This wasn't going to be my first drone episode
but after seeing how amazing the tracking capabilities were
of this drone during my initial testing
I decided to do this one first
and since this drone is a lot different
I picked out certain situations that are a drone operators worst nightmare
the first is gonna be having the drone track a person
as they go through the woods with literally millions of obstacles
then i'm gonna have it track my car while i drive under a steel bridge
and last but not least
trying to operate the drone in an area bombarded with electromagnetic interference
as well as large pieces of steel lying around
that would make the compass and any other drone go nuts
this drone right here has some amazing tracking capabilities
i haven't seen in any other drone
it basically flies itself using these seven on-board cameras
it uses visual tracking creating a 3d map of the entire world around it as it flies
and predicts where the subject its tracking is going 4 seconds in the future
first test is gonna be where you probably would never fly a drone
in these woods right here
and for this I'm gonna need a volunteer
this is daniela
i'm gonna have her try to outrun the drone try to psych it out the best she can
and she's pretty athletic so we'll figure it out once we get in there
i've also flown fpv drones in woods
but usually in like pine forest where there's a lot of space in between the trees
and it's a little bit cleaner but this type of forest is not a pine forest
there's brush there's grass there's tall grass
there's little trees like this one right over there
and these are all obstacles that are very difficult
for any artificial intelligence to map out and avoid
and I want to mention I'm not going to have the drone track them from the back
I'm actually going to have the drone track them from the side
because if you look at the trail at the widest point
which is here there's only about 10 feet from the trail to the tree
so if I set the drone to track somebody 20 feet out from the trail
it's going to be forced to go through all of those trees
as it's tracking the person
I expect it to crash but that's okay I have some extra propellers in the car
I want to mention that in the woods situation I'm setting up here
is not recommended by skydio
I just want to see what the technology does when put into a more extreme setting
to get a better understanding for the capabilities of this drone
let's get it going let's get our volunteer on the trail
see what happens
so like if I want to go right in between those trees
I just go and push that stick forward
so now we're going to select our subject and set it to track from the left
right there and go-ahead
oh here's a nice trail
I would just take off running if I were you
let me look at the drone
Passerby: "I saw one of those about 10 years ago
I thought it was aliens"
go ahead Daniela run that way
it's following her visually
visually?
yeah visually
it's got her man look at he's going around the trees and everything
that's just simply amazing
look at her, look at it, it's flying off to the side around the trees that's insane
get one loser not even hitting a little stick or anything
that's nuts
I'm tired I don't think I'm gonna run it out
what did you run like a block?
I think so
oh man you're out of shape Daniela
I know but look at it
it's on you I mean that's like that's pretty insane
even in between the trees
it's pretty crazy all right cool
let's go down there and see if you can lose it
so we're in the next spot over here
the drone's just hanging out there trying to figure out where it's gonna go
I'm just gonna have Daniella try to psych it out over here and see what it does
and remember I am not flying this drone at all
it's completely flying autonomously all on its own
the only time I touch the control is when I launched it
all the way down at the end which is about half a mile down
just something to keep in mind I thought it was pretty cool
that I didn't touch the control at all
hopefully she could shake the drone
this time let's see all right let's do it
oh that thing went right in between the trees
I'm not as much of an athlete as I thought i was
it's still on you just watching you
what do you think about that
it's awesome
any other drone would have lost you for sure that's amazing
all right well let me land it
that's it for this test that and was nothing short of impressive
so let's see how this drone does tracking a car not a person
I'm here in my next location with this beautiful steel bridge behind us
I'm going to keep this simple
I'm just going to launch the Skydio
set it to track the supra
and then drive the car back and forth under that steel bridge a few times
I don't know what's going to happen
but in my past experiences with other drones
when flying near large steel structures like this
you usually get a compass error
or it pops up with a warning saying there's strong electromagnetic interference
and it asks you to land I don't think the skydio is going to have that problem
because it uses 3d visual tracking but I guess we'll find out
all right we're gonna go on the low side underneath the bridge first
it's on it look at that
that is pretty amazing all right let me do another turn here
try to take off on it
this time I'm gonna go under the high side there we go
whoa look at that it actually
it actually tracked me right underneath that bridge
that was pretty amazing
I'm just gonna try to do a little spin here
I don't want to attract too much attention
all right it tracked it
that was pretty cool I thought that was pretty impressive
I had the height floor set to about 150 feet so as the drone approached the bridge
it had the option of going over the bridge or under the bridge
and the drone chose to go under the bridge
my guess is because it was able to keep the subject that it was locked on in its sight
I even went under the bridge came back tried to confuse the drone
went back and forth and as you just saw
the drone continued tracking me even though that steel bridge was in the way
for my final test I'm gonna keep it simple
I'm gonna place the skydio on the flatbed semi-trailer
next to a 25 000 pound steel counterweight
which is located in a crane yard
next to a power substation and see what it does
my other drone will not take off here and it gives me a compass error
saying there's strong electromagnetic interference
and I need to move to a new location let's see what the skydio does
if this was another drone that used magnetic compasses
well there you go completely unaffected
this isn't a sponsored video or anything like that
I just really wanted to share this 3d mapping technology with everybody
to show people how it works in a real world scenario because
I think this type of 3d mapping technology is the future
imagine if tesla used something like this in their autopilot
it would be able to actually map out the whole world around the car
and avoid animals pedestrians objects garbage in the road
and not rely on the lane markers for the navigation
that would be pretty amazing
it would be just like a person driving
the only difference is it would be paying attention 100% of the time
I thought that was awesome
tell me what you thought in the comments below
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