The Dronecode Foundation is pleased to announce that LECENT has joined as a Silver Member. A core component supplier for unmanned systems, LECENT designs and manufactures a comprehensive range of hardware including flight controllers, GNSS modules, and peripherals that support the full spectrum of unmanned platforms, including multi-rotor and fixed-wing aircraft, VTOL, helicopters, unmanned ground vehicles, and surface and underwater vessels.

LECENT’s product lineup includes the Falcon series of flight controllers (Falcon 7-EVO, Falcon 6X, and Falcon 7-Nano), the Arrow series of GNSS modules (Arrow 4 SE, Arrow 3X, Arrow 4 Nano, and Arrow 3-RTK), and a range of supporting peripherals including the ACER-2 airspeed sensor, L-COMPASS, L-PMU 2L power management unit, and L-R8 receiver. Their breadth of hardware offerings reflects a deep commitment to building reliable, intelligent components for professional unmanned systems.

 “As a core component supplier, joining the Dronecode community allows us to contribute directly to the open-source ecosystem, which aligns with our commitment to open collaboration. Looking ahead, we aim to help bridge cutting-edge component design with open-source technology, empowering developers to build more reliable and intelligent unmanned systems.” — Richard, CTO, LECENT

LECENT’s membership brings valuable component-level expertise to the Dronecode ecosystem, strengthening the foundation’s ability to support developers building on open standards. We warmly welcome the LECENT team and look forward to their contributions to the open-source aerial robotics community.

The Dronecode Foundation is pleased to announce that NewBeeDrone has joined as a Silver Member. Based in San Diego, California, NewBeeDrone is a drone hardware manufacturer and retailer with deep roots in the FPV and micro-drone community, serving pilots from beginner builders up to seasoned operators around the world.

NewBeeDrone designs and manufactures a range of components and ready-to-fly platforms, including their well-known AcroBee and Hummingbird lines of drones, as well as electronics, frames, and motors for ducted and open-prop configurations across a variety of build sizes. The company has built a strong reputation for quality hardware and responsive customer support. Their focus on accessible, well-documented products reflects the same spirit of openness that drives the Dronecode ecosystem.

“The open-source community has played an essential role in shaping the modern UAV ecosystem. At NewBeeDrone, we believe long-term industry progress depends on healthy collaboration between developers, manufacturers, and contributors. Joining Dronecode reflects our desire to support that collaborative foundation and help strengthen the standards and technologies that move our industry forward.” — Kelvin Lee, Founder & CEO, NewBeeDrone

NewBeeDrone’s membership brings a valuable manufacturer’s perspective grounded in the day-to-realities of the drone market and domain expertise in the FPV space, a valuable addition to Dronecode’s growing community of contributors and innovators. We warmly welcome NewBeeDrone to the Dronecode Foundation and look forward to their contributions to the open source aerial robotics ecosystem.

The meetup will be held at the regular Intrinsic / Google X location at 250 West Mayfield Avenue in Mountain View, running from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM PST in the Space Invaders Conf. Room.

Talks

State of the PX4 Ecosystem

Ramón Roche, General Manager of the Dronecode Foundation

Ramón will share an update on the current state of the PX4 ecosystem and upcoming work across Dronecode’s projects.

Hardware Abstraction Layers as an Alternative to ROS 2 Control

Zeerek Ahmad, Senior Robotics and Controls Engineer at Polymath Robotics

Zeerek will discuss the development of Polymath’s Hardware Abstraction Layer(s) and how they offer an alternative to ROS 2 control for improved scalability and reliability.

Event Details

Date: February 26, 2026

Location: 250 Mayfield Ave, Mountain View, CA

Time: 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM PST

RSVP: Register on Meetup

Whether you’re a local Bay Area developer or just passing through, come join us for an evening of talks, demos, and networking with the ROS and PX4 communities. We look forward to seeing you there!

Meet Our New Board Members

Robert Cheek – UVify

Robert Cheek is the COO of UVify, where he helped scale IFO, the swarm light show drone powering the industry’s most widely deployed professional drone swarms, with 18+ Guinness World Records achieved. Robert has supported Dronecode and PX4 since the beginning because he believes the Linux Foundation model wins: open, vendor-neutral collaboration that raises the baseline for everyone and lets members differentiate above it. His vision is to make Dronecode the easiest, most trusted path from code to flight by reducing contributor friction, improving release quality, and strengthening interoperability.

LinkedIn Profile

Ryan Johnston – Applied Aeronautics

Ryan Johnston is the CEO of Applied Aeronautics. He is known for his leadership, ingenuity, and deep commitment to the open source community. Ryan leads by doing, supporting others, and pushing the community forward. His vision is a genuinely open and interoperable future where innovation moves faster because everyone is empowered to contribute. As a steward of open source and a generous mentor, Ryan brings exactly the perspective and energy needed to help guide Dronecode into its next chapter.

