OSB Number: SOSB-24-V12
Date: 21 November 2024
Operational Impact: In rare cases, the Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) navigation system can encounter scenarios where position drift and autonomy do not guarantee a hold in position without pilot input.
Products affected: Skydio X10, Skydio X10D
Description, Identification, and Manifestation
Skydio uses a combination of GPS and VIO to determine the location and motion of the drone. In rare instances, the drone’s VIO system may accumulate minor errors, causing the drone to slowly drift in any direction if left in a hovering state with no commanded control inputs from the pilot. In this drifting state, obstacle avoidance (OA) is still active (unless manually disabled), and the drone is safe.
Skydio emphasizes that VIO excels in challenging GPS environments, providing reliable navigation even when signals are weak, jammed, spoofed or obstructed. While GPS works well in specific, open-sky scenarios, VIO is fundamental to a long-term sensor fusion strategy ensuring the safety and accuracy that a comprehensive navigation solution demands.
Mitigation
Skydio Actions
Skydio is aware of this issue and is actively investigating all cases of VIO drift. To accelerate progress, we also introduced telemetry enhancements, including VIO performance and sensor disagreement metrics to better analyze this issue going forward.
Operator Actions
- If the pilot observes uncommanded vehicle drift, it can be arrested at any time by providing control inputs (joystick if using the Skydio X10 controller; keyboard or gamepad controller if using Remote Flight Deck) to counter the drift and hold position.
- Report any cases of significant drift to Skydio Support and upload Support Logs, as this will aid in our investigation of VIO drift and autonomy model learning.