This is the dock that lets Skydio drones truly fly themselves – The Verge

Skydio is the only company making drones that can largely fly themselves, able to sense and avoid objects so seamlessly you can hand a toddler the controls. But legally and practically, they need a lot of human oversight. Who’s going to charge the drone, update it, download its footage, and be the oft legally required visual observer to make sure it doesn’t crash into anything nearby?

But for years, Skydio has been working on the gadget that could eliminate pesky humans from the equation. It’s called the Skydio Dock, and it’s a 72-pound motorized box that can let these drones operate completely autonomously. I drove to Skydio’s headquarters in San Mateo, California, this week to check it out, watch it fly an autonomous mission, and used one to remote control another drone 17 miles away.

Originally announced in October 2019, the dock is basically an internet-connected robotic landing and charging pad that behaves in a very specific way to protect and service a Skydio X2 or Skydio 2 drone. As you can see in our embedded video above, it’s got a fancy motorized door that closes multiple times during launch and landing. It not only keeps rain and dust out but also makes sure a drone’s propellers and antennas properly fold and unfold.

The landing point is a scoop. I saw a Skydio X2’s bottom-mounted battery slide right in when it touched down.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

There’s a big landing sign atop the box that a drone’s cameras can use to lock onto its landing point and a fancy robotic arm that slides out to “catch” the drone with a little scoop. Skydio CEO Adam Bry tells me that his drones reliably land on that scoop 99.9 percent of the time. When they don’t, they’ll typically just switch to plan B and safely land on the ground nearby.

When the arm retracts into the box, it pulls a newly designed Skydio battery right into a battery charging receptacle. The fanciest version of the dock even has air conditioning inside to cool down the battery for faster charging and a heater to melt any ice and snow that might build up on its roof as well as IP56 dust and rain …….

Source: https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiUmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRoZXZlcmdlLmNvbS8yMDIyLzEyLzcvMjM0OTgyNDkvc2t5ZGlvLTIteDItZG9jay1zZWxmLWZseWluZy1kcm9uZS1ib3jSAQA?oc=5

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