Just a few weeks ago, Skydio had an amazing opportunity to participate in the Tough Stump Rodeo, near Bozeman, MT. Although this rodeo didn’t offer steer-roping or barrel-racing, it did give us a chance to showcase the Skydio X10 & X10D and its ability to integrate into customers’ ecosystems.
What is the Tough Stump Rodeo?
Tough Stump Technologies organizes the event to bring vendors together with USG, DoD, Law Enforcement, and Commercial clients to see for themselves what drone technology and supporting systems can accomplish for their missions. After all, show and tell is the key to real-world scenario demonstrations.
The environment for the event is in a remote location, more than two hours from Bozeman, that offers austere and interesting operational areas, such as a “Disaster Area”, “Mineshaft”, and locations for positioning comms relays. Taking advantage of this rugged terrain, Skydio and others had an opportunity to tackle a variety of activities, including disaster scenarios, mineshaft explorations, search & rescue operations, and a technology showcase in an “off-the-grid” approach to ops.
Skydio brought an awesome team of engineers and systems experts who demonstrated impressive results for attendees at the event. We received high praise for our ISR platform, described as the "Ferrari of UAS" by Tough Stump leaders. Skydio's X10 and X10D performed exceptionally well, particularly in high winds, offering superior sensor and video quality, flight stability, endurance, and portability.
Seemingly Contradictory: A Successful Disaster Scenario
For our scenario demonstration, we were tasked with supporting the aftermath of a flood affecting people in a remote location. We would need to support first responders near an austere fire station who were searching for people and vehicles impacted by the flood. Our remote first responders would also need to communicate back to a tactical operations center (TOC).
Skydio teamed with Persistent systems. The Persistent team provided a secure high-throughput network from the disaster site to the TOC. Together, we delivered video for observers via Team Awareness Kit (TAK) – to ensure observers and teams in the operations center could watch the action on TV screens while communicating with our “first responders” in the field (using ATAK). This also allowed us to stream video of the operation to remote participants from across the US and in 20+ different countries.
Skydio’s remote responders set off with 2 small pelican cases of gear in their vehicles and headed to the disaster site, 2.4km out. They deployed the drones on site in less than 40 seconds (box to air).
With our SkydioLink & Multi-band radios we established solid air-to-ground comms RF link and also provided capability for support of Tactical MANET radios on our controller. The team had a secure TAK server connection, video with adaptive bitrate control, and ran with offline maps & DTED.
During the scenario, we faced real-world high winds for the drone, gusting to 34 knots. Our hardware and software stabilization along with superior aircraft performance ensured the flight was manageable and the zoom + stability of the gimbal setup was rock solid.
Through our remote operations setup, we were able to also share the video stream of the responder ops with people anywhere in the world. One of those remote observers was Ken Rehbehn who was watching from the Washington D.C. area. He commented on the stunning Skydio X10 camera zoom being able to identify minute details on a vehicle during the scenario with enough clarity that the truck “might as well have been at his office Maryland.”
Technology Showcase
Beyond the scenario demonstration we were happy to provide event attendees with hands-on experience using our X10 and X10D drones. Giving them a chance to fly our aircraft without formal training showcased the maturity, ease, and reliability of our system. This also proved our system’s ability to enable operators at the lowest to zero levels of piloting skills to be an effective UAS operator. This is a big reason why we focus so much on autonomous flight. Having autonomy reduces the cognitive load and allows any operator to be an effective pilot, directly out of the box.
Our new “Skydio pilots” were also able to witness the unmatched capabilities for effective standoff in organic ISR from a drone of this size and weight, thanks to our VT300-Z gimbal.
The event also offered a great opportunity for Skydio to engage with our larger ecosystem of partners. Remote observers from approximately 29 U.S. states and 14 different countries were able to experience the rodeo through PAR Government TAK Server setup. ParGov and iGov helped establish connectivity that enabled us to stream video from this austere location.
Event attendees also had the chance to experience a VR model of the area via ARTAK. The model was made possible from a scan collected by a Skydio X10D and output to a geotiff using our drone’s onboard modeling. Eolian then processed the scan into a 3D model that attendees could interact with through VR goggles.
Future Rodeos
Now that we have our first rodeo under our belts, we’re looking forward to the chance to join teams in future events. We’ll make sure to bring the drone equivalents of our best bulldoggers, flankman, and riggin’ to tackle the next set of challenges.
