Skydio Demonstrates Incredible Obstacle-Dodging Full Autonomy With New R1 Consumer Drone

Almost two years ago, a startup called Skydio posted some video of a weird-looking drone autonomously following people as they jogged and biked along paths and around trees. Even without much in the way of detail, this was exciting for three reasons: First, the drone was moving at a useful speed and not crashing into stuff using only onboard sensing and computing, and second, the folks behind Skydio included Adam Bry and Abe Bachrach, who worked on high-speed autonomous flight at MIT before cofounding Project Wing at Google[x] (now just called X). The third reason we were excited about Skydio's drone was that, as much as it looked like a research project, it was actually designed to be commercialized, and today, Skydio is (finally!) And before you think that you've seen flying cameras before, we promise you've never seen anything like the R1: as Bry told us two years ago, Skydio's goal was "to provide a trustworthy and magical experience." Initially, Skydio sent us a couple different videos to show off the new R1.