GLOSSARY
Drone platform glossary
Clear definitions of the terms behind open, software-defined drones. Each entry is written to answer a plain question: what is this, and what does it do.
- Software-defined drone
- A software-defined drone is an aircraft whose autonomy, video, connectivity, and mission logic are delivered by software on a general-purpose companion computer rather than fixed vendor firmware, so its capabilities can be updated, extended, and replaced independently of the airframe. Learn more →
- Companion computer
- A companion computer is a small Linux computer (such as a Raspberry Pi or NVIDIA Jetson) mounted on a drone alongside the flight controller. It handles the tasks the flight controller cannot: video encoding, long-range links, cloud connectivity, computer vision, and higher-level autonomy. Learn more →
- Flight controller
- A flight controller is the real-time board that stabilizes and steers a drone, running firmware such as ArduPilot, PX4, Betaflight, or iNav. It reads the IMU and sensors and drives the motors, while a companion computer handles everything higher level. Learn more →
- Ground control station (GCS)
- A ground control station is the operator's software for monitoring and commanding a drone: live telemetry, a map, mission planning, flight-controller configuration, and video. Altnautica Mission Control is an open-source, browser-based GCS for any drone. Learn more →
- Drone agent
- In the Altnautica platform, the drone agent is the open-source software that runs on the companion computer. One install turns any ARM64 Linux board into a full companion computer with MAVLink routing, long-range video, cloud connectivity, on-vehicle AI, and a signed plugin system. Learn more →
- MAVLink
- MAVLink is the lightweight open messaging protocol drones use to exchange telemetry and commands between the flight controller, companion computer, and ground control station. It is the common language of the ArduPilot and PX4 ecosystems. Learn more →
- MSP (MultiWii Serial Protocol)
- MSP is the serial protocol used by Betaflight and iNav flight controllers to read and write settings and telemetry. Altnautica Mission Control speaks MSP so the same tool configures MSP and MAVLink drones. Learn more →
- ArduPilot
- ArduPilot is a mature open-source autopilot firmware for multirotors, planes, VTOLs, rovers, and boats. Altnautica supports ArduPilot fully over MAVLink. Learn more →
- PX4
- PX4 is an open-source flight-control firmware common in research and commercial drones. Altnautica supports PX4 fully over MAVLink, including its structured events and component metadata. Learn more →
- Betaflight
- Betaflight is flight-controller firmware focused on FPV and acrobatic flight, configured over MSP. Altnautica Mission Control provides Betaflight configuration over MSP. Learn more →
- WFB-ng
- WFB-ng (Wi-Fi Broadcast) is an open long-range digital radio link that sends HD video and telemetry over ordinary Wi-Fi radios in broadcast mode. Altnautica uses it for a 50 km-class drone-to-ground link. Learn more →
- Mission planning
- Mission planning is the act of defining a drone's autonomous route and actions before flight: waypoints, survey patterns, terrain following, geofences, and rally points. Altnautica Mission Control includes a full mission planner and a 3D simulator. Learn more →
- Fleet management
- Fleet management is monitoring and coordinating many drones from one place, with live telemetry, remote access, and analytics. Altnautica MeshNet provides cloud fleet management for the platform. Learn more →
- Gaussian splatting
- Gaussian splatting is a 3D reconstruction technique that represents a scene as many small colored blobs, producing photorealistic, fast-to-render models from images. Altnautica Atlas can reconstruct drone footage into gaussian splats on a compute node. Learn more →
- RTK GNSS
- RTK GNSS is a satellite-positioning technique that corrects a drone's location to centimeter accuracy using a fixed base station, used for precise survey and mapping. Learn more →
- VTOL
- VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) describes aircraft that take off like a multirotor and cruise like a plane, combining hover with long range. ArduPilot and PX4 both support VTOL, and Altnautica works with all of them. Learn more →
- Geofence
- A geofence is a virtual boundary that constrains where a drone may fly. If the drone reaches the boundary, the autopilot enforces a configured response such as holding position or returning to launch. Learn more →
- Telemetry
- Telemetry is the stream of live data a drone reports in flight: position, attitude, battery, GPS, and status. A ground control station displays it and a fleet-management layer records it. Learn more →
- Onboard AI (edge inference)
- Onboard AI is running computer-vision or machine-learning models on the drone's own companion computer during flight, so detection and tracking work without a network connection. Altnautica runs vision models on-vehicle through its drone agent. Learn more →