning I think about my past
- and I wake up and I'm
- motivated to come deliver the next generation of technology and, and I
- think that that's drones and, and that's why I'm here at Skydio.
- Cool. Yeah, I, um,
- I love working on stuff that matters
- and, you know, watching the keynote today
- and like thinking about all the stuff
- that our customers are, are doing is, is super motivating.
- Um, and, you know, I also love, uh, the fact that we're able to
- support our military, um, at Skydio, and it kind of
- brings me back to earlier in my career, um, when I was, uh,
- kind of working more in
- that space. Um, so I'm thrilled to be doing that here.
- Uh, but really the thing that brought me into Skydio, uh, is,
- uh, is this
- vision of what can be accomplished with connected fleets of autonomous drones.
- And I think we're seeing a lot of that, uh, come to life here, um, with
- the, the product announcements that we have, um, what's happening
- out with DFR across cities across the US.
- Um, I couldn't be more optimistic about the
- potential of this.
- Super thrilled to be working on it.
- Great. Thanks. So we'll start to move into the product
- questions now,
- um, and the live chat. And again, please, please keep those questions coming.
- Um, I thought we'd kick things off, uh, by first talking about
- the biggest differences between the Dock for X10 announced today and the previous
- Skydio Dock for S2 and X2.
- Yeah. Um, Adam talked about this a little bit,
- and I think the, the place to
- start with this is just
- recognizing that this isn't our first Dock.
- Um, in fact, as I said, I've just been here, um,
- for about four years and, you
- know, one of the things that I was excited about was seeing-- when I, uh,
- when I
- first, uh, was interviewing at Skydio, there were prototype Docks being
- built and tested and evaluated then.
- Um, so this has been a lo- a technology, like, long in the making.
- We've been learning about this for a long time.
- Um, we had our first generation product with
- Dock for X2, and we've been
- rolling all of those learnings up into the product.
- Um, and so as we've been thinking about what
- is the greatest Dock we could build
- for X10, there's been kind of three main pillars.
- We've been focusing on the ruggedization of the product, reliability is a key
- feature, um, Adam talked about that at the keynote, uh,
- and then having the best
- connectivity solution possible.
- Yeah, maybe just to dive into that a little bit more.
- Uh, I don't know if we're gonna have slides in
- the chat, but you saw a little bit
- of this in the keynote. Um, we saw the stress testing that we were
- doing. And as an example, we have these two really beefy
- motors that are able to open the Dock and break through freezing
- ice that might be caked in if you're up in Alaska.
- We have a mega HVAC unit, uh, so when we're flying in Vegas and it's
- a hundred and twenty degrees, we can keep things rolling.
- And then other things along connectivity, I mean, we, we've spent a lot of
- time on roofs for the last year getting ready for this.
- And, you know, when it's hot and cold, uh, sometimes that's not as much fun.
- But what is great is now that's-- those learnings have rolled into the
- product.
- And so what you saw with Connect Access Points is a great example of this.
- Our original Dock had the radios right there in the Dock.
- And sometimes you might wanna put that Dock in a different place than where
- you
- wanna have line of sight- Uh, to see, uh, the Dock and the
- drone connecting from a point-to-point radio perspective.
- And so just a tremendous amount of things like that that we've integrated into this
- product. And ultimately, all this comes down to the outcomes
- that our customers are gonna be able to get with that.
- And, and fundamentally, this product offers a
- tremendous new capability to deliver outcomes that we could not before.
- Yeah. You saw, um, on the slide there some of the stuff
- that we're doing in the lab
- in terms of, like, cold chambers, shaking tests.
- There's a bunch of, like, synthetic testing that we're doing.
- We can see that here.
- Um, we're also just doing a tremendous amount
- of testing, just like the demos that,
- uh, you saw up in the keynote. So we have a permanent installation wind
- wall that's
- running, uh, essentially full time, running au- autonomous missions
- up and down, collecting lots and lots of flight hours.
- We have folks on a- on the roofs at headquarters flying every
- day.
- Um, but then the other thing is we've actually gotten this product out
- with
- customers. Um, and we talked a little bit th- uh,
- about this,
- um, in the keynote. Um, but our alpha program has been a, a, a
- hugely important aspect of making sure that we have a product that actually
- works in the real world. Um, so we've been, you know,
- out in the heat in
- Nevada. Um, we've been up on the rooftops in New York.
- We've been all around with this product, um, putting it through its paces in kind
- of real world scenarios. Um, and I think that's, like,
- just super critical and
- super necessary, um, to actually having a product that works.
- Tunnels in Japan too.
- Tunnels in Japan.
- Uh-huh.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Yeah.
- Um, getting back to reliability, just talk a little bit about the actual
- design,
- um, of the Dock as well. So the design of the Dock has
- fundamentally changed from,
- uh, the Dock for X2. So the Dock for X2 had a sliding arm.
- It had a cradle. And we were leveraging Skydio's great autonomy to
- do precision
- landing, um, into that cradle. Um,
- but at the same time, it's a bit of a precarious, um, type of,
- of design, and so
- we've taken all of that learning and, and folded it into what you see
- now, which is a, a platform design.
- Um, and, uh, you can see the results as we're, like,
- testing
- landing in wind, landing in wind and rain, landing at night.
- Um, we wanna make sure that that product is designed so it works every
- time,
- and that we've put it through our paces so that we can know that it's gonna work
- every time for our customers.
- Yeah, that's awesome. So there's been, been a couple of questions coming in.
