The brain on the drone
Flight controller, companion computer and radio, one stack.
Two boards, or one
The drone board, not the workstation
This page is the airborne flight computer that rides on the drone. The operator's machine that runs the ground control and the desktop compute is the Workstation.
The flight computer fuses a Linux companion processor and a real-time autopilot MCU onto one airframe-mounted board. It runs the onboard agent, the vision engine, and the video pipeline in the air. The machine on the ground that runs GPU compute and every operator surface is a separate profile.
Architecture
Compute meets control
A Linux companion and a real-time flight controller share one board and talk over a high-speed serial link, bidirectionally.
Specification
What is on the board
- Companion CPU
- Multi-core ARM, Linux
- RAM
- Several memory options
- AI acceleration
- NPU up to 6 TOPSboard dependent
- Flight MCU
- Real-time autopilot MCU
- Autopilot firmware
- ArduPilot / PX4
- Sensors
- IMU, baro, mag, GPS
- Camera
- MIPI CSI-2 + USB UVC
- Video encode
- Hardware H.264 / H.265board dependent
- RF video
- 5.8 GHz over USB adapter
- Cellular
- 4G LTE over USB
- Expansion
- USB, PCIe
- Motor output
- 4-in-1 ESC
Compatibility
19 supported companion boards
Until the board ships, the agent runs on the companion you already have. It reads the device tree at boot and picks the matching profile, and a board without one falls back to a generic ARM64 or x86_64 profile.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What hardware does the drone agent run on?
The drone agent ships profiles for 19 companion boards, plus generic ARM64 and x86_64 fallbacks, from a Raspberry Pi 3, 4, and 5 and Compute Modules to NVIDIA Jetson Nano and Orin Nano, Radxa, Orange Pi, BeagleBoard, and other ARM64 Linux boards. One install command detects the board and configures it.
What companion computer works with ArduPilot?
A Raspberry Pi, NVIDIA Jetson, or almost any ARM64 Linux board works as an ArduPilot companion computer once you install the Altnautica drone agent. It connects to the flight controller over MAVLink and adds video, long-range links, cloud connectivity, and on-vehicle AI. Nineteen boards have their own profile today, and generic ARM64 and x86_64 fallbacks cover the rest.
Build on the open board
Schematics are CC0 and the firmware is GPLv3. Fork the design, manufacture your own variant, ship it commercially.
Read the docs