Drones are on an increasing scale being used and give a real-time view to help in different kinds of situations, for example, a search and rescue mission, or operating in military conditions.
Skydio makes autonomous drones that make the world more productive, creative, and safe.
Their latest software release enhances existing pilots’ situational awareness missions in three key ways:
Less Cognitive Load
Today’s common manual drones come with some disadvantages. The operators must be very cautious in flight, making it more difficult to complete their missions. Autonomous Skydio drones have vision bases navigation and obstacle avoidance which soften the pilot’s burden. Skydio Scout is an autonomous flight skill that gives operators awareness without needing to actually fly the drone.
Skydio Scout advantages
Skydio’s unmatched obstacle avoidance makes for worry free flying while maintaining a set distance from the GPS location and camera direction, even without line of sight.
Skydio Scout makes your operations easier in a few key ways:
- The Skydio Scout skill does not require the drone to “look” at its tracked GPS position. That means you can place the drone anywhere in 3D space and position the camera to focus on what you care about, all while following the tracked GPS position.
- Skydio Scout lets you easily reposition the drone while a tracked subject or GPS position is in motion. There is no need to position the camera while manually trying to keep up with a moving subject in busy environments.
- Scout makes it easy to reposition the drone and keep eyes around a moving subject.
In action
Scout can be an extremely versatile situational awareness tool.
- Military Vehicle Convoy: A vehicle convoy in an isolated area where your team has no idea about the surroundings, can be very dangerous. By quickly deploying a Skydio drone and selecting the Scout skill, you can position the drone ahead of your convoy and it can give your team an overwatch of what is nearby without the need to constantly fly the drone. This way enemies or threats are easily identified.
- Search and Rescue: During SAR missions it is essential to maximize your search coverage in the limited time you have got. Using the Skydio Scout the ground search team can strenghtened with an overhead aerial view while an army dronepilot is monitoring what’s in front of the search team.
This ensures more complete search coverage of the given area, and reduces the cognitive load of the drone operator so they can more closely focus on searching the scene and not flying the drone. - K9 Deployment: when the dog must leave the line of sight of the handler, Skydio Scout
will be advantageous. With the Beacon attached to the K9’s vest, the Skydio drone will track the GPS location of the K9 and stay with it as it runs around corners, under trees or overhangs, etc.
TAK Integration: Coordinated Situational Awareness
For missions in tactical environments to succeed, it is critical to create situational awareness within the whole team. The Skydio + Scout Team Awareness Kit (TAK) can provide in this. TAK stands for Team Awareness Kit. TAK is an application that allows multiple inputs from GPS enabled devices to be displayed in one central location. Having centralized location information from many different devices gives team members a real-time view of the area that allows for better coordination amongst teams. By connecting to the TAK network with the Skydio Enterprise Controller, teammates on the ground are given access to the drone’s live video feed and location. It provides improved communication and context, especially for emergency situations in real-time leading to quicker resolutions, allowing teams to identify issues or gauge the severity of an emergency to provide more rapid response. This new situational awareness capability allows users to see where team members are (which reduces friendly fire incidents and helps with coordinating movements). TAK enables collaboration across multiple devices such as GPS beacons that were previously unable to communicate when on joint missions because they use different equipment, radio frequencies or encryption.
Do you want to know more about Skydio and the Scout Team Awareness Kit? Please contact us at intel@cobbsindustries.com or directly Request Intel.
