Skydio X10D - Operating at Night | Beyond The Build
Chris Stock is a seasoned professional in program management, systems engineering, and technology innovation. He has a proven track record of leading teams in both the Department of Defense and NASA. Currently, Chris is at the forefront of driving innovation as he leads a technology innovation team that is dedicated to exploring, developing, and experimenting with disruptive and innovative technologies that will shape the future of warfare.
Kelsee Hober is an accomplished product leader and aviation expert, skilled in iterative innovation and leadership. Her experience spans roles as a combat pilot and Director of Product Management, as well as a Mission Operations Engineer. A former US Army Aviation Officer and UH-60 Pilot at Fort Bragg, NC, she served for over seven years, demonstrating leadership and resilience in three combat tours. Kelsee holds a Bachelor’s in Systems Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point (2008-2012), exemplifying her dedication to excellence and innovation.
As President/General Manager of Global Government at Skydio, Mark focuses on delivering autonomous aerial capabilities to national governments around the world to make them more productive, creative and safe.
Prior to joining Skydio, Mark was the SVP/GM for Scale AI's Federal team and the GM of Microsoft's National Security team. In those roles, he focused on delivering advanced technologies such as AI/ML, cloud computing and mixed reality to warfighters and analysts across the US Federal government. Prior to his time in industry, Mark served in the US Air Force for over 25 years as a combat veteran fighter pilot (F-16), commander, and staff officer at headquarters US Air Force and the Joint Staff.
Mark currently lives near Annapolis, MD where is is active in the American Legion Boys State program and several non-profit boards.
To be able to truly conduct night operations, you want to be able to do the same things that you could do during the day.
Night vision has made leaps and bounds. Night vision is really incredible, but even night vision as far as it's come still has limitations.
So we have a capability in the X10D called night sense, which allows all the obstacle avoidance and all the AI features that we had in previous drones that work during the day, allows that to operate at night, and that is a phenomenal capability. Because it's one thing to be able to see in the night, it's another thing to be able to get to where you want to see at night, and that's what NightSense brings.
The first application of NightSense that makes a lot of sense is operators very rarely have, the luxury of being able to go out into an open field with no obstructions and launch. What we're designing for is the ability to be under tree cover, behind tree cover, and be able to take off while not exposing yourself.
You have this low hour pilot who is able to fly in the daytime, and then, you know, maybe he's high risk at night.
That's no longer the case. Now with NightSense we're able to, you know, if you're in a high threat crash environment, turn on NightSense, you have your IR illuminators to provide obstacle avoidance, You get free of the obstacles and send your drone on its way to go to its mission.
The other use case is when you're in tight quarters in a in a dense urban environment, that active illumination is going to give you the ability to fly on VIO only and not care whether you're being GPS denied, as is, you know, very often the case in in a lot of these conflict areas.
Also, we've incorporated the best in class thermal camera, which is the Flare BOSON plus.
There are still things that NME can do to kind of mask their signature, so it's really important to have a high quality thermal.
Having the X10D to essentially scout ahead and provide situation awareness and do a route reconnaissance, Now I'm starting to detect things that shouldn't be there. I can also start to make decisions that enable me to say we need to choose a new route or we need to make a decision about that thing. It brings a capability to the warfighter that expands across time domains.
The general guiding principle, right, is that we want operators to be able to fly at night with the same level of ease that they fly during the day.
And so, what that requires is again, not just a great FLIR camera that can see things, but the autonomy that we've already built in and now the night sense capability that allows that operator to fly the vehicle just like it was the day and not have to worry about crashing it into a tree or a building because that obstacle avoidance is built in.