OSB Number: SOSB-25-V07

Date Created: 14 October 2025

Date updated: 12 November 2025

12 November 2025 - Software Mitigation Release

On October 14, 2025 Skydio published a Notice to Operators (NTO) to describe a battery estimation error which resulted in rapid drops in the displayed battery percentage during flight or immediately after landing. To address this issue, Skydio developed a software update to address inaccurate state of charge battery estimations for both in-flight and post-flight to mitigate this issue. This software release and fix will automatically detect inaccuracies in state of charge battery estimation and re-calculate the actual remaining capacity. This software will be released over the course of 4 weeks. External release notes regarding this release can be found here.

Products affected: All Skydio X10 and Skydio X10D flight systems

Operator Actions

Please update your drone software version to 40.269 for online vehicles as soon as it becomes available. Offline software versions will be available in the next few weeks.

13 October 2025 - Original Notice

Summary: 

Skydio has identified instances of inaccurate battery percentage readings from the battery management system, which can cause rapid drops in the displayed battery percentage during flight or immediately after landing. This issue has been traced to a software issue in the battery estimation algorithm, not to any hardware or cell defect. In some cases, these anomalies have caused low battery landings before vehicles could complete landing at the specified return location.

We understand the criticality of accurate battery life estimation for operational planning and the safety of flight. We take these issues very seriously and have already deployed a cloud software fix. In addition, we will be releasing a software hotfix to all X10 vehicles in the next few weeks to help detect these estimation errors and re-calculate an accurate remaining charge estimation. 

Products affected: All Skydio X10 and Skydio X10D flight systems

Description, Identification, and Manifestation 

Skydio is observing these issues on approximately 1 in 300 flights that reach less than 30% charge and on about 1 in 1500 flights overall. The battery estimate errors are due to an issue in the battery management algorithm, which can cause inaccurate battery percentage readings from the battery impacting flight behavior. We are aware of two symptoms that customers can experience due to these issues.

1. The pilot may observe a rapid or sudden drop in the remaining battery percentage indicator during flight. This can trigger premature low-battery landing behavior, failure to return to home, or failure to return to the Dock.
2. The pilot may observe a sudden drop in remaining battery percentage once the vehicle has landed.

Mitigation and Resolution

Skydio Actions

We are testing a fix to the vehicle software that will address this issue for both online and offline systems. The firmware update will be released as soon as available and will be communicated through an NTO update. 

In the immediate term, Skydio released a fleet-wide change in our return estimation logic for Skydio X10 online systems, increasing the return energy safety factor, which allocates more energy for the return to account for unpredictable environmental conditions. The additional buffer will initiate return-to-home and return-to-dock sooner, to reduce the likelihood of this battery capacity estimation issue causing a low battery landing before completing the return.  Pilots will temporarily experience a slight decrease in flight time and on station time as a result of this change until the upcoming software update is released to fix the underlying root cause. 

Operator Actions

Until the software update is released, operators are advised to:

• Consider the reduced mission/flight time when planning operations due to the increased safety margin on battery estimation logic. 
  • For planning purposes, at a return speed of 26 mph in calm winds, a 0.5-mile return will begin about 15 seconds sooner, and a 2-mile return will begin about 1 minute sooner.
• Set the return speed to 26 mph in cloud.skydio.com or the Skydio X10 Controller, which is the most efficient traversal speed. 

In addition, operators are reminded of the following: 

If the fault is encountered and a low battery landing is occurring in an unsafe location, the pilot retains the ability to cancel the landing, move the vehicle to a safer landing location, and land there. Alternatively, nudging during the landing allows for very slight lateral adjustments at 1 mph.  All efforts should be made to land as soon as practical if overriding low battery behaviors.