Skydio Makes Its Symforce Framework Open-source

US-based drone maker Skydio developed SymForce, a framework for writing algorithms for drones and other robots. The company announced that it will release SymForce as an open-source project to help accelerate innovation across robotics.

Skydio says it has learned a lot during the development of the Skydio R1 and Skydio 2 drones. About five years ago, the drone maker started developing a new motion planner to balance dynamic flight, obstacle avoidance, and cinematography objectives for the Skydio 2 in real-time.

With SymForce, Skydio has developed a far more powerful motion planner that is easier to maintain and runs at a faster pace on its drones.

“It’s an incredible tool that allows our team to quickly progress from rapid prototyping to the type of highly-optimized runtime code that powers our drones,” Skydio says in a press release. “SymForce is the result of five years of development by Skydio’s autonomy team in an environment where performance and code…