There will never be the perfect drone for everyone. There are too many different reasons for owning a drone. Some like to shoot sweeping cinematic masterpieces, and some want to follow fast-paced action. What makes a drone good at one thing often makes it not so great for another. That said, if you're after speed and maneuverability, the Skydio 2 is darn near perfect. It does have some shortcomings, which I'll get to below.

In a few short years, US drone maker Skydio has gone from relative unknown to a legitimate DJI competitor. In 2019, the company took a big step forward with its Skydio 2, releasing a UAV that had one of the best obstacle avoidance systems we had seen up to that point. With CES 2022 underway, it's back with an updated model of that drone called the Skydio 2 Plus that adds both hardware and software enhancements. The new model features two additional antennas compared to the Skydio 2, allowing you to fly it up to 6 kilometers away in any one direction. By contrast, its predecessor had a range of 3.5 kilometers.

Drone startup Skydio today announced the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) statewide approval to fly Skydio drones beyond visual line of sight to inspect bridges. Skydio, which describes the waiver as the first of its kind, says the NCDOT will be able to conduct maintenance activities without the use of visual observers like trained pilots or staff. A recent study by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials found that taxpayer cost per bridge inspection can be reduced 75% by switching from traditional methods to drones. The Minnesota Department of Transportation found that using drones for bridge inspection offsets some or all of the costs, depending on the bridge configuration and location, with a trial of drone-assisted inspections saving an average of 40% over traditional methods and providing ostensibly superior data and reporting. Going forward, the NCDOT's inspectors can send Skydio 2 drones to inspect critical structures below bridges in North Carolina instead of conducting rappels or using "snooper trucks."

Skydio, a startup that makes autonomous drones that fly themselves with little human intervention, is entering the commercial drone market with its new X2 model. The X2 is Skydio's first non-consumer device and it's marketed toward government agencies, the military, and other organizations that require aerial surveillance or surveying, with its own built-in infrared thermal camera. The X2 announcement coincides with Skydio's new round of $100 million in funding, led by German multinational company Siemens' Next47 firm. Skydio first entered the market a little more than two years ago with the Skydio R1. The R1 was an autonomous drone that sported impressive artificial intelligence-powered obstacle avoidance and other sensors and software features that let it seamlessly fly itself through complex outdoor environments like wooded trails while following subjects.

Skydio is an autonomous drone technology company that designs and develops GPS enabled software to navigate drones. Since 2014, Skydio has established its company which specializes in artificial intelligence, robotics and computer vision. Not until 2018 they launched R1 which was considered as a breakthrough in autonomous drones for customers and as a platform for commercial development. Nowadays, they are building autonomous systems, using artificial intelligence to duck under canopies and dive around branches in forests with caution all by itself. Furthermore, not only it is able to avoid obstacles, some other benefits are they provide remarkable pictures no other drones can.

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.

Redwood City, California-based Skydio and member of NVIDIA's startup accelerator, Inception, has just released the latest version of their AI capable GPU-accelerated drone, Skydio 2. Comprised of six 4K cameras, with an NVIDIA Jetson TX2 as the processor for the autonomous system, Skydio 2 is capable of flying for up to 23 minutes at a time and can be piloted by either an experienced pilot or by the AI-based system. The Jetson TX2 has 256 GPU cores and is capable of 1.3 trillion operations a second. According to the team, the drone uses nine custom deep neural networks that help the drone track up to 10 objects while traveling at speeds of 36 miles per hour. "Skydio 2 enables you to capture everything from a backyard pickup game to a downhill adventure with a single tap, the company wrote in blog post. "It builds on Skydio R1's foundation and takes it to the next level."

Skydio on Tuesday announced its second drone, Skydio 2. The company's latest drone still uses artificial intelligence for obstacle avoidance, shoots in 4K, works with two different controllers, and now has a range of up to 3.5 kilometers. And Skydio figured out a way to price it at $999. Skydio is being upfront about limited inventory throughout the rest of the year. If you want to get a Skydio 2 this year, you'll want to place a $100 reservation today. In total, there are six 4K cameras on the Skydio 2. The cameras are used to scan and identify the drone's surroundings and use the Skydio Autonomy Engine to avoid objects without any input by the user.

It's not easy to fly DJI's drones despite all the sensors. The newly introduced Skydio 2 virtually eliminates the need for you. The drone does it with artificial intelligence. Skydio is one of the most innovative names on the drone side. The first model, the Skydio R1, has done an amazing job with artificial intelligence but could not reach the end-user, as it was kinda big and at $2,500, prohibitively expensive for the majority.

I reviewed the company's first drone, the R1, and my jaw's still on the floor. Most drones fall into the "remote control vehicle" category, the R1 and Skydio 2 are better described as robots. They rely on computer vision to effectively see in every direction. And both use a proprietary AI system to avoid crashing, perform aerial cinematography maneuvers, and follow people and vehicles. The Skydio 2 features six 4K cameras and flies at up to 38MPH.