The development of autonomous flight systems is increasingly revolutionizing the drone market. Now a (co) pilot can drop his ship into the air and it will follow him wherever he goes without needing a hand-held controller. The most recent example is Skydio 2, Which promises to be a major competitor to the models of DJI, Which already has analysis here in the Connected World. However, the operation of the new autonomous drone may make some people curious, and this is what we will explain here.
Skydio claims he is the "easiest to use and hardest to hit planet drone"
Skydio 2 has a total of six 4K cameras in its navigation system distributed in upper and lower trinocular configuration. To make it simple: three at the top and three at the bottom.
However, Skydio CEO Adam Bry explains that it was not so easy to get this combo:
"(…) we have moved from these conventional global shutter cameras to the rotary shutter fisheye cameras, which are very challenging from an algoremic point of view. But the big advantage is that at a lower price we can get very good performance." best of the sensor. " – Adam Bry.
The propellers are positioned so as not to disturb cameras with a 200 degree field of view, and the drone is equipped with a Nvidia Tegra X2 processor, which manages its autonomous system and processes all data from the six cameras. In addition, it runs nine custom deep networks to create a 3D model of surrounding environment with refresh rate of over 1 million points per second. This way, the drone can identify up to 10 objects at a time and dodge obstacles with speeds up to 60km / h.
Too much data to process requires a powerful chip to process quickly
Still on Skydio 2's standalone feature, one of the big changes is in new Deep Learning-based depth perception algorithm instead of more conventional stereo (photogrammetric) techniques – the Skydio R1 used stereo depth perception with 12 VGA cameras. The latter, as Bry explains, has good results in simple scenes, but begins to have problems in environments with repeated structures or surfaces without texture.
"What people do by combining understanding of the contextual scene with photometric information – when we look at a scene we know what things are and generally how the world is structured around us. And the combination of this information means that people are animals essentially have a perfect depth perception based only on sight. We have created a deep learning algorithm that mimics that (…). " – Adam Bry.
Skydio 2 presale in limited quantity is already open for $ 100 in the US. Shipments will begin in November and we look forward to posting a full review here. See the news of the drone announcement by clicking here.
Via: DroneDJ. (TagsToTranslate) skydio (t) skydio 2 (t) autonomous drone (t) autonomous flight system (t) nvidia (t) tegra x2 (t) sony (t) drone 4k (t) drone (t) drones (t) 4k 60fps