LinkedIn Profile

Andrew Wilkins – Ascend Engineering

Andrew Wilkins is the CEO of Ascend Engineering. He does extensive contracting work with various PX4-related projects and has a strong sense of what these projects need from Dronecode. Ascend Engineering currently employs two PX4 maintainers, giving Andrew direct insight into the technical needs and direction of the community.

LinkedIn Profile

A Thank You to All Nominees

We also want to thank Alex Klimaj of ARK Electronics and Godfrey Nolan of RIIS LLC for their willingness to serve on the Board. They are valuable community members, and we hope they will consider running again in future elections.

The Current Board of Directors

The 2026 Board of Directors are:

• Lorenz Meier (Community Director) — Chairman
• Daniel Agar (PX4 Maintainer) — TSC Chairman
• Robert Cheek (UVify) — Silver Director
• Ryan Johnston (Applied Aeronautics) — Silver Director
• Andrew Wilkins (Ascend Engineering) — Silver Director

First Board Meeting

The newly elected board will hold its first meeting at the Linux Foundation Member Summit in Napa, California between February 23-25, 2026.

The Importance of Membership

Membership in the Dronecode Foundation is an opportunity to take an active role in supporting the growth and evolution of the open drone ecosystem. Our members are part of a vibrant community, working together to advance the drone industry through open source. Learn more about membership here.

Plus, Dronecode will be there early to kickstart the festivities with our first international meetup of the year! Whether you’re a PX4 veteran or just curious about open source aerial robotics, here’s everything happening and how to get involved.

Pre-FOSDEM: PX4 Community Meetup in Leuven

Friday, January 30 | De Hoorn Bar & Resto, Leuven

Before the FOSDEM crowds descend on Brussels, join us for a half-day technical meetup in nearby Leuven, sponsored by Septentrio. This is our first European meetup of the year, and it’s shaping up to be a solid opportunity to connect with the PX4 community.

What’s on the agenda:

• PX4 project updates and roadmap discussion
• GNSS jamming and spoofing: threats and mitigation strategies (Septentrio)
• PX4-Septentrio integration deep dive
• Live demos: jamming detection, autopilot setups, ROS integration
• Community feedback session: what do you want from PX4 and GNSS suppliers?

Logistics:

• About 15 min walk from Leuven train station (20 min by train from Brussels)
• Parking available at Parking Vaartkom (Engels Plein)
• Food and drinks provided
• Post-event social at the on-site brewery or downtown Leuven

Register: https://luma.com/sw0ae3c1

FOSDEM Stand: Dronecode + Zephyr

We’re sharing a stand with the Zephyr Project at FOSDEM this year. Stop by to see live demos, products running on PX4 and Zephyr, and connect with project developers. We’ll have hardware on display, can answer questions about getting started with PX4, and are happy to talk about anything from Pixhawk standards to ROS 2 integration.

The stand will be staffed both days of the conference (Saturday January 31 and Sunday February 1). The exact building & location will be announced closer to the event.

Volunteers Needed: We’re looking for stand staff volunteers to help out during the conference. We’re working on providing PX4/Dronecode shirts for volunteers. If you’re interested, apply here: https://forms.gle/gsYCpcTEKxnAdcjc8

Robotics and Simulation Devroom Talk

Saturday, January 31 | 14:55 – 15:20 | Room UB2.147

“Precision Landing with PX4 and ROS 2 using Aruco Markers” Ramon Roche and Beniamino Pozzan

Many ROS developers know PX4 exists but never get the chance to actually poke at it. This talk gives you that chance.

We walk through a complete precision landing pipeline using PX4, ROS 2, OpenCV, Aruco markers, and Gazebo, built the same way we teach it in our hands-on workshops. You’ll see:

• The pieces of PX4 architecture that matter to you as a ROS developer
• How the PX4 ROS 2 interface works, including the PX4 ROS 2 Library by Auterion
• Simulation with Gazebo and OpenCV-based Aruco detection
• A precision landing controller with PI velocity control
• Frame transformations from camera optical frame to body frame to world frame

The goal is practical: by the end, you’ll understand how to take a tag pose from OpenCV and use it to land a drone on a target.

Full devroom schedule: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/robotics-and-simulation/

The Robotics and Simulation devroom runs all day Saturday with talks on Gazebo, ROS 2 Rust client libraries, PlotJuggler, iceoryx2, and plenty more. Worth blocking out the day if robotics is your thing.

Linux Foundation FOSDEM Reception

Saturday, January 31 | 18:00 – 21:00 CET | Au Bassin, Quai Au Briques 74, Brussels

The Linux Foundation is hosting their annual FOSDEM reception. A good chance to connect with folks from across the LF project ecosystem in a more relaxed setting.