- I thought we'd take a quick tangent, answer a couple of those,
- then we'll get back
- to some of the connectivity stuff.
- Um, Paul's asking, uh, about mobile Dock solutions.
- So to sort of expand on that question, uh, I think, um, we should
- talk a little bit about can you mount a Skydio Dock on a, on a-
- Yeah
- ... moving vehicle, uh, in a dynamic environment?
- It, it, it's a great question. And Alden, you can add in on this.
- But, uh, the Dock is designed to be, uh,
- portable, but not mobile. Um, so you can take it and you can move
- it, say, onto a construction site temporarily,
- put it there, allow it to do useful
- work for you. When it's done, pack it up, um, move it to a next location and do
- that. Um, but, uh, withstanding the kind of, uh,
- you know, daily jolts that it would get on the back of a
- vehicle, um, the Dock
- is not designed for that. Um, so that is not a recommended ins- installation.
- I mean, fundamentally, just back to reliability,
- the shake test that you saw in the
- slide, that was for us to test that as it's being transported across
- the country to where you need to install it, that this thing's gonna come out of
- the box and it's gonna work. So we're trying to think really end to end
- from the
- moment that you're talking to your sales rep until five years later when
- this thing is still operating on your site.
- I, I ... And, y- you know, another, like, aspect on this, we've, we've thought a
- lot about, um, like, whether that should be a use case that we support-
- Yeah
- ... um, with, with Dock for X10. Uh, and, um,
- certainly w- would love to continue to hear more about
- use cases that, uh, that,
- that customers have and ideas. Um, but, uh, I think
- ... I wanna, you know, bring attention to kind of the full suite
- of capabilities.
- A lot of the use cases that came up there could also be solved by
- using
- a hand launch-
- Yep
- ... um, X10 and remote capa- remote operations
- capabilities-
- Yep
- ... um, and without needing the complexity of a
- Dock.
- Um, and so, you know, when we look at kind of the,
- the suite of needs out there,
- um, actually having a truly, like, mobile mounted in a, in a, in a
- vehicle Dock was, was not a high priority.
- Yeah. Connect Fusion is not just for Dock. It's for all of our X10 platforms.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, maybe we'll, we'll get back to that.
- So we're talking about reliability, ruggedness.
- We'll go a little deeper maybe on the, on the connectivity bit now.
- Um, we talked about Fusion today, the, the seamless switching between point to
- point and cellular. Uh, maybe we can talk a little bit about
- when you
- might be using the Connect Access Points versus when you might use cellular, and,
- and what kind of actual real world performance you might expect from those.
- I, I can maybe start off. So back to for the intro there where we
- were talking
- about we just wanna build systems that work for customers.
- We know that our customers are, are really advanced, but in order to scale
- this, we believe that fundamentally things just have to get
- simpler.
- And so the core premise around Connect Fusion is that it just works,
- and you don't
- have to think about it. And so the idea that you're able to switch
- between
- multiple different and redundant different types of
- communication paths is
- really critical to the overall vision.
- Yeah. Uh, and I think a key thing that's important
- about
- the Access Points and the reason that we created the acces-
- Access Points is we
- just have a wide variety of customers doing different use cases that need
- optionality. Um, so with our current generation
- products, you have a controller, and the radio and the antenna
- are baked into the
- controller. And with the Dock, the radio was baked into the Dock.
- And so you had to kind of choose, you know, am I ...
- Do I need to be in the best position for me, or do you need to be in the best
- position for the mission? Where's the best position for the Dock
- versus where's the
- bes- best position for the antennas?
- Um, and so Access Points give us that optionality to be able
- to place the radio in the place where it's gonna be best for the mission while
- allowing the person- Um, or the Dock to be in the best place, um,
- for, for it. Um, and y- so Adam talked a bit about this.
- We can see some examples of, of use cases here. You know, I think we...
- On the, on the battlefield, you know, there's a desire to be undercover, be
- in protected location as the operator, but have your, your radio
- out in the place where it's got the best visibility.
- Um, so that's a pretty key use case, but you can see that coming back in for,
- like,
- law enforcement. You know, even just being able to be in a hot day in
- the, in the
- comfort of your air-conditioned truck-
- Yeah
- ... um, that gives you a lot of flexibility.
- And then of course for docked operations, um, having, having ideal placement for,
- for antennas and radios is super critical.
- I think part of the thing that, uh, enables access points too,
- and we saw this a
- little bit in the demo, is Skydio's autonomy.
- Uh, I've been out flying distro lines with a
- customer, I won't say who,
- and we were out there for a few days and in North Carolina, and
- yeah, it's... We all wanted to sit in the truck. It
- was hot, it was sticky.
- Um, but you, you can't do that unless you fundamentally trust the
- system not to
- crash into things, and that's something that
- is very unique to Skydio, that,
- um, these two technologies combine and allow a different
- kind of outcome, uh, than we think any other system on the
- planet.
- So the other thing about, uh, the access points, another dimension of,
- of flexibility is the antennas.
- Yeah.
- Um, so again, with the previous Dock and controller, we had fixed antennas, um,
- in
- there. Um, with the access point we have standard
- antenna connectors, um,
- so that we have optionality for choosing the right antennas for the mission.
- Um, so, um, for example, you know, in a, in a Dock, uh,
- deployment you may wanna have, you know, omni antennas that provide you 360
- degree coverage for an area. But if you're on the battlefield examp- for
- example, you know you're flying in a certain
- direction and you might wanna use
- directional antennas to maximize your, your range, um, in that.
