ABSTRACT
The technology for intelligent and trustworthy navigation of autonomous UAVs has reached an inflection point to provide transformative gains in capability, efficiency, and safety to major industries. Drones are starting to save lives of first responders, automate dangerous infrastructure inspection, digitize the physical world with millimeter precision, and capture Hollywood quality video – all on affordable consumer hardware.
At Skydio, we have invested five years of R&D in the ability to handle difficult unknown scenarios in real-time based on visual sensing, and shipped two generations of fully autonomous drone. In this talk, I will discuss the close collaboration of geometry, learning, and modeling within our system, our experience putting robots into production, and the challenges still ahead.