Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Fully autonomous drone: Skydio R1 review”.
( upbeat music ) In this day and age, people are pretty familiar with the idea of a consumer drone., But even today the general concept of a drone remains pretty much the same.. You need a wide open space and you need a remote control to fly. Your drone, in. And you’re, probably gon na, need some pilot experience to make sure you don’t hurt anybody and wreck your device in the process.. That is not the case with the Skydio R1..
Instead, the device uses an array of cameras, sensors and a powerful onboard computer to map its surroundings predict where it’s going next and avoid people and inanimate objects.. Essentially, this drone flies itself all of the time.. The company thinks this is going to be an action. Sport enthusiast’s dream come true. Of course, hearing those claims we felt like we had to put it through its paces., So we brought the R1 to a park just outside of San Francisco, so we could test its abilities in three different situations., Hiking, skateboarding and biking.. We wanted to see how well the R1 could avoid obstacles like trees, whether it could keep up and film stable, 4K at high speeds and how well it adapts to changes in its environment., So the Skydio R1 is pretty simple..
Basically, all you gon na need is the drone itself and a flat surface to let it take off from and a battery which plugs in right here.. After that, everything is taken care of on the mobile app., ( upbeat music ), What’s surprising about the R1, is how fluid it feels. It’s not stopping, and starting and trying to calibrate or locate you.. It basically has a image of you all the time.
It’S tracking you all throughout the environment with all of its cameras and sensors., And then it’s just following you in a very fluid, almost natural way. Skydio says that’s because the drone is predicting where it’s gon na go all of the time.. Now it’s time to try a second activity: biking. (, blades, whirring ), As you can see here once it takes off. All you need to do, is tap on the image of your face from the live camera feed and the drone snaps into position. And then it follows you, wherever you go., It’s important to note that the camera sensor on the R1 isn’t the absolute best..
The drone’s camera lacks dynamic range and you can’t set up color profiles which would help in post processing. And despite being 4K. The overall quality isn’t as good as what you’d get on the DJI., With some graininess and noise that you might not be able to catch with the video previews on the mobile app. But you can definitely see when you blow it up full screen on your computer.
( upbeat, music, ), So biking with the Skydio R1 went well, but that was basically one static. Camera angle. So we’re here at a skate park in Balboa in San Francisco to see if the R1 can keep up with lots of changing camera angles..
Luckily, the company has built in a number of different shooting modes so that the Skydio R1 can keep up with you from either following you from the front following you from the side, it can even orbit in one giant 360.. Let’S give it a shot. Here.
It seems to be struggling a little bit with the speed going around the skate park and because it’s such a tight area, but it hasn’t hit anything and it pretty much recalibrates itself very quickly.. Oh wait. I think it was following you., So we ran into a couple issues of the R1 here at the skate park. For one it started following Vjeran instead of following me., So because the R1 basically tracks you the shape of your body and, as you go around in An environment it can get a little bit mixed up if it sees somebody else that looks similar to you and then it’ll start following that person instead.. The whole point of the R1 is that anyone can use it., I’m not an experienced pilot myself. I’Ve only barely flown drones from say, DJI, but I was able to use the R1 right out of the box..
There are a few compromises with the R1.. It’S an action sports drone, but it’s not waterproof, so it’d be really risky to take it. Skiing and it’d be even riskier to take it surfing.. It also doesn’t have a micro SD card slot, like some other drones from DJI., But it does have 64 gigabytes of onboard storage.. That’S probably more than enough for the 16-minute battery life. You get on a single charge., So if you’re a photographer or a videographer, and you really want cool aerial shots or say you just like piloting drones, because it’s really fun.
The R1 is probably not for you. And also it’s $ 2,500. That’S a lot of money for a drone and it’s also being hand-assembled in Mountain View: California, where the company’s headquarters are.. That means it’s basically only for the early adopters right now. That said, drones as smart as these they’re gon na get better they’re gon na get cheaper and they’re gon na get even smarter down. The line.
And Skydio has proven that it’s at the front of the pack. Ooh – Oh my god, my chain broke (, laughs, )! Well, my chain just fell off, but the drone’s fine .