Davide Falanga

Davide Falanga is a drone autonomy researcher who earned his PhD from the University of Zurich's Robotics and Perception Group (RPG), one of the world's leading academic labs for agile autonomous flight. He leads Skydio's new Zurich R&D office, which opened in approximately April 2026 with a focus on GPS-denied navigation and multi-drone coordination. Falanga joined Skydio alongside four engineers hired from ETH Zurich and UZH robotics labs, concentrating domain expertise from academic research into a commercially focused team.

The UZH Robotics and Perception Group, where Falanga trained, is the laboratory that produced foundational research in agile autonomous drone flight, including work on neural-network-based obstacle avoidance and minimum-time racing trajectories. Falanga's background places him directly in the lineage of that research. His move to Skydio signals the company's intent to translate academic GPS-denied autonomy breakthroughs into production systems for defence applications, where GPS-denied operation is a core requirement in contested environments.