Skydio has a motorized charging box to make its self-flying drone truly autonomous

Skydio makes one of the most incredible drones on the market, and while we haven't gotten to review the new Skydio 2 yet, the tiny California startup is already setting its ambitions higher than prosumers and videographers. For industrial and commercial entities, it wants to remove humans from the equation entirely, letting them rely on its obstacle-dodging, self-flying technology for automated mapping and surveillance. To that end, it's announcing the Skydio 2 Dock, a drone-in-a-box solution that theoretically lets the Skydio 2 fly mission after mission all by itself. As you can see in the video above, it's got a motorized door and slide-out arm that the drone can land on as well as a built-in charging station for a special version of the Skydio 2's battery with contact pins on the bottom. Skydio co-founder Adam Bry tells me that his drone can find its way back to the box without GPS, thanks to its visual and inertial navigation systems, and it can land precisely on that pad time after time, thanks to a pair of visual markers on top.