- And so access points also provide flexibility for, um,
- improving range, im- improving kind of operational coverage
- depending on what
- you're trying to accomplish.
- Uh, maybe just to preempt a question too, and those two examples of directional
- antennas on the battlefield and omni antennas for Dock, those
- are our initial
- launch antennas, and then we'll continue to build from
- there.
- Yeah. And so, uh, you know, may- maybe getting back,
- you'd asked about performance.
- Um, the, uh...
- I think fusion is a super important dimension to this,
- and Adam talked about this.
- So especially in urban environments, um, these are
- interference heavy environments.
- Um, and so, you know, when we're kind of testing in ideal kind
- of
- rural environments and you have like, you know, good line of sight
- and not a lot of
- interference, you're gonna get lots of range.
- But in these urban environments, you're gonna have that reduced.
- Um, and so this idea of being able to leverage
- kind of the ubiquitous
- nature of cellular but have, like, coverage area, and having the system,
- like, really, like, manage that for you so that the system just
- works,
- um, is, is, is super important. And, you know, the testing that we've seen has
- shown that. Um, you know, I, I imagine there's gonna be, uh, there,
- there... You know, lots of questions on, like, cellular.
- We're working heavily with T-Mobile right now.
- We've seen great results on a lot of occasions, but there's areas where, um,
- it's,
- it's, it's not as good. Um, but I think when we can start pairing
- these
- technologies together to give optionality, um, we give lots of ways to actually,
- you know, set up the system to accomplish the
- mission.
- Yeah.
- Great.
- The combinatory effect of all these technologies I think
- is the story of Skydio,
- right? You- vision plus GPS, cellular plus point-to-point
- radio, and we're seeing this across the industry.
- Combining technologies ultimately allows you to achieve results instead of just
- relying on a single one.
- Great. Thank you. I'll, uh, I'll, I'll hit on a couple, uh...
- There's been a couple follow-up questions around mobile Dock, and I'll just hit on
- those to say that, um, disassembly of the Dock is required
- for transport.
- Yeah.
- Once you are on scene, you can very quickly reassemble
- and deploy, um-
- Should we maybe just talk a little bit about, like, the
- portability of it and, like-
- Yeah. So, so Dock breaks down into three different
- pieces.
- Uh, we, we've been doing this a lot in our,
- in our alpha testing.
- Also, Dock come-
- The, the, the three different pieces, the, the roof comes off.
- Yeah. The roof comes off.
- The body comes off the legs.
- Main body and the stand.
- Um, and then it's a, a... It supports a two-person lift.
- Two-person lift. Uh, we're doing this today quite frequently in
- our early
- access program. Also important, you know, when you, when you do
- purchase the Dock platform, all of our deployment services come with
- that. And that includes physically helping you
- get the Dock into position,
- helping you figure out what kind of infrastructure you're gonna want to go
- with
- that. Some people are looking for more resiliency and,
- and different kinds of
- connectivity options in really remote areas, and some people are trying
- to put Docks like we're talking about with DFR on top of really tall
- buildings, and there's different paths
- that you need to take to do that.
- No matter what happens, part of what you get in the deployment
- service
- is Skydio deployment engineers on site with you, helping you make sure
- that you're... We will achieve the results that you need,
- and that
- we're telling you in advance the correct connectivity options that
- work in your area of operations.
- This is another aspect that I think has been informed by,
- you know, having gone
- through this a few times. And we actually spent a lot of time during
- the design
- phase making sure that the Dock could be
- transported by a dolly comfortably by one person, and make sure that we had the
- weight distribution in such a way so that we had portability there,
- making sure the
- dimensions were such that you could fit through a standard
- door.
- Um, so there's been a lot of thought in terms
- of like, you know, the, the actual,
- like, logistics of, like, running these things into the design.
- I think, I think we saw a little quick GIF,
- maybe nobody s- saw it in the keynote,
- but of a few of us dragging a early prototype up a really
- steep set of stairs in a relatively cold, slippery environment, and we
- know that those kinds of things are gonna have to happen.
- We want to think about every possible range of options for where deployment
- needs to happen, and we've built the system to accommodate
- that.
- I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and have us change gears a little bit, um,
- talk about
- another popular question here. Uh, folks on the chat are
- wondering what Skydio Dock costs. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- Yeah. I mean, at a high level, so there's different configurations, uh,
- especially
- when you get into the radios and attachments that you're gonna want for
- your drone.
- But you should essentially budget around $50,000 for the hardware.
- But I think really zoom out of that, uh, of that way of
- thinking. I- Dock overall and how Skydio wants to work with
- our customers is about delivering solutions.
- Uh, and so when I think about how you're going
- to leverage Dock,
- it's not just, "Hey, can I buy this piece of hardware?" It's
- how are we
- gonna have the regulatory framework to support the
- operation that you want? How are we gonna deploy this correctly?
- How are we gonna maintain this? Um, all of those things, that full
- end-to-end picture, is how Skydio is thinking about Dock.
- What I would say is you should probably budget around $50,000 a year total.
- Uh, and we think about this as a five-year
- program.
- Uh, and that full end-to-end solution is how we like to engage with our
- customers, and we think ultimately that's the right
- way to engage.
- This is not something that you go to Best Buy and buy.
- Uh, this is something that you want a partner shoulder to
- shoulder with you in the
- field working through the nuances of your operation so that you can get the
- outcomes that you need.
- I, I think this is super critical in that, you know,
- we have a cool piece of hardware up here.