Register: https://linuxfoundation.regfox.com/the-linux-foundation-fosdem-reception

Spread the Word

If you’re speaking at FOSDEM or attending the Robotics devroom, the devroom organizers have speaker graphics available: https://github.com/robotics-devroom/robotics-devroom.github.io/tree/main/events/fosdem26/speaker-graphics

Summary: Key Dates and Links

See you in Belgium!

The Dronecode Foundation is excited to announce that Applied Aeronautics has joined the foundation as a Silver Member. With over a decade of experience designing and manufacturing long-range fixed-wing UAVs, Applied Aeronautics’ commitment to open source flight software aligns perfectly with Dronecode’s mission to foster innovation and the adoption of open standards within the global drone ecosystem.

Founded in 2014, Applied Aeronautics specializes in high-performance, cost-effective, UAV platforms. Their flagship product, the Albatross, is a long-ranged Group 2 fixed-wing platform with autonomous takeoff and landing capabilities. The team are active members of the PX4 community, and have contributed significantly in issue reporting, testing, and field validation for fixed wing aircraft development.

With deployments in over 55 countries, Applied Aeronautics’ drones are trusted by governments, defense contractors, research institutions, and commercial operators across applications including security and surveillance, infrastructure inspections, emergency response, precision agriculture, and public safety.

“We joined Dronecode because we believe in giving back to the ecosystem that helped all of us get here. When we invest in open platforms, open standards, and the people behind them, our entire industry moves forward. Through our time, expertise, and technology, we’re committed to supporting the community and helping elevate safety, reliability, and capability across the global UAV landscape.” — Meg Annand, Co-Founder & COO, Applied Aeronautics

Applied Aeronautics’ proven track record of delivering mission-ready UAV platforms validates the strength of open source, and their broader community support exemplifies the innovative attitude that propels drone development forward. We warmly welcome Applied Aeronautics to the Dronecode Foundation and eagerly anticipate their impactful contributions and innovations.

If you’re heading to FOSDEM at the end of January or are local to the area, join us for a half-day PX4 meetup in nearby Leuven. Sponsored by Septentrio, this event brings together drone and robotics developers, researchers, and industry professionals for hours of networking, fun, and knowledge sharing. Register for your spot today!

The agenda covers PX4 project updates and roadmap discussion, a deep look at GNSS jamming and spoofing threats alongside mitigation strategies, and a technical walkthrough of the PX4-Septentrio integration. Expect live demos on jamming detection, autopilot setups, and ROS integration.

Attend and connect with fellow developers at our first European meetup and see what the global PX4 developer community is all about. Taking place at De Hoorn Bar & Resto on Sluisstraat 79, about a 15-minute walk from Leuven train station (which is just 20 minutes by train from Brussels), food and drink is included. Plus, there’s a post-event social at the onsite brewery or downtown Leuven.

We’re also accepting additional talk submissions if you’d like to throw your hat into the ring. You can submit a proposal through the registration form. Whether you’re planning to talk or just attend, there’s no better place to connect with the open source drone developer community before FOSDEM.

Atlanta delivered! The community delivered! And this summit showed once again that open-source robotics is advancing faster than anyone expects, driven by developers who show up ready to build!

This year, we brought nearly 200 developers, researchers, integrators, and industry partners together at the Omni Hotel in Centennial Park. Before the main program even opened, maintainers met to align roadmaps, identify pain points, and set priorities for the next cycle. Coordination was the core theme this year, and the outcome already shows in early planning for upcoming releases.

Then came two days packed with PX4 architecture talks, autonomy research, ROS 2 integration, GNSS and navigation tech, hardware platforms, middleware work, developer tools, and a pile of sessions that would have been impossible to fit into a multi track event. The single track format kept the entire community focused in the same room, which made discussions sharper and more collaborative. Partners brought serious work to Atlanta too. From computer vision to advanced autonomy to flight ready payload integrations, these demos made it clear that PX4 is not a hobbyist playground. It is a production grade stack for companies shipping robots today.

Below is a recap, plus photos, videos, and the traditional post-event highlight reel.

What You Missed

Here is the yearly video tradition. Short, sharp, and good enough to make anyone who skipped Atlanta reconsider their life choices.

Thank You to Our Sponsors

This event exists because sponsors believe in the value of open source robotics and are willing to back that belief with actual support. A sincere thank you to every company that helped us bring the summit to Atlanta.

Platinum

Auterion

Silver

Ascend Engineering, CUAV, Firestorm, FlyingBasket, Holybro, ModalAI, RIIS, Roboto.AI, UVIFY

Your presence helped fund the venue, the AV team, the recording crew, the badges, the signage, and everything else that keeps the summit looking polished instead of improvised.

Media Partners

Thanks to our media partners for amplifying the message, covering the event, and helping new developers discover the PX4 ecosystem.

Autonomy Global, Commercial UAV News, Weekly Robotics

The Linux Foundation Events Team

A major shoutout to the LF Events crew. They handled registration, logistics, AV, speaker coordination, and a hundred quiet details that no one sees but everyone benefits from. They were flawless. If this event felt smooth, it is because they executed perfectly.

