Redwood City-based drone startup Skydio today revealed it raised $ 100 million, bringing its total raised to $ 170 million. Coinciding with the fundraising, it unveiled a new family of drones — the X2 — and software solutions designed to simplify inspections and enterprise-oriented workflows.

Skydio is the brainchild of Adam Bry, Abe Bachrach, and Matt Donahoe, the last of whom worked as a research assistant at MIT’s Media Lab. Bry and Bachrach — fellow MIT students in the college’s robotics program — spent years researching ways to build aircraft that could fly themselves without GPS, culminating in a fixed-wing autonomous drone. They later contributed to the Google X labs project that became Wing, which designs delivery drones deployed in parts of Australia, Finland, and Virginia. Years afterward, they set out to engineer a system that could power self-navigating drones using commodity hardware.

X2 follows the October 2019 launch of the Skydio 2, and it pairs the company’s autonomous navigation tech with a ruggedized airframe, folding arms for “pack and go” transportation, a thermal camera, and up to 35 minutes of flight time. X2 is equipped with six 4K navigation cameras for obstacle avoidance and a dual-sensor payload that includes 12MP color and LWIR sensors. It’ll come with a new “enterprise-grade” Enterprise Controller with a built-in touch screen, glove-compatible controls, and a wireless system to extend range up to 6.2 kilometers (3.8 miles), and it’ll initially be available starting in Q4 2020 in two configurations:

• Skydio X2D, which is built to meet the Short-Range Reconnaissance (SRR) requirements for the U.S. Army. Skydio says it’s tailored to military, defense, reconnaissance, search and rescue, and security patrol missions.
• Skydio X2E, which targets enterprises, first responders, and civilian agencies. The company says it’s designed for situational awareness and inspection of infrastructure.

The X2 might be perceived as a doubling down on Skydio’s controversial work with governments. As Wired reports, Skydio recently won a contract with the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the company has agency contracts worth at least $ 7 million including with the U.S. Air Force and Army. Skydio drones are also use by law enforcement in Chula Vista, California, which last week won FAA approval to fly beyond an operator’s line of sight.

“Skydio is firmly committed to developing drone technology, and the rules that govern the use of drones, in a manner that protects privacy and civil liberties,” a spokesperson told VentureBeat last month in a statement. “In our work with government customers, Skydio highlights and promotes the bedrock obligation to uphold civil liberties — including the First Amendment freedom to peaceably assemble and petition for change. [We] stand with those demonstrating for justice and equality, and we condemn anyone — uniformed, elected, or otherwise — who seeks to bring them harm. We are committed to developing technology in a responsible manner that advances both safety and liberty.”

Like Skydio 2, the X2 will benefit from the company’s Autonomy Core, which handles navigation with 360-degree, real-time obstacle avoidance, object detection, and motion prediction. Leveraging advanced computer vision and deep learning, Autonomy Core creates a 3D understanding of the drones’ surroundings in real-time and predicts into the future to make intelligent decisions, dynamically controlling the drone’s flight to avoid obstacles even in GPS-denied environments.

Both the X2 series and Skydio’s existing drones can be enhanced with the forthcoming Autonomy Enterprise Foundation, an aftermarket software upgrade that enhances Autonomy Core with pilot-assist capabilities like 360-degree zoom up to 100 times digital zoom, precision mode for flights within 0.5 meters of obstacles, and a vertical mode that captures images by looking straight up overhead.

Another headliner of Autonomy Enterprise Foundation is 3D Scan, which is designed for inspections of complex industrial structures and locations including bridges, building facades, energy infrastructure, power plants, power stations, railyards, accidents, and crime scenes. Skydio claims that 3D Scan enables a fully automated, structure-agnostic process that doesn’t require any prior knowledge of the inspected structure and can operate without an internet connection. Operators can specify the area or volume to inspect, pick a desired imaging resolution, and the AI-powered Skydio 3D Scan does the rest, autonomously imaging all surfaces with precision by dynamically building a real-time map as the drone flies. The resulting imagery has no gaps in captured data and is optimized to ensure effective photogrammetry.

X2 also boasts House scan, a feature developed in partnership with aerial imagery provider Eagleview. House scan, which will be available in Q4 2020, enables home insurance agents to automatically perform inspection of residential homes.

Skydio — whose customers include Civil Air Patrol, the Ohio Department of Transportation, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, Southern Company, Chula Vista PD, and Japan Infrastructure Waymark — says it plans to use the aforementioned series C funding to accelerate product development and go-to-market expansion in enterprise and public sector markets. Next47 led the round with participation from Levitate Capital, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, and Playground.

The company also today announced three additions to its C-Suite. Former Signalfx COO Mark Cranney will join as chief operating officer alongside Brendan Groves, Skydio’s new head of regulatory and policy affairs who previously served as associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department. And Alberto Farronato, who formerly held positions at VMware and Mulesoft, has been appointed Skydio’s chief marketing officer.