- Yep.
- You know, it's got some shiny lights on it.
- Um, but at the end of the day, like setting up a program, um,
- and like what's happening with DFR, like we're just on the bleeding edge.
- The industry's on the bleeding edge of setting this up.
- Um, and you know, Adam highlighted this in the keynote,
- there's a lot of moving
- parts to bringing together. Um, and we're trying to bring together as much
- of the
- technology solution as we can to, to be a highly integrated solution.
- Um, but we also wanna be partners in like
- standing up these
- programs, bringing in best practices, bringing in knowledge from across the
- industry, um, and really being a partner for you
- and being successful in
- setting up these programs. So it's, it's less about buying the hardware
- and more
- about how do we like set up a successful program.
- And you know, I, like getting back to like why I joined
- Skydio, you know, as
- an engineer, uh, and an engineering leader, um,
- that's the other thing that I love
- about this is, you know, we're out there with our customers all the
- time.
- I mean, I love going on site. I love having the engineers go on site,
- see what's
- going on. Um, we've done ride-alongs with like, uh,
- police
- departments, understand the day-to-day, and fold that like learning back
- into our development process. Um, and I think that's something that's
- really unique that Skydio brings to the table.
- Um, and I'm really proud of it, so, um, I'm, I just wanted to
- call that out.
- Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I mean, the, the best example of that, it's an extreme
- example, is that we've all been to Ukraine.
- And we did that because it felt disingenuous to try and solve
- or help solve the problems that they're facing without being there
- ourselves.
- Uh, one other thing I'll say is, you know, on the customer success side, myself and
- a lot of the folks on the team, we built drone programs before we came to
- Skydio. Uh, I built a program that did about 30,000 flights a year,
- and I'm really proud of that, but I think
- ultimately w- when we're thinking about this kind of
- disruptive and big change
- technology, change management in your organization is,
- is a
- real thing that we want to help you with.
- And all the documentation and regulatory services
- and all the services that we're
- talking about ultimately are in the service of helping you
- conduct change management in your organization because we know that we
- are part of an existing ecosystem.
- Defense was defending us before we got here.
- Law enforcement was protecting us before we got here.
- Uh, you know, utilities were keeping the lights on before we got
- here.
- And all of those use cases or, or industries
- were doing that with a suite of technology before we got here.
- And now that we're here, we know that we need to plug into that existing
- ecosystem because getting the data where you need it in your system of
- record is not just a technology solution, it's, it's a programmatic
- solution, and we wanna help you with that change.
- I'll, uh, I'll shift us to another category of
- question.
- Uh, quite a few of these were coming in towards the beginning as
- well as this
- morning's keynote. Um, when will the Dock begin
- shipping?
- When can folks expect it in the wild?
- Yeah, so I think we talked about this a little
- bit in the keynote, but maybe to get
- in a few more details. So, uh, early next year, but for us, we,
- we plan on putting our first, uh, early access next gen Dock
- down in January. Uh, the early access
- program is already booked up, so we're gonna be cranking hard to get
- those things
- in the field, confirming everything that we've talked about here.
- And then orders that are coming in today should be shipping,
- uh,
- in summer, and we're, we're excited to get after it.
- Great. There's been a lot of, uh, strong international interest in the chat
- as
- well. Uh, I thought we should address that.
- Um, when will we be shipping internationally
- and or where?
- How do we think about that?
- Yeah, so maybe just to start like with the-
- Sure, yeah
- ... the basics on this, and you can add on.
- Um, but to start, uh, we're gonna be focusing on US and
- Japan as our primary markets. Um, and uh, we're gonna be
- spending our energies there. We absolutely see this as a global
- product,
- um, and see the opportunity, um, for it having impact across the world.
- Um, so that is something that's high on our
- radar, and we're gonna be mo- moving
- aggressively, um, to supporting.
- Um, but we're gonna make sure we land it, um, super well here in the US, um, for
- our US customers and Japan customers first.
- Yeah. I, I, nothing to add.
- Great. Uh, there's been ... Maybe we'll shift over and talk about, uh,
- DFR Command a little bit. Um, a specific question that has come in,
- um, I think, I think maybe there's some follow-up based
- on what folks saw this
- morning, uh, in the end-to-end demo.
- Um,
- can you fly more than one drone, uh, at the same time?
- Uh, and what are the ... Why might you want to do that?
- Well, it's a great question. Well, uh, we showed it here live on stage-
- Yeah
- ... uh, that, uh, that multiple drones, um, are supported.
- And you know, I think if you just think about programs at scale,
- um, like that is
- an inevitability. You know, we're kind of moving, kind of looking,
- you know,
- backwards from a- Um, you know, a typical deployment where one
- person hands on joysticks in the field, like flying a drone.
- Um, and, you know, especially as the technology
- and the regulatory like landscape
- changes that, you know, you're gonna have centralized command, um,
- and
- operators that are basically in control of like multiple drones doing useful
- things. And the autonomous nature of the drones
- are really what enables that.
- Yep.
- Um, and certainly there's software
- integrations.
- Um, team has put a tremendous amount of work,
- um, into the, the
- experience that you saw here, um, on stage.
- Um, and you know, that, that's actually something that
- is like quite
- complicated that, you know, just kind of looks seamless.
- Um, so, you know, I think we can get a lot more into like
- what are the important
- aspects of something like DFR Command in terms of like reducing cognitive load,
- helping people fo- focus on the thing that matters.
- Um, but the TLDR is, um, we will support flying multiple drones.
