The City of Bloomington, Minnesota, will spend the next two weeks running a Drone as First Responder pilot using Skydio X10 aircraft and the Skydio Dock, the city announced on May 15. The testing period begins the week of May 18 and is intended to give city staff a working view of what DFR technology actually does before any policy or procurement decisions get made. DFR programs use remotely piloted drones that launch ahead of police, fire, or other first responders to provide real-time video and situational awareness to dispatchers and units en route. Skydio is a California-based manufacturer, and over the last two years it has become the default answer for U.S. public safety agencies that need a non-Chinese platform. The Skydio X10 is the platform doing the work in Bloomington’s pilot. The aircraft carries a 64-megapixel visual sensor with what Skydio calls NightSense for low-light operations, runs onboard autonomy on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin compute module, and supports modular payloads including thermal imaging. Flight time is rated up to 40 minutes per battery, and the airframe is designed for the kind of autonomous obstacle avoidance that DFR programs depend on, since the drone is often flying to an address before any operator has eyes on the scene. Top speed sits in 45 miles per hour, which matters when the use case is reaching an incident before a patrol car can.

Full report : The City of Bloomington, Minnesota, will spend the next two weeks running a Drone as First Responder pilot using Skydio X10 aircraft.

For more see the OODA Company Profile on Skydio.