Skydio named Frost and Sullivan 2021 Company of the Year
Skydio, the leading United States (US) drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight, today announced it was recognized as Company of the Year by Frost & Sullivan, a leader in global research and consulting solutions. The Award recognizes companies that demonstrate excellence in visionary innovation performance as well as customer impact.
Frost & Sullivan applies a rigorous analytical process to evaluate multiple nominees for each Award category before determining the final Award recipient. The process involves a detailed best practices criteria evaluation across two dimensions for each nominated company.
According to its report, “Skydio excels in many of the criteria in the commercial drone space,” adding “with its artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision‐enabled drones, Frost & Sullivan appreciates how Skydio nicely redefines autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles capabilities. These capabilities allow the drones to operate much more autonomously and can make intelligent decisions about flight paths and obstacle avoidance.”
“Skydio is the fastest growing small UAS manufacturer in the world, and is almost single-handedly re-establishing an industrial base for commercial drones in the United States. This growth is being accelerated by an unrivaled AI-driven autonomy engine that allows Skydio drones to safely and efficiently execute a wide range of missions for numerous use cases with minimal inputs or oversight from human operators. Skydio’s unique technologies have enabled several companies using its drones to obtain waivers for conducting BVLOS operations that other platforms are prohibited from executing. Frost & Sullivan has identified autonomy and AI as the two main technologies that will drive commercial drone adoption in the future and Skydio is at the forefront of both,” said Michael S. Blades, Vice President – Aerospace, Defense & Security, Frost & Sullivan. “The company is consistently improving its AI to enable increased precision and more enterprise-focused autonomy capabilities through its Autonomy Enterprise Foundation and upcoming 3D Scan solution. Skydio’s rapid growth, along with a focus on autonomous flight, automated workflows, and partnerships to enable manufacturing at scale, make it an obvious choice for commercial drone OEM of the year.”
Skydio is founded on the premise that autonomy is the key ingredient to unlock drones’ full potential. By transforming drones into intelligent devices that can dynamically understand and adjust to the environment in which they are operated, Skydio enables radically simpler flights and makes missions once considered impossible possible. In 2019 Skydio introduced the Skydio 2, marking the beginning of an ambitious innovation agenda to take drones into the age of software and AI-based autonomy.
This innovation will further accelerate in 2021 with the upcoming release of the new Skydio X2, recipient of CES’s 2021 Best of Innovation Award, and Skydio 3D Scan, the first-of-its-kind adaptive scanning software.
“We are thrilled to receive this recognition from Frost & Sullivan, whose methodology focuses on technology and innovation,” said Adam Bry, CEO and co-founder of Skydio. “As a world leader in autonomous flight, we continue to work vigorously to make drones easier and safer to use while opening up entirely new use cases based on autonomous flight.”
