Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's dynamic remotely operated navigation equipment, more commonly known as a drone. These unmanned devices are everywhere and they can do everything - from saving lives to delivering pizza.

Whether you call them Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Miniature Pilotless Aircraft or Flying Mini Robots, drones are rapidly growing in popularity. They are still in the infancy stage in terms of mass adoption and usage, but drones have already broken through rigid traditional barriers in industries which otherwise seemed impenetrable by similar technological innovations. 2017 was the year drones became truly mainstream, and 2018 will see drones start to form a part of our everyday lives.

Commercially, drones have proven their absolute worth, saving lives during hurricanes Irma and Harvey, reducing labour costs through infrastructure inspections and improving border security, amongst others. Commercially, the possibilities are limitless. While most people think of drones as either sophisticated military technology or a hobbyist’s tool for capturing images of foliage, sporting events, and cityscapes, businesses are realising that drones have multiple commercial applications, some of which go beyond basic surveillance, photography, or videos, and they are already using them to transform daily work. Insurance companies are using drones to inspect damaged assets, for instance, and farmers are sending them to monitor crops and collect soil data. Even more dramatic changes could be in store as innovators explore new uses, including drone-delivery services for retail stores and air taxis for commuters.

But here’s the thing - as drones have taken off in popularity, the number of problems associated with drones is also on the rise. As with so many other technologies, entry into the consumer market has led to abuse: pranksters spying on neighbours, criminals smuggling drugs and terrorists converting drones into homemade missiles.

For those of us who truly understand, though, one thing remains - seeing the world from above is a metamorphic experience. A leafless tree becomes a spider web, a circus transforms into a box of sweets, while a harvest field simplifies into slashes of flaxen and gold. And it is with this insurmountable passion for the all things positive that drone technology can bring to the world that forms the core of what Skydio does – making flying tools to free up our hands, and mind.

An autonomous drone startup based out of Redwood City, California, Skydio believes in building intelligent machines that bring the creative capacity of software to life in the physical world is the opportunity of a generation; a future where they multiply human creativity and human possibility. With its goal of constantly push the boundaries of what’s possible in this new world, this means imagining and building beyond what’s possible today, and looking for opportunities to do new useful things for people.

The brainchild culminating from lifelong passions of co-founders who grew up steeped in aviation, robotics, and storytelling - Abraham Bachrach and Adam Bry, they met as graduate students at MIT, where they helped pioneer autonomous flight using onboard sensors (both had previously worked at Google together). The inspiration for starting Skydio came from the enormous gap between the imagined promise of drones and what existing manually-flown products are capable of. From early on it was clear that getting to a compelling fully autonomous product would mean building hardware and software from the ground up - ambitious and challenging, but also a lot of fun.