Watch: Cinematic Footage from Skydio’s New Drone

Skydio has released footage captured by its upcoming drone.

As we reported in July, the company is set to build on the success of the R1 with a new drone this Fall. That’s about all we knew until today, when the following statement was sent out to subscribers via email.

Building a drone that can actually fly itself and avoid obstacles is an incredible challenge. In fact, we’re the only company that’s managed to do it. Now we’re raising the bar again on what a self-flying drone can do and how incredibly cinematic its video can be.

How? We’ve developed an entirely new and breakthrough flight algorithm.

With this, the drone can do so much more than just avoid crashing. Now it can determine exactly where and how to fly to get the most stunning cinematic shots possible. The type of shots that until now only expert pilots were capable of capturing.

Below are a few clips from recent testing that start to show our new autonomy capabilities (as well as the stunning image quality from our completely redesigned camera). They are the very first glimpses of what our newest machine can do. We’re super excited to share them with you.

Improved autonomy is just one of many advancements that make our next drone, Skydio 2, awesome. We can’t wait to show you more.

Cinematic shots, unbeatable computer vision

The exciting thing, for fans of the original R1 and the drone industry in general, is that Skydio appears to be putting cinematography front and center of the new drone.

As the statement suggests, building a drone that can avoid obstacles and follow a moving subject with ease was a remarkable technological achievement. But that capability doesn’t necessarily translate into the cinematic touches that make videos feel professional and inspiring.

Skydio has now confirmed the new drone will come with “an entirely new and breakthrough flight algorithm” to rectify that, as well as a “completely redesigned camera”.

One of those little touches can be seen in the video below, as the drone does a totally unnecessary but very cool 360-spin during the opening shot. That’s what we call flair.