See You in 2026

If you missed Atlanta, don’t worry, 2026 gives you two chances to make it right. Next year the PX4 community joins the Open Source Summit events in North America in May and Europe in October. Bigger stage, bigger crowd, and a perfect excuse to block your calendar early. We’re bringing our developer focused energy to the wider Linux world, and it’s going to be a good time to show up, learn, share, and brag a little about what you’re building.

If you were in Atlanta, thank you for being part of it.

If you missed it, see you next time.

This year at ROSCon 2025 in Singapore, the Dronecode community was out in full force. From hands-on learning sessions to live demos and technical discussions, we showcased how PX4 and ROS 2 continue to grow closer together.

Hands-On Aerial Robotics Workshop

Our workshop “Hands-On Aerial Robotics with PX4 and ROS 2” was a full house with more than 60 participants completing all assignments successfully. Thanks to Patrik Dominik Pördi and Beniamino Pozzan for building and delivering the content, and to ARK Electronics for their partnership in making it happen. The session guided participants from simulation to full autonomy using PX4, ROS 2, Gazebo, and Foxglove.

Aerial Robotics Meetup

Later in the week, we hosted an Aerial Robotics Meetup that drew over 100 attendees. The four-hour event was packed with discussions, demos, and networking across the open robotics community. These conversations helped us align on upcoming collaborations, including deeper integration work with 03DE.

Showcasing Innovation Across the Ecosystem

ROSCon’s sponsor showcase featured several exciting PX4-powered demos. Benji Barash from Roboto AI demonstrated PX4 integrated with their analytics engine for physical AI. UVify presented their advanced Omega research platform, featuring the new Xeye visual odometry solution for ROS developers, with founder Hyon Lim and Robb Cheek leading the presentation. PX4 was also mentioned across multiple talks throughout the conference, underscoring its growing role in the broader ROS ecosystem.

PX4 Now in the ROS Distro

We also reached an important technical milestone: the first PX4 package was officially published to the ROS Rolling Ridley distribution, marking a major step toward easier integration between PX4 and ROS 2 for developers everywhere.

View the contribution on GitHub

Looking Ahead

We are already preparing to submit a new workshop proposal for ROSCon 2026 in Toronto (September 22 – 24). Our goal is to continue deepening collaboration with our sister ROS community and to make aerial robotics development even more accessible to researchers and engineers worldwide.

Open collaboration remains at the heart of everything we do. Thank you to everyone who joined us in Singapore and helped strengthen the bridge between PX4 and ROS 2

Dronecode is hosting a hands-on aerial robotics workshop at ROSCon Singapore on October 27. Tickets are still available, so there’s still time to join us.

Hands-On Aerial Robotics Using PX4 and ROS 2

Instructors: Ramón Roche (Dronecode Foundation), Patrik Pordi (ARK Electronics), and Beniamino Pozzan (PX4 Autopilot)

Nicoll 1 Hall, Singapore
Full Day, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM

In this workshop, you’ll connect PX4 and ROS 2 in a complete simulation pipeline using Gazebo, RViz, and Foxglove. You’ll learn how to:

• Send velocity, position, and acceleration commands from ROS 2 nodes directly to PX4
• Integrate perception systems like ArUco markers and LiDAR
• Stream live telemetry and visualize flight data
• Build and run control routines on simulated or real drones

No PX4 experience is required. Bring your ROS 2 knowledge, your laptop, and your curiosity. You’ll leave with working simulation setups, example projects, and a clear path to move from virtual drones to real hardware.

All code, tools, and instructions are fully open source and available here:

github.com/Dronecode/roscon-25-workshop

Tickets for ROSCon and the workshop are still available—don’t miss your chance to join us in Singapore!

Register for ROSCon 2025

Help Shape the Future of Simulation

With the help of Kimberly McGuire, an Independent Contractor, the Dronecode team is gathering feedback to improve drone simulation for the entire open source drone developer community. Whether you’re just getting started, a researcher working on autonomous flight, or an engineer developing commercial systems, your input can make a difference.

Closing the Simulation to Reality Gap

The simulation ecosystem is fragmented. Developers struggle with installation complexity, performance limitations, and the biggest problem of all, real-world tests invalidating your simulation results. This survey aims to identify the most pressing pain points, feature gaps, and current preferences, so Dronecode can prioritize improvements and integrations from PX4 to make the greatest impact.

Your responses will directly influence which simulator integrations get improved or added, what new features are developed, where documentation and examples are strengthened, and how simulation tools evolve to support diverse use cases, from single-drone prototyping to swarm simulation, from hobbyist projects to commercial development.

