What is a software-defined drone?
THE IDEA
Software, not sealed firmware
In a traditional drone, capability is baked into the vendor's firmware. What the drone can do is fixed at the factory, and adding a new sensor, a new behavior, or a new link means waiting for the vendor or buying a new aircraft.
A software-defined drone moves that capability into software running on a general-purpose companion computer. Autonomy, video, connectivity, computer vision, and mission logic become programs that can be updated, replaced, and extended, the same way a phone gains features through apps. The airframe and flight controller stay simple; the intelligence lives in software that improves over time.
The result is a drone you own end to end. You can inspect it, modify it, self-host it, and carry the same software across different airframes and flight controllers.
IN PRACTICE
What makes Altnautica software-defined
Altnautica is an open-source, software-defined drone platform. The onboard drone agent runs on the companion computer and speaks MAVLink to any ArduPilot or PX4 flight controller, or MSP to Betaflight and iNav. Mission Control is a browser-based ground control station. MeshNet is the cloud fleet layer. Every layer is software, open source under GPLv3, and works with drones you already own.
Because the capability is software, the same platform runs across 17 companion boards and four firmware families, and a plugin system lets you add new behaviors and hardware without touching the core.
See the software-defined stack
Flight computer, onboard agent, ground control, and cloud fleet management, all open source.
Explore the platform