Last week, Skydio held its annual Ascend event, a yearly user conference held in California and livestreamed online. This is the third edition of this event, with each featuring major product announcements and live demonstrations. In 2023, they launched their X10 and demonstrated its ability to autonomously navigate live through a night environment. Following up on that in 2024, they launched the Dock for X10 and landed the X10 on one of their Docks through wind and rain live on stage. Each of these demonstrations showed new products and capabilities in live and challenging conditions.

More than that, each of these announcements dovetailed with gains in autonomy, in which the company has invested a lot over the years to give more capabilities for its customers across numerous sectors. This year’s Ascend once again included new product announcements and live demonstrations of said releases, with the two main releases continuing to build off of Skydio’s expertise in automation and delivering ease-of-use to industries like defense, industrial inspection, and most notably, public safety.

We’ll start with the Skydio R10, which was announced for this event and marks the company’s first foray into strictly indoor-use drones. In fact, they say that it is the “first indoor drone in the U.S. that delivers the ease of use and low operational cost of consumer drones, combined with the onboard lighting, communications, and cloud integrations that public safety missions demand.”

As the quote suggests, much of the announcement around this particular release was targeted at public safety organizations. This, of course, makes sense as that sector is both a major customer base for Skydio and also one that would benefit greatly from this kind of indoor drone. To be clear, the R10 is not the first indoor drone to hit the market, as there are some companies that make these kinds of drones specifically designed for public safety agencies already, and others that build these drones for infrastructure inspection.

However, Skydio believes the R10 can be a game-changer even amid these other options, at least in part due to the fact that this drone is not a standalone product, but rather a new piece of the Skydio Drone as First Responder ecosystem. In other words, users are able to use the same controller as the X10 for the R10, and the latter runs in the same Remote Ops and DFR Command software. This sets up a situation in which an agency could use the X10 and R10 in concert, with the former providing outdoor watch and the latter providing indoor reconnaissance, all managed by the same operator.

Along with the R10, Skydio also announced its new fully autonomous fixed-wing drone, the F10. Whereas the R10 is designed for indoor use, the F10 meets needs on the opposite end of the spectrum, providing a platform for long flights that provide speed. For these purposes, Skydio says that the F10, which is still under development, is targeted to achieve a speed of “greater than 80 mph” to go with a flight time of more than 90 minutes. They specifically call out Drone as First Responder in rural areas, high-speed pursuits, and long linear inspections as examples of potential use cases for this drone.

The drone itself is not the only innovation here, either. Continuing to build on the theme of autonomy, Skydio also announced that they are building an automatic launch and landing platform inside a Dock specifically for the F10. They showed off how this works at their live event, with a Dock mounted on a Tesla Cybertruck and a robotic arm that releases the drones as it prepares for its flight.

Each of these announcements comes at an opportune time for an industry that is mired in uncertainty around the availability of foreign-made drones, most notably from DJI. Many commercial drone operators today – particularly those in public safety – rely heavily on DJI platforms. With scrutiny around these products only increasing the United States and potential bans looming, organizations are seeking U.S.-based alternatives. This release signals an understanding of these dynamics from Skydio, as they are both targeting a sector with deep investment into DJI products and advertising their ease of use.

Skydio says that the R10 will be available for early access customers in the fall of 2025, with general availability being targeted for the first half of 2026. The F10, meanwhile, will be available for use by early access customers in the first half of 2026.