What We’re Asking

The survey takes 10-15 minutes and covers:

• Your background and current simulator usage
• Hardware constraints and technical setup
• Feature priorities
  • Technical capabilities (physics, rendering, hardware-in-the-loop)
  • Usability (installation, interface, debugging tools)
  • Advanced functionality (multi-agent simulation, ML integration, custom models)
• Your biggest frustrations and desired improvements

Questions are designed to understand not just what tools you use, but how and why, from the number of vehicles you simulate to whether you need photorealistic rendering, or real-time execution

Share Your Perspective

Your answers will help build better tools for everyone in the PX4 ecosystem and beyond. Thank you for your participation!

The Dronecode Foundation is delighted to announce that Shenzen UTMTEK Technology Co., Ltd has joined as a Silver Member. With their innovative edge-computing flight controllers and comprehensive UAV management solutions, Utmtek’s commitment to open source development aligns perfectly with Dronecode’s mission to foster innovation.

Its USX51 Edge Computing Flight Controller system combines a D-Robotics X5 AI chip with a Pixhawk 6X flight controller architecture, delivering powerful onboard AI computing capabilities. This hardware demonstrates the extensibility of open hardware standards to provide cutting edge commercial products. Utmtek’s hardware and software platforms have been deployed various real-world domains including fire rescue, traffic management, law enforcement, and inspection.

“We build edge-computing flight control systems that bring together high-performance computing and autonomous flight, making drones and low-altitude applications smarter and more reliable. We believe innovation grows stronger through openness and collaboration, which is why we’re excited to join the Dronecode community. By sharing what we know and working closely with developers and partners around the world, we can help grow the open-source flight control ecosystem and push forward the next generation of intelligent aerial platforms. ”  Utmtek CEO Ricky Yan

Utmtek’s expertise in edge computing and comprehensive UAV management represents a significant advancement for the drone industry, bringing industrial-grade reliability, domestic chip integration, and AI-powered autonomous capabilities to the open-source community. Their focus on building complete digital low-altitude ecosystems positions them among the top tier of UAV industry applications and services.

Utmtek’s expertise in edge computing and comprehensive UAV management represents a significant advancement for the drone industry, bringing industrial-grade reliability, domestic chip integration, and AI-powered autonomous capabilities to the open-source community. Its focus on building complete digital low-altitude ecosystems positions them among the top tier of domestic UAV industry applications and services.

The PX4 Developer Summit 2025’s program has dropped, and it’s packed with amazing speakers covering the most important topics in open source aerial robotics. This year’s lineup covers deep technical sessions on PX4 core development, MAVLink protocol advances, ROS 2 integration patterns, advanced simulation frameworks, computer vision and vision-based navigation, EKF2 estimation techniques, cutting-edge applications from F-16 simulation to warehouse autonomy, and more. 

The summit program committee worked hard selecting the sessions from an overwhelmingly fantastic pool of submissions, so we thought we’d share a few of their favorites to give you a taste of what you can expect at the show!

Fuse, Reset, or Reject? Handling Various Data-sources in EKF2

This session dissects PX4’s estimation pipeline, exploring how EKF2 manages multi-sensor data fusion and the recent architectural shift toward “reset by fusion” over hard resets. Using GNSS-degraded scenarios as real-world examples, it demonstrates how the system handles everything from valid data to complete sensor failures, providing practical insights for configuring and extending EKF2’s capabilities.

Design MC Gains From First Principles Within the PX4 Architecture

This presentation covers a systematic approach to controller gain design that moves beyond iterative tuning to physics-based modeling. It explains how to linearize PX4’s rate-to-position controllers correctly and account for the architecture’s internal normalizations and transformations, providing a stronger starting point for tuning larger multi-copters where default gains are often suboptimal.

Fixed-wing Control API

A comprehensive deep-dive into PX4’s fixed-wing control architecture, mapping out where internal flight modes live and how they interface with the control pipeline. This session focuses on ROS 2 integration points, with practical examples and developer tips for creating custom external flight modes that seamlessly integrate with PX4’s core systems.

Taming the Wing: A Standardized Workflow for PX4 Fixed-Wing Tuning

This session unveils a systematic approach to fixed-wing tuning that transforms the traditionally complex process into a reproducible workflow. It presents a step-by-step methodology covering attitude controllers, TECS, NPFG, and airspeed configurations, while showcasing semi-automated tools that accelerate the tuning process.

PX4 Device Manifest

This presentation introduces a unified solution for device configuration management that addresses the current patchwork of opportunistic driver initialization and inconsistent parameter exposure. The approach promises backward-compatible parameter types with clear health feedback and runtime monitoring, eliminating silent failures in redundant sensor setups.

See you at the show!!!

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the great sessions you’ll find at the PX4 Developer Summit 2025, Atlanta, Georgia, November 10-11. If you haven’t already, register for your pass here. We can’t wait to see you there!

We had a great time at this year’s Open Source Summit Europe. It was inspiring to see the energy of the Linux community and to connect with so many of our members, partners, and friends.

