Podcast: Why isn’t there a drone in every home?

Drones have been around for a while now. Why is it that they haven’t become mainstream yet? Skydio’s Martin Brandenburg says the reason is that they are dumb.

Cue plenty of YouTube clips of drones doing silly things and crashing into objects. They seem quite primitive when compared to the AI-powered smartphones and smart home assistants we use on a daily basis.

So what’s the missing ingredient for drones? Autonomy, said Martin. Skydio’s drones are completely autonomous, have omnidirectional high-resolution vision, nine real-time neural networks, and will figure out how to get to a destination on their own. Just tell them where you want them to go.

“You no longer have to fly the drone, the drone will fly itself. You tell the drone where you want it to go and it will figure out the best and most efficient way of getting there,” he explained.

The reason such drones can plan their own trips and respond quickly to obstacles, is two-fold: Computer vision and the power of neural networks. Skydio drones have six navigation cameras with 4K image resolution, three on top and three on the bottom. They also use nine real-time neural networks to interpret the data they see.

“Imagine you had six eyes, two in the front, two in the back. You could see the world around you without even moving your head. That’s what the drone does,” said Martin.

There are many use cases for such drones but one growing market is the inspection industry. Martin explained that these drones can fly around and capture enough data to create a highly detailed 3D model of something like a suspension bridge. The engineer can then examine this 3D replica or digital twin in order to check the structural integrity. Everything from cracks to sags can be spotted without the need for a human scaling these constructions.

They are also useful on the scene of an accident. Responders usually capture images on their smartphones in order to recreate the accident during an investigation. These images, however, don’t sufficiently capture the data required. In then minutes, smart drones can fly around the scene of an accident and capture a highly detailed 3D image.

Who knows, perhaps autonomous drones will be flying alongside, above or near most of us as we do our jobs in ten years or less.

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Main image: Web Summit