Mention autonomy in drones and Skydio, not DJI, is the name most will mention first, but since the October 2019 announcement of the Skydio 2 drone customers have looked for more.

Finally, at CES 2022, a revised Skydio 2+ has been announced, with improved 5GHz radio for a range of up to 6km (3.7 miles) and batteries capable of 27 minutes flight time. The key improvements, though, are to the software, most notably the “Skydio KeyFrame” tool. This enables a hybrid of the firm’s well-known subject tracking abilities with a flight path set out using points in three-dimension space.

The Skydio 2+ takes the points defined by the user – the key frames – and establishes a smooth spline between them which it can fly along (repeatedly if necessary). Once the route has a start and end point, the drone can fly along it automatically, speed being tweaked along the way as required; crucially the camera will stay on the subject the whole time.

This provides a distinct alternative to the approach offered by dual operators (or subject tracking systems) in a professional drone like the Inspire, and perhaps we’ll see something like it in DJI’s upcoming ActiveTrack 5.0 (as yet unreleased for the Mavic 3).