The event was a success, and we were glad to see familiar faces as well as new ones joining the conversation. Thank you to everyone who attended our sessions, stopped by to chat, and continues to support open source autonomy.

We are already looking forward to the next opportunity to meet with the global open source community and share the progress being made in aerial robotics.

Dronecode contributed two talks to the program:

*Keynote* Up Up and Away: Adventures in Aerial Robotics

Co-presented with Dr. Kimberly McGuire, this session explored how open source aerial robotics is shaping the future of autonomy and bringing developers together across disciplines.

Dronecode: A Decade of Open Source Autonomy

A look back at how far the PX4 and Pixhawk ecosystems have come, and where open collaboration is taking us next.

We’re excited to share that Dronecode will be at Open Source Summit Europe, happening August 25–27 in Amsterdam. This year, we’re bringing the story of open source autonomy to one of the biggest stages in open source.

Keynote: 

Up, Up, and Away – Adventures in Aerial Robotics

August 26, 10:10 am CEST

Ramón Roche, General Manager of the Dronecode Foundation

Kimberly McGuire, Independent Roboticist

Keynote details

Together, we’ll share how open source is powering the next generation of aerial robotics and why communities like PX4 and ROS are essential to making it happen.

Talk: 

Dronecode – A Decade of Open Source Autonomy

August 26, 4:20 pm CEST

G102-G103 (Level 1)

Session details

Join me for a deep dive into the Dronecode story: how we started, what we’ve built together, and where we’re headed as we enter the next decade of open source autonomy.

More Robotics at OSS EU

The open source robotics community will be out in full force this year:

• An Opinionated Overview of Open Source Robotics – Mateusz Sadowski, Weekly Robotics
• Ask the Expert: Robotics – Kimberly McGuire

Don’t Miss These Co-Located Events

Open Source Summit EU is also home to some great co-located events:

• Yocto Project Developer Day – essential for anyone building Linux-based systems
• Zephyr Developer Summit – the hub for open source embedded development

Why It Matters

Dronecode is proud to represent the open source UAV community at OSS EU. These events show how drones and robotics are no longer niche, they’re central to the future of open systems, from research to industry.

If you’ll be in Amsterdam, come join us. Let’s talk about how open source autonomy is taking flight.

Hosted with our friends at NEROS in El Segundo, this joint Dronecode and ROS meetup brought together contributors working across autonomy, robotics, and aerospace. Over the course of the evening, we shared lightning talks, ran live flight demos inside a secure test cage, and met new collaborators from across Southern California.

Lightning Talks

Short and focused. Each talk ran about 15 minutes and aimed to share something concrete the audience could take home.

ROS Updates (Kat Scott, Developer Advocate for ROS)
A fast tour of what landed recently in ROS 2 and what is coming next. Kat also pointed folks to the right working groups, weekly ROS News, and where to start contributing.

Dronecode Updates (Ramón Roche, Linux Foundation)
A snapshot of what is new across the Dronecode stack and how to get involved. Highlights included recent PX4 releases, improvements in simulation and docs, and a reminder to submit talks for the PX4 Developer Summit in Atlanta this November.

Introducing Bagel: The Open Source AI Robotics Toolchain (Arun Venkatadri and Shouheng Yi)
Bagel lets you ask questions of your robot logs instead of writing one-off scripts. It already works with ROS 2 bags, ROS 1 bags, and PX4 ULogs, and can surface events like hard landings from IMU data. The team ran live queries and shared how to try it.

NEROS Technologies (Olaf Hichwa, CTO)
An inside look at NEROS and how they build, test, and iterate on autonomous systems in El Segundo. Olaf walked through the on-site test cage setup and invited attendees to connect about open roles.

Live Flight Demos

We wrapped talks with hands‑on demos in the NEROS test cage. Attendees saw PX4‑powered vehicles up close and had time for Q&A with the teams running the demos.

Thank You, NEROS

Big thanks to NEROS for hosting us in El Segundo and for sponsoring food and drinks. Events like this happen because local partners open their doors and share their space with the community.

Get Involved

Want to keep the momentum going? Join us in the Dronecode and ROS communities:

• Dronecode Foundation: https://dronecode.org/
• Dronecode Discord: https://chat.dronecode.org/
• PX4 Discussions: https://discuss.px4.io/
• OSRA: https://osralliance.org/
• OSRF Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/RtJeHT8mXQ
• ROS Discussions: https://discourse.openrobotics.org

Looking Ahead

We are lining up the next set of meetups now. If your team wants to host or present, reach out to us. You can also keep an eye on our blog for upcoming dates.

PX4 Developer Summit

November 10-11, 2025, Atlanta, Georgia. Registration is open. Learn more and register: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/px4-developer-summit/

The Dronecode Foundation is thrilled to announce that the PX4 Developer Summit will return in 2025, this November 10-11 in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Omni Atlanta Hotel at Centennial Park. The two-day event brings together the top maintainers and contributors, community members and users, and innovative companies building on top of the PX4 ecosystem. Register today to lock in your spot at the premier event in aerial robotics development. Everyone is welcome!

