I love the endless stream of outdoor sporting porn being generated by cheap and easy to fly drones.
However, every good looking video I've seen has a dedicated drone pilot. A $700-1500 drone is cheap compared to having a skilled drone pilot follow you around and spend their time filming.
Years ago, the airdog (which has now been eclipsed by the Staaker) hinted at the idea of a drone that would pilot itself for sports, but both of them are huge and lack obstacle avoidance -- limiting you to far-away shots and managing obstacles yourself.
The upcoming Skydio 2 ($999 drone-only, going into production now, sold out until July) seems to be a quantum leap in active avoidance for pilot-less drone use. It's a followup to their sold-out first design, the Skydio R1 ($2500).
Reviewers are having it follow them through dense forests of small branches, and while it sometimes struggles, it does amazingly well.
It can do camera only-following, but it's even more impressive with the must-have $150 handheld beacon/remote, so it can follow even when the subject is occluded, and follow at up to 1.5km away. You can also use the remote to point-and-drag the drone where you want it in the sky.
Skydio is not perfect. Here is Skydio R1 hitting a branch, and here is Skydio 2 crashing into a Manhattan bridge cross-beam when moving quickly, with low-light, in an urban environment.
However, it's the only drone that has come close to this kind of autonomy and avoidance. If used in non-urban settings, the main risk is crashing and losing the drone, which seems acceptable (unlike using Tesla autopilot).
In the future this will only improve. Check out this interesting UZH Zurich Robotics research in active drone avoidance.
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