- Maybe, maybe one thing to add on there, and this goes back to how much we
- enjoy getting shoulder to shoulder with our customers.
- I mean, we
- ... Some, some of the folks on the team
- were UAS military operators before coming
- to Skydio, and there's a,
- there's a, uh, concept there called on station transfer,
- which we think,
- just to go deep real quick into DFR for a moment, is absolutely
- applicable for DFR. We saw in the demo here, you know,
- Deepu was
- looking at, at the suspect. There was another incident happening in this
- case, so
- he wanted to dispatch a drone. But we also know
- that we have customers who are
- doing, you know, barricaded subjects, and they might be flying for hours, right?
- The negotiator, it, it might take time to get through
- that stuff.
- And so you can imagine a world where we know that batteries or fuel are,
- are not infinite, so whether you have a gas-powered engine
- or not, uh, and you
- don't wanna lose situational awareness.
- The idea of returning home, losing awareness, sending something back.
- So
- the workflow end to end is so important to us,
- and going deep for something
- like on station transfer for the DFR, the platform that you
- saw today allows and enables those kinds of workflows.
- And I think we can think about that across all of our customer segments.
- Like, that's the kind of depth that we want to get into,
- and we probably shouldn't
- talk about it here, but we'll get ...
- It'll get down into the weeds of just what's the easiest way for you to even
- move
- the mouse the least amount [laughs] possible to click the button.
- Yeah. Yeah. Um, th- you know, I guess maybe just to kind of riff off of
- DFR Command, you know, I think, you know, the importance of it
- goes well beyond just like the operation of drones.
- Um, so making, you know, we kind of
- w- got right into it on stage here, but this idea of like data that's coming
- in
- from-
- Yeah
- ... these systems of record coming right into
- the operating, um, you know,
- uh, uh, screen of, uh, of folks that are in these com-
- command centers and being able to like seamlessly, you know,
- dispatch drones, dispatch resources, um, to get
- to incidents that, that matter quickly, um, is, is super critical.
- And like that requires tight integration with all of these systems, and I think
- that's just a fundamentally important capability.
- And then, you know, flying the drone is important,
- but we're not flying drones to
- fly drones. We're flying drones to get information to
- be able to make decisions.
- So things like having a ready link that you can distribute around to
- the people that matter so that the folks that
- are making decisions about the
- resources to deploy, about like the type of force to use,
- about how to engage,
- have that information, um, that's a huge part of, uh, of the value
- proposition of DFR Command. Um, and then, you know, the end of it here, um,
- in the resolve phase is like capturing all that data, um,
- in a way that you
- can, uh, you know, store it for processing, um,
- for evidentiary purposes, um, or establish, uh, community
- transparency. Um, this is the full picture of what needs to
- happen to be
- successful. Um, and you know, that's, that's really what DFR Command
- is all about.
- Yeah.
- There are a couple, uh, a couple specific questions, uh, which,
- which I think we've
- answered, but maybe not, uh, super directly, which I'll take on here
- around battery swapping and charge times.
- So I think we just spoke about on station relief, and I think that, that is key
- here. That is our priority right now to have the
- most seamless, uh,
- on station relief sort of automated workflows as possible such that there
- are no
- gaps in coverage at all. Uh, and that also allows us to build sort of the
- ultimate
- and overall dock product reliability.
- Um, so that's, that's how we think about that.
- We also have ... I mean, part of our learnings in working through
- X2 Dock, we've
- built a tool. Uh, part of the process when we're working
- with a public safety customer is we will ingest
- all of the calls for service data that you have historically, and we'll map
- where we think we can deliver, uh, the best
- outcomes for you based on your priorities.
- If time to respond is a priority versus just wide area
- coverage,
- I mean, this is part of the process.
- And to Ryan's point,
- you know, w- we were in ... We, we're entering this ecosystem,
- and we're ...
- I think we're doing a good job. We've been here.
- But it's been around for a long time, and so agencies have, you know, decades of
- call for service data. And that, that level of detail I think allows us
- to go and, and plan for the right kind of redundancy
- or
- on station transfer or multiple simultaneous operations
- that you want for the
- op tempo or the, you know, the busyness of, of, of your
- agency.
- So the, the other thing I wanna n- like drive home a bit here as well
- is we're
- talking about docks, and they're gonna be, you know, shipping, you know, new order
- shipping, you know, mid-next year and second half of next year.
- Um, but
- the software stacks that we're talking about now
- are available today.
- Yeah.
- Um, and folks that, you know, depending i, you know ...
- This combination of like both having operational flexibility
- but also being able to
- get started today and build up the, the operational
- rhythms that are going to be, you know, needed e- for when a dock comes,
- and we're seeing folks doing this with a patrol-led model.
- Yep.
- Um, so having X10s in, in patrol cars
- on demand, being able to put them down, have a remote operator take over, use the
- same exact software stack to then provide remote assistance to somebody on the
- ground. Uh, we're seeing, uh, rooftop DFR with like
- crew-led base, so like without a dock, but a human doing operations there,
- swapping batteries, like helping support that.
- And then even like pop-up DFR commands, you know?
- If there's like something, um, Captain Bussard talked about Oklahoma City
- Fair.
- Yep.
- There's like a, an event or something that's happening there,
- being able to put up
- a small command mobily, have docks or have X10s there,
- remote operators, um, that are able to like provide overwatch and
- situational awareness. So this stuff is available today.
- Yeah.