It’s time to throw a big party again! Following a wave of 5 local meetups across the globe from Philadelphia to Korea, the PX4 Developers Summit stands as the Dronecode Foundation’s flagship event. Bringing together 200 international attendees, the event represents the best chance to meet the people behind the platforms and code pushing the boundaries of autonomous systems.

If you are involved in aerial robotics in any way, this event is for you. With unrivaled networking, you’ll interact with the best and brightest in the drone development community. It’s an unmatched opportunity to share knowledge and research, develop your career, find talent, or pair up with a future co-founder. 

Meet the Industry Leaders

The PX4 Developers Summit is known for inviting legendary voices to keynote. You’ll hear from the visionaries leading the charge in aerial robotics and groundbreaking developers who have made it all possible.

Over the course of 2 Days, keynotes and sessions will dive into the innovations that are driving drone development and the core technologies that form the bedrock of the PX4 ecosystem, including PX4 Autopilot, Pixhawk, MAVLink, and QGroundControl, and it doesn’t stop there. The full program will include talks on ROS 2, simulation, AI, computer vision, and more.

Auterion, ModalAI, RIIS have already signed on to sponsor the event and lend their support to open source. Attendees will have access to the pillars of the drone industry to find their next career opportunity, source components, platforms, or services, and ask the questions you just can’t get answered online. 

Looking to sponsor? Reach out to us here.

A Brand New Location

Taking place in the bustling city of Atlanta, Georgia, the PX4 Developer Summit will take place just as the weather cools down and the city settles into comfortable 70-degree days. Taking place next to Kubecon, the largest Linux Foundation event, the city will become a hub for open source developers all week long.

The summit will be hosted at the Omni Atlanta Hotel at Centennial Park, located at 190 Marietta Street NW in the heart of downtown Atlanta Venue & Travel | LF Events. Conveniently positioned just a short walk from the CNN Center and accessible via MARTA’s CNN/GWCC station, the venue offers attendees easy access to Atlanta’s vibrant downtown district Venue & Travel | LF Events. For those flying in, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is approximately 30 minutes away by car or accessible via MARTA’s rail system for about $2.75 each way Venue & Travel | LF Events.

It’s Great to Be Back

If your memory is fading from the last summit or this is your first time hearing about it, check out some of videos from the 2023 event in Louisiana. We promise to put on as good a show this time, if not even better.

We are excited to announce our next community meetup taking place in Los Angeles, California, on July 31, 2025. Hosted in collaboration with Dronecode Member NEROS Technologies and OSRA, this event brings together developers and contributors from the ROS and PX4 communities for an evening of networking, demos, and lightning talks.

The meetup will be held at the NEROS headquarters in El Segundo, on the last day of the IEEE Space Mission IT conference. This is an excellent opportunity to connect with others working in robotics, aerospace, and open source software development.

The program features a series of short presentations highlighting recent work across both the ROS and PX4 ecosystems, accompanied by live demonstrations and ample time for informal discussions. Our host, NEROS, will provide food and drinks.

Whether you are local to Southern California or visiting for the conference, we invite you to join us and meet others who are building open-source solutions for robotics and autonomy.

Event Details

Date: July 31, 2025

Location: NEROS Technologies, El Segundo, CA

Time: 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM

RSVP: Register on Luma

We look forward to seeing you there.

The meetup held on July 8, 2025, in Guadalajara, Mexico, was a truly memorable event hosted by the always supportive NXP Semiconductor family. It brought together nearly 60 attendees in person from the Guadalajara metropolitan region, with developers from across Academia and Industry joining us for an evening of embedded talks with varying topics from RTOS to Flying Robots.

The event kicked off with networking fueled by snacks and drinks, but most importantly, project swag and cool demos featuring the open source projects on display, capturing the attention of everyone. This was followed by the welcome address and first talk by our speaker and host Ramón Roche.

Welcome Note & Zephyr: Open Source Project Best Practices Over Time – Ramón Roche, The Linux Foundation

This talk provided attendees with a comprehensive overview of the Zephyr project, highlighting its meteoric rise to the top due to its focus on best practices and safety. It showcased the Zephyr ecosystem and offered pathways for collaboration within the local community.

Getting started with Zephyr on NXP MCX microcontrollers – Missael Maciel, NXP Semiconductor

Missael demonstrated Zephyr in action with a live demonstration using an NXP board, and a comprehensive tutorial on the use of VSCode paired with NXP plugins for ease of use, showing developers how to make the most out of the predefined Devicetree configurations available for a given board.

After this, the group enjoyed a lively break, enjoying Pizza and drinks sponsored by our gracious host, NXP, while the next speaker set up on stage.

