Beyond the Build - Skydio X10D: Operating at Night
It's not enough to just be able to see things at night. Hear how operators can navigate obstacle-dense environments in darkness as confidently as if it's light.
Learn more about Skydio X10D.
- To be able to truly conduct night operations, you want to be able
- to do the same things that you could do during the day.
- Night vision has made leaps and bounds. Night vision is really incredible.
- But even night vision, as far as it's come, still has
- limitations.
- So we have a capability in the X10D called Night Sense, which allows all the
- obstacle avoidance and all the AI features
- that we had in previous drones that
- worked during the day,
- allows that to operate at night. And that is a phenomenal capability 'cause
- it's
- one thing to be able to see in the night.
- It's another thing to be able to get to where you want to see at night, and that's
- what Night Sense brings.
- The first application of Night Sense that makes a lot of sense is
- operators very rarely have, um, the luxury
- of being able to go out into an open field with no
- obstructions and launch. What we're designing for
- is the ability to be under tree cover, behind tree cover, and be able
- to take off while not exposing yourself.
- You have this low-hour pilot who was able to fly in the daytime and
- then, you know, maybe he's high-risk at night.
- That's no longer the case.
- Um, now with Night Sense, we're able to, you know, if you're in a high-threat crash
- environment, turn on Night Sense.
- You have your IR illuminators to provide obstacle avoidance.
- You get free of the obstacles and send your drone on its way to
- go do its mission.
- The other use case is when you're in tight quarters in a -
- in a dense urban
- environment. That active illumination's going to give
- you the ability to fly on
- VIO only and not care whether you're being
- GPS-denied, um, as is, you know, very often the case in - in a lot
- of these conflict areas.
- Also, we've incorporated a best-in-class thermal
- camera,
- which is the FLIR Boson+.
- There are still things that enemy can do to kind of mask their
- signature,
- so it's really important to have a high-quality thermal.
- Having the X10D to essentially scout ahead and provide
- situational awareness and do a route reconnaissance,
- now I'm starting to detect
- things that shouldn't be there. I can also start to make decisions
- that enable me to say, "We need to choose a new route," or,
- "We need to make a
- decision about that thing." It brings a capability to the war fighter that
- expands across time domains.
- The general guiding principle, right, is that we want operators to be able
- to fly at night with the same level of ease that they fly during the
- day.
- And so what that requires is, again, not just a great FLIR camera
- that can see things, but the autonomy that we've already built in and now
- the Night Sense capability that allows that operator to fly the
- vehicle
- just like it was the day and not have to worry about crashing it
- into a
- tree or a building because that obstacle avoidance is built in.
- [outro music]
Watch Time
2 Mins 48 Secs