The Skydio R1: Truly autonomous drone flight, but with a price

While many drones over the past several years have promised “autonomous” flight, very few have actually delivered. Even the latest drone from industry leader DJI, the Mavic Air, only offers relatively limited sense-and-avoid capabilities.

Welcome to the Future?

The Skydio R1 brings the futuristic possibility of drones being able to fly all on their own one step closer to the present. Founded by MIT grads, the 4 year old silicon valley company isn’t just promising some far-out concept: they’re selling the R1 today for $2,499. Though that is an eye-wateringly high price tag (especially considering that it only has a 16 minute flight time and 300′ range from the smartphone) Skydio isn’t isn’t targeting people who like to fly drones — and the R1 packs some serious specs to support its truly autonomous flight:

• 256-core Nvidia Jetson GPU “supercomputer”
• Quad-core 64-bit ARM CPU
• 4GB RAM
• 12 navigation cameras for omnidirectional vision
• The Skydio Autonomy Engine
• 4 IMUs

One more camera…

Along with all the tech to make the R1 truly autonomous, it also features a 4k/30fps capable camera mounted on a 2-axis gimbal. No info on what size sensor or how many megapixels it features.  Utilizing the app users can choose one of several different follow modes and then have the drone track them at speeds up to 25mph. Once the R1 lands, you can begin to create a video from the captured footage, even syncing it with the audio from your phone.

Check out the video below to see the Skydio R1 in action. It’s pretty impressive how it is able to avoid even the smaller branches, but the movement is hardly anything but smooth by cinematic standards for most of the video.

If you’ve got $2,500 to spend and are interested in checking out a brand new technology in the drone space, head on over to Skydio’s website to find out more or purchase the R1.