Skydio, maker of the autonomous, self-flying R1 drone, has announced a new platform that enables third-party developers to create new ’Skills’ for the drone, as well as a range of new Skills the company has developed.
Skydio Autonomy Platform allows anyone to develop application-specific behaviours, or ‘Skills’, for the R1 whether it’s for consumer or commercial uses.
What’s more, Skydio has unveiled its own new Skills it built on the platform, introducing new cinematic manoeuvres, such as Dronie, Boomerang, Vortex, and Rocket.
These new Skills are design for getting short shareable clips for social
media, or to quickly get a wide variety of angles for longer videos.
The Skydio app also includes a new Stabilize option in the clip creator tool for smoothing out your clips.
A new Cable Cam option allows users to pilot the Skydio R1 to specific positions and orientations and then retrace the flight path between two points, all while maintaining full obstacle avoidance, and optionally tracking a subject.
Under the new Skydio Autonomy Platform developers can create new Skills for Skydio R1 in a few lines of Python and share them with other Skydio owners via the Developer Console.
Developers can also set waypoints and issue movement commands to the R1, make 3D map distance queries to understand the environment around R1, track subjects — including both people and cars — and define how it should move around them.
Developers can also leverage relevant, comprehensive R1 telemetry signals, such as takeoff-relative position, speed, distance from ground, location, user location, battery levels, temperature, and more.
Skydio’s new simulator also allows developers to run their Skills on a simulated R1 in a virtual 3D environment, all from a web browser.
The Skydio R1 is soon entering mass production, priced at $1,999.