FLIGHT COMPUTERIn Development

The brain on the drone

The Altnautica flight computer is an open-hardware drone board that carries AI compute, a real-time flight controller, HD video encoding, and cellular connectivity. This is the airborne board that flies the drone, not the operator machine on the desk.
Read the docsView on GitHub
In Development

Actively being built. The design is scoped and firm; it is not usable yet.

~100g
Board weight
2-8GB
RAM options
2×
Camera interfaces
100%
Open hardware

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.

Meet the Workstation

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.

Onboard signal path
Companion ComputeLinux + Drone Agent
AI inferenceH.264 / H.265 encodeMAVLink proxy
Flight ControllerReal-time autopilot MCU
Sensor fusionPID control loopsMotor output
Motors + ESC4-in-1, 30 A/channel
SensorsIMU, baro, mag, GPS
The companion runs the agent, the vision engine, and the H.264 encoder. The flight MCU runs the autopilot loop and drives the motors. They exchange MAVLink over serial.

Specification

What is on the board

Compute & control
Companion CPU
Quad-core ARM, up to 2.4 GHz
RAM
2-8 GB LPDDR4X
AI acceleration
NPU up to 6 TOPSboard dependent
Flight MCU
Real-time autopilot, 480 MHz
Autopilot firmware
ArduPilot / PX4
Sensors
9-axis IMU, baro, mag, RTK GPS
Video, link & power
Camera
2× CSI-2 (MIPI) + USB UVC
Video encode
H.264 / H.265 hardware
RF video
5.8 GHz over USB adapter
Cellular
4G / 5G over USB
Expansion
USB 3.0, PCIe Gen 3
Motor output
4-in-1 ESC, 30 A/channel

Compatibility

17 supported companion boards

The agent auto-detects the board at first boot from a hardware fingerprint. The same install works from a Raspberry Pi to a Jetson to a Rockchip NPU board.

Raspberry Pi 3BCM2837
Raspberry Pi 4BBCM2711
Raspberry Pi 5BCM2712
Compute Module 3BCM2837
Compute Module 4BCM2711
Compute Module 5BCM2712
Jetson NanoMaxwell GPU
Jetson Orin NanoAmpere GPU
Orange Pi 5RK3588S
Radxa Rock 5C LiteRK3582
Radxa CM3RK3566
Radxa Cubie A7ZA733
Rockchip RK35660.8 TOPS NPU
Rockchip RK35766 TOPS NPU
Rockchip RK3588S26 TOPS NPU
Rockchip RV1126BVision SoC
Generic ARM64Any Linux board

Related

Explore the stack

Vision EngineAvailable
Model registry, custom model upload, and on-vehicle inferenceLearn more →
Video & Data LinkShipping
50 km+ HD video, 30-70 ms latency, WebRTC cloud relayLearn more →
ProtocolsShipping
Full ArduPilot, PX4, Betaflight, and iNav supportLearn more →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What hardware does the drone agent run on?

The drone agent runs on 17 supported companion boards, from a Raspberry Pi 3, 4, and 5 and Compute Modules to NVIDIA Jetson Nano and Orin Nano, Radxa, Orange Pi, and other Rockchip 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. Seventeen boards are supported today.

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
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