- Um, and you can get started, and it's the exact same software stack
- that you can
- get integrated in with your ecosystem, that you can get learn, learn about, have
- pilots trained on, and then when the dock is ready,
- that just slots in seamlessly.
- Yeah, for those in the chat that have been asking about how to,
- how to get this
- now, how to start a trial POC, uh, that is the answer.
- Sales@skydio.com, uh, is the best route-
- Absolutely
- ... uh, to, to get that rolling. Um, there's also been a couple questions
- about, uh, some of the awesome capabilities shown as
- part of DFR Command, and folks are wondering if they'll be able to
- get those things- Without DFR Command, things like map
- overlays, some of the multi-drone capability,
- things like that.
- Will that be available outside of DFR Command?
- Yeah. I mean, just generally to zoom out a little bit,
- DFR Command is built on the overall Skydio platform and architecture, and
- it's tailor-made and specific, like Ryan mentioned, with ready, respond,
- resolve kinds of workflows to make that seamless for specific
- customers in the public safety world who need to go do things.
- But that doesn't mean that the underlying technologies aren't
- being
- delivered and aren't super value to the rest of our customer base.
- So maybe short answer is yes. Uh, we, I don't know how much specifics we want to
- get into.
- Yeah, I mean, the, the technologies, I...
- The, the thing I would say is the technologies are there and
- are applicable across
- a wide variety of use cases. You know, as that makes sense,
- we're gonna make those
- technologies available to all use cases.
- DFR Command is a, a specific instantiation of this that is
- optimized for solving the DFR and public safety use case.
- Um, but, you know, the same underlying technology may apply,
- apply across
- industries, and, uh, we'll certainly be bringing those as it
- makes sense.
- Great.
- Um, let's shift gears, uh, a little bit again.
- Uh, maybe we'll, maybe we'll go back just a little bit to
- some of the services
- discussion. Uh, there's been a couple questions about
- that, um, and
- if folks will be able to leverage third-party maintenance
- or deployment services,
- uh, to, to go along with our Dock.
- Uh, yeah, I c- I can take that. So, um, Ryan mentioned this
- before. We, we believe that Dock is a global platform, and we're, we're
- starting with the US and Japan, but, but we know that this will be, uh, a
- tool that will be used worldwide. Um, and we also know
- that,
- uh, a- or excuse me, organizations such as partners know how to
- operate inside of their communities and their regions oftentimes better than
- anybody somebody far away can. Uh, so just to say it out loud, I
- mean, we absolutely plan to and are in the process of
- certifying third parties to work helping us install and
- maintain Docks. Um, and that's an ecosystem that we're
- just really hungry to continue to grow.
- Uh, part of the reason that we've been doing these early access
- programs is,
- you know, as you build a program and start to understand the technology
- and all of
- its nuances, it's really important when you're working with partners to be
- able to
- give really clear, specific work instructions.
- Uh, I've dealt with this a little bit in, in my prior life.
- You know, if I was having a third-party engine
- maintainer go work on a
- truck, if you can't explain exactly what needs to
- happen and have that
- documented and, and provide certification so
- that the right people are gonna come
- and the end customer's gonna get what they need, then that's really challenging.
- And so a lot of the work that we're doing now
- is building those programs, but we
- are super enthusiastic about all kinds of partners coming with us on
- this journey, and it's something that we're already working on today.
- Great. Thank you. Um, let's jump around yet again
- here. Uh, maybe we can talk a little bit about, uh,
- another big
- announcement today, which was, uh, the Dock for
- X10D. Um, maybe we can... We've got a visual.
- Uh, maybe we can pull that up and just talk a little bit about what
- that means,
- what the implications are-
- Yeah
- ... what the benefits might be.
- So I, I think this is, um, super exciting.
- We've been, you know, working on this technology with the
- previous generation, and,
- you know, as I mentioned, it's a fundamentally connected technology.
- Um, and because of that and the nature of the software
- architecture that
- supports that, it, it's kind of been i- you know,
- uh, something that's, you know, not really applicable or, like,
- unusable by our, our government customers
- or government partners that are working in kind of these critical
- areas that have
- high, um, high security needs, um, and are high security
- applications. Um, and so this is allowing us to
- bring this technology to those, those agencies and those use
- cases. Um, and we've, we've designed the software so
- that you can really
- bring that, you know, kind of regardless of what you're doing,
- if you have
- air-gapped networks, you can bring that software behind the air gap.
- If you're working on high-side networks, you can do that, um, for things like, you
- know, like SIPR or whatever your agency network
- is.
- Um, and, uh, and, you know, we have the flexibility
- to support a wide variety. I mean, the, the base security I think is a great
- example. There's lots of other, um, you know, critical
- infrastructure, uh, types of, uh, applications out there that are high
- security that really demand this type of architecture.
- Um, so I think this is, I think this is super important.
- I think, you know, this is also probably the only system in the
- world that's gonna be able to address those types of use cases.
- Um, so I think it's, I think it's really powerful.
- I was hoping we could nerd out about SIPR and NIPR.
- [laughs]
- I got to-
- It's been a while.
- Yeah, it's been a while.
- But, uh-
- I, I ran the battalion S2 shop for a little
- bit when I was a captain, so I- I mean,
- look, the other thing is not just with Dock,
- but just in general, you know, we
- already partner with ATAK. We know that delivering this information over
- tactical
- networks is just super important, and by definition,
- those tactical networks are
- local area architectures.
- Yeah, and, you know, th- this has been part of our, um,
- alpha deployments as well.
