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Comment by Justin_K | Hacker News Reader

Looks really cool, but I'm skeptical of all the demo videos and whether or not a person or software flew the drone. Would like to see some independent reviews of their following capability.

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TheVerge video has some good footage of their reporter testing out the functionality https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20892377/skydio-2-drone-a...

edit: I work at Skydio -- all the footage you are seeing is real and filmed entirely on Skydio 2. In our launch video each clip is labeled with "Flying Itself - No Pilot" where it is totally autonomous and "Piloted with AI Assist" when a pilot is using Skydio Controller combined with on-board obstacle avoidance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imt2qZ7uw1s

The Skydio R1 was by far the leader in collision avoidance and follow capability. Flitetest did an independent review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG_PMF27tDE

These guys are really sharp, I met a few of them when they worked on Google's Project Wing in the early days.

Thanks!

I think even if it is not that great it still beats DJI from a price point and technical specs perspective.

It is always good for DJI to have some competition. They have been spending too much time going after GoPro cameras instead of advancing their quadcopters.

DJI makes multiple drones at multiple price points. I think not making it fold-able is going to hurt them. I know some people use their drone to follow them, but a lot of people just to fly their drone. I don't see why they would have any advantage in that space. I feel this probably cool technology without a good market fit.

I think it may just be the case that they heavily culled the shots they had. Some of the "automated" movement does end up looking too cinematic.

Yes, we pick the cool looking stuff for publishing, but the bigger factor is that we really do program the AI to fly in cinematic ways. Because it has a full 3D model of the world, we can actually model in software a lot of what cinematography traditionally does manually.

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