Skydio drones are all about working smarter, not harder, through AI-powered autonomous flight. With the announcement of Skydio 3D Scan, we introduced a new way to think about enterprise drone flights. Now, instead of having to fly manual drones far away from the objects that need to be documented or inspected, Skydio drones use AI to adapt their flight pattern to any scene, and any given resolution requirement. With such a new way to fly the drone, comes an entirely new way to choose which drone to fly. Our Enterprise Drone Inspection EBook, which we are releasing over the coming months, is designed to help program managers navigate this expansive new set of options.
Roof shingle imagery comparison from Skydio 2 and DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0. Note the grainy oversaturation of the DJI photo (right) that nearly obscures the edge between two shingles.
Today, we are releasing Volume 6 of the eBook, which is titled: “High-precision Insurance Appraisal: How to get decision-quality data from your drone program.” In this volume, we dive deep into residential roof inspections through 3D model and photo comparisons performed with the support of Skydio’s Image Quality team, led by former GoPro Image Quality Test Engineer, Russell Bondi.
Inspecting residential rooftops for insurance appraisals can be a dangerous and inefficient job. Natural disasters can cause demand to spike in a single location, creating backlogs on local teams, who must then climb on top of a large volume of rooftops for visual assessments. Drones can help generate fully comprehensive datasets in a fraction of the time, with operators remaining in safety on the ground.
However, not all drones are created equal. Last generation manual drones cannot be flown up close to metallic structures without introducing high crash risk, so manufacturers have raced to add larger, and more expensive, camera payloads that can zoom in from far away. Skydio’s autonomous drones can accomplish better inspections with smaller cameras simply by being able to fly closer to the subject, reducing the requirement to carry such precious camera payloads.
With an expanding set of options, it is no longer good enough to simply buy the drone with the biggest camera. To unlock these next-generation operations, drone program managers need to know they will be able to generate the data they need to make and communicate decisions. We sincerely hope that these materials, with their in-depth dataset comparisons, will make your upcoming drone decisions easier as you build and scale your fleets. Choose confidently and safe flying!