- We've been, uh, you know, out there in these types of, like,
- offline environments, tactical environments, um,
- and testing the Dock and the
- software, um, and, and with great success and integrating
- in with other robotic systems, um, to provide a- advanced, like, types
- of security. Um, and so I, I, I... It's very clear to me
- that that's the future,
- um, and I think this is gonna unlock a lot of really
- interesting use cases.
- Cool. We'll, let's transition to a couple of,
- of hardware, uh, specific
- questions here. Um, one question is just is,
- is Skydio Dock drone-agnostic? Uh, maybe we can talk a little bit about
- the benefits of a, a fully integrated system with the
- Skydio Dock and the Skydio drone.
- Yeah. I, I mean, I guess I can start with this a little
- bit, and feel free to chime
- in.
- Sure.
- So, um, I would say the Skydio Dock for X10
- has been built for the X10.
- Yeah.
- Um, so, uh, currently they, you know, it, it supports only, like,
- that drone. However, um, the, the concept of the Dock,
- um, is something that is very applicable to, um, you know,
- if we,
- uh, have, you know, other form factors or iterations on the product, um,
- that those design elements will still remain highly relevant.
- Nothing to add.
- Great. Um, there was a couple earlier questions, um,
- about snow and rain. Uh, we talked about the
- IP55 rating, uh, on stage. We, we did a demonstration, uh,
- in rain. Um, how do we handle snow?
- Well, first off we, we have heaters built into the dock so we
- melt snow.
- That's why I was nerding out about the big motors to crack the ice.
- That's, that's part of the workflow. Um, you also saw how the, the dock opens.
- There was some thought behind that to sort of dump the snow off the back
- as, as
- the thing rotates around itself. Um, so bring on the snow.
- We're, we're excited for snow.
- Yeah. And, and maybe just going a little bit deeper
- there, um, as we didn't talk
- much about this, but, you know, inside the dock it's basically a full
- thermal
- management system.
- Yeah.
- And, you know, it's important for being able to, like,
- operate in extreme weather
- conditions for things like resiliency to snow, but it's also
- important for, like, battery and, like, system health management as well.
- We need to keep that system at the right temperature, whether it's, like, you know,
- 110 outside-
- Yep
- ... or, like, you know, below zero outside.
- Um, and so the system has that all fully integrated to keep the,
- keep the drone
- up and running as optimal as possible.
- I, I mean, this is a little bit of a dovetail,
- but one of the things that Ryan and
- I are, and our teams are working on, which we're pretty excited about,
- is the full
- enterprise management of these platforms at scale across your enterprise.
- So you can imagine a world where you have all these connected devices, they're
- sitting inside of connected docks. You know the health status of those
- things.
- Uh, there are some customers that we have, you know, they, they have a national
- footprint, so it would not be crazy on a given day,
- if anybody's lived in New
- England, you know, sometimes Thanksgiving it's zero
- and sometimes it's 70 degrees.
- But you can imagine a world where you have on the same day a platform that's in
- 100 degree weather and zero degree weather because that's the
- scale of your
- footprint as an organization. And we want to be able to show you the
- health status of those things so that you can manage your fleet however you
- need to
- to accomplish your mission.
- You know, it ... We haven't, like, got into this much,
- but maybe just a quick aside
- on, you know, redundancy and, and, and reliability and how we're thinking
- about
- deployments. So, um, we're seeing a lot of need, and we are
- designing, um, the system around the ability to deploy
- them in,
- in, in groups, and we call those groups of docks a hive.
- Um, so the idea that, um, you know, you have multiple redundant
- systems, you have multiple systems in parallel, um,
- that can be
- coordinating to respond to, um, events.
- Um, and that they are deconflicting with each other in
- intelligent ways.
- And so, you know, we're thinking about different, like,
- deployment models.
- That is a, that is a fundamental concept that,
- that we are building around and we
- recommend, um, deployment strategies around.
- Yeah.
- And maybe, maybe we, uh, we can just jump back a little bit to
- Skydio
- Connect access points. There's been a couple more questions about
- that.
- Sure.
- Um, couple questions about, uh, is there a radio in the dock
- itself, and how does that work in conjunction with the,
- the access
- points?
- Yeah, I can take that. Um, so
- there is a radio in the dock itself.
- So if you just set up a dock, um, with no connect access point, um,
- it can operate, um, within a limited range.
- Um, you'll get the best range, the optimum range by having external
- access point with a, with a good mounting location. Um,
- but we'll have a radio.
- Um, and then, you know, also even without an access point,
- if you have strong
- cellular coverage, you can operate that system completely off of cellular,
- um, using the local radio. That local radio is also there for
- supporting media
- offload. Um, so when the system, like, lands, starts
- charging, then it's, like, connected to the local dock radio for
- doing media
- offload. Um, and that link is optimized for that high-speed transfer.
- Um, and then you don't have to worry about
- anything beyond that.
- Um, as, you know, we're taking off, we're gonna transition, um,
- the drone from the
- local radio that's on the dock to either an access point or cellular, and
- all that's gonna be seamless.
- Maybe just to talk about that a little bit more.
- We haven't
- dove into the details on backhaul, but just to say it upfront, you know, w-
- we're
- ... Today, we've tested and we will support backhaul in multiple
- different
- configurations. We have folks who are doing backhaul only through
- Starlink, so satellite only. We have folks using cellular.
- We have folks using both. There's solutions out there to bond
- satellite or
- cellular, and of course if you, if you have access to ethernet, we,
- we love
- plugging in and going hard line as well.
- So all those different options are there, and that's to afford the ability to
- deploy in more austere or more urban environments,
- whatever's gonna work b-
- best for your use case.
- Great. Um, question just came in, um,
- about,
- uh, options for backup power. So thinking again about
- very isolated environments-
- Yep
- ... um, redundancy is, is in- critically important.
- We've talked about it from a connectivity standpoint.
- Uh, does Skydio Dock support or have built-in backup power?
- Yeah. So, so it does. Actually, if, if you haven't checked out, uh, Caltrans'
- LinkedIn page, they have some, some great media of what they've done over
- there in
- early access, and I highly recommend it.
- We're also gonna be working with partners to s- to ...
- who can provide battery backup, solar.
- Um, if, you know, if you wanna run them on a generator,
- you can.
- All those things, I think, depending on the type of mission
- that you're kind of
- trying to complete, uh, uh, should be part of the consideration, and
- something that the Skydio team will be working with you on as you go through the
- process.
- Great. Uh, we'll do probably two more here, um,
- as we wind down.
- Um, first, uh, there are a couple questions about sort of
- built-in
- analysis tools versus reliance and integration on third parties.
- So maybe, maybe a quick hit on, on sort of Skydio Extend and, and how
- that sort of
- unlocks broader end-to-end workflows.
- Yeah, absolutely. Um-
- So
- I would say the, the first, like, baseline is that,
- you know, our software system is built on top of, of an API
- layer. So you can go on our website today, you can go and get the developer
- documentation, um, and, you know, if you have the resources or the
- interest, um, you can start building integrations
- against that
- API today. Um, we've also added on,
- um, a capability called Skydio Extend, which is kind of an umbrella over t- the
- API, which makes it very easy, um, for,
- um, us to integrate with third-party platforms
- through an integration system
- that's on top, so that you don't need to have your own
- development resources,
- development team to leverage those APIs.
- And we also have services that go along with that.
- Um, and the, you know, there's just s- such a wide
- variety of different tools out there in terms of, uh,
- analysis capabilities for imagery and the data that's coming in.
- Um, so, you know, for our customers to take advantage of
- that, these systems
- need to be integrated with those. Um, you can actually go onto the, uh,
- Skydio Cloud today. There's an integrations tab.
- You can see a library of all the things, um, that we support today, um, out of
- the box. Um, certainly using these APIs
- and the platform that I've
- discussed, um, it's, uh, it's possible to, to add more.
- We'd love to hear what, uh, what integrations f- folks
- are most excited
- about. Um, so please, uh, you know, you can go in there, you can click,
- you can
- request, you can type in your feedback. Um, it'll come in directly to us.
- Um, and, uh, yeah, e- excited to hear more from folks.
- Cool. And then the last one here is a bit, a bit of a go back on an earlier
- conversation we had, but, uh, there's an ask about if we
- have built-in, uh, diagnostic system
- checks so folks know, you know, the health of their system and, and how to
- manage them and, and maybe what-
- Yeah
- ... what things can be addressed proactively.
- So may- maybe twofold is, um, on this, and, you know, Alden, if you, you can,
- um, bookend my, my comment here. So there, there's a ton of system health
- checks that go into both the drone operation and the dock operation.
- Um, and you can see some of those as, uh, as the drone's being launched, and it's
- doing some of its checks, and it'll showing some of that on screen.
- Um, and, uh, and so all of that's gonna be happening.
- Uh, but, you know, we've been just talking about this.
- You know, one of the things that we need to do, we are going to be,
- uh, working on
- is also exposing more of that to our customers for helping, like,
- maintain and
- manage the system. Um, so that's gonna be a big part of,
- of kind of where we're
- taking the platform as well. So it's not just about, like,
- Skydio doing it all,
- but also exposing the data to help the, the operators, um, the program
- managers of these systems understand the health of their fleet, um, and-
- I think that's also important. I know we're gonna run out of time here,
- but just
- for the maintenance story long term of these things.
- Absolutely.
- These, these docks break down into major
- component modules.
- We've intentionally built sensing capabilities for each of those major
- modules.
- And whether you wanna do the maintenance yourself or, uh, one of our partners
- is or we are, overall, this ... A, a lot of what a dock
- does is reduce truck rolls. And so we want to [laughs] reduce truck
- rolls in the
- full ecosystem, not just in the, in the critical missions.
- And so knowing that you're gonna go out and fix whatever parts
- you need to the right time, the first time, um, all that
- is, is part of, of how we're thinking about sensing and,
- and being
- able to check the health of the system.
- We could go on for another 15 minutes on this, I'm sure.
- Yeah, we, we probably could.
- I'll, uh-
- Yeah.
- It's kind of my baby.
- I'll unfortunately, yeah, unfortunately have to wrap us up here.
- But thanks, uh, thanks to you both so much, uh,
- for doing this.
- Um, I'd like to remind everybody, uh, to check out skydio.com for all of the
- detailed product information, data sheets, specifications for the dock, remote
- ops, DFR command, and X10, of course.
- Uh, for purchasing and sales questions, please contact s- contact us
- directly at sales@skydio.com. Uh, and we very much look forward to
- having you all at the rest of our virtual events over the next two days.
- Uh, and lastly, uh, for those of you who did submit questions
- live in the chat that
- we were not able to directly address, uh, we do plan to follow up with
- you directly. So thank you all for joining us.
- Thanks, Brian.
- Thank you.
- Thanks, everybody.
Watch Time
46 Mins 24 Secs
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