Dronecode: A Decade of Open Source Autonomy – Ramón Roche, The Linux Foundation

After the break, Ramón followed up with a detailed overview of the field of Aerial Robotics and the role of the Dronecode Foundation, stewarding innovation with open technologies, including a deep dive into the Dronecode stack, from firmware to hardware, flying by middleware, telemetry, and ground station apps. 

QZPro: The game changer for fast and easy development – Alexis Guijarro and Leonardo Garcia, 3DR

Giveaway Quiz

The 3DR team showcased the newly released Zephyr & PX4-capable drone platform called the QZPro, featuring multiple microcontrollers and the OpenMV project exposing a MicroPython interface for extendability and highlighting the numerous benefits of using open source.

Thank you, NXP Semiconductor team!

We are especially grateful to the NXP Semiconductor team for hosting the event at their Guadalajara campus, for sponsoring the food and beverages, and for being a fantastic steward for open source collaboration in Mexico and beyond.

Looking Ahead

The Guadalajara meetup was a success on so many levels. The Mexican robotics community showed up in numbers to share their knowledge and show their support for the PX4 and Zephyr communities. As our first joint meetup, this proved that collaboration doesn’t only exist within a project, but multiple projects can work together to expand the possibilities for everyone.

Next Meetup

Join us for an exciting joint ROS / Dronecode Foundation meetup in Los Angeles! This special event, hosted by Kat Scott and Ramon Roche, will take place following the IEEE International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology, on July 31, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm It’s an excellent chance to meet fellow developers, researchers, and enthusiasts while exploring the latest in robotics and unmanned systems. Whether you’re working on autonomous vehicles, aerial robotics, or cutting-edge ROS applications, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to learn, collaborate, and build meaningful connections.

The Dronecode Foundation is delighted to announce that Raefly has joined as a Silver Member. With its professional UAV technical expertise and extensive industry experience, Raefly’s commitment to advancing PX4 open-source UAV applications aligns perfectly with Dronecode’s mission to foster innovation within the global drone ecosystem.

Raefly brings impressive credentials to the Dronecode community, having provided UAV debugging and technical services for more than 2,000 UAV companies. The company specializes in UAV applications across surveying & mapping, inspection, and public security domains, accumulating extensive practical experience in the uncrewed systems industry. Through comprehensive services including UAS debugging and customized technical solutions, Raefly has established itself as a trusted partner in the UAV sector.

By joining Dronecode, Raefly will be able to leverage the collaborative power of the open-source community while bringing their technical expertise to benefit users worldwide.

“Joining Dronecode Foundation can significantly deepen our connection with open-source organization and expand our access to communicate with cutting-edge technology, which aligns with our long-standing goal,” says Lusen Liu, Co-founder of Raefly. “The PX4 ecosystem enables us to develop more innovative UAV application modes and enhance the user experience of UAVs. We are so excited to collaborate with Dronecode to advance the uncrewed systems industry. We will make every effort to explore new operation functions and potential application scenarios for UAVs.”

With their proven track record of serving thousands of UAV companies, Raefly’s technical expertise in debugging and customized solutions will strengthen the PX4 ecosystem and support the broader community’s innovation efforts.

We warmly welcome Raefly to the Dronecode Foundation and eagerly anticipate their impactful contributions and innovations.

We’re thrilled to announce the next stop in the Dronecode Foundation’s community meetup series. This time, we’re teaming up with the ELISA Project for a one-day, in-person event at Korea Aerospace University. The focus? Safety-critical Linux and autonomous flight software, with a strong emphasis on PX4 and the growing interest in certifiable open-source flight stacks.

This meetup is a great opportunity to connect with local developers, researchers, and industry partners who are working on the cutting edge of aerial robotics and space-grade systems. The program will dive into how PX4 is being integrated into safety-critical workflows and the role of Linux in enabling robust, certifiable platforms across domains. The day will start with a single-track format covering shared challenges and tooling from the ELISA Project, including the ongoing work in the Space Grade Linux (SGL) initiative. After lunch, the program will split into two focused tracks on practical applications of PX4 in autonomous flight.

If you’re interested in contributing to the conversation, we’d love to hear from you. The call for proposals is now open, and we encourage anyone building with PX4 or working on safety-critical Linux to submit a talk. The deadline to submit is October 24, 2025, at 11:55 PM local time. Registration for the event is now open as well—seats are limited, so be sure to sign up early.

As always, this meetup is organized by the community with support from both the Dronecode Foundation and the ELISA Project. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to [email protected]. We’re looking forward to seeing the PX4 community show up strong in Korea.

By Fernando Cladera and Mike Pehel

Every year the PX4 ecosystem sees milestone advancements in research. This research provides a foundation for the real-world applications that expand the capabilities of autonomous platforms. We wanted to share some exceptional papers we found to help inspire you and bring to light some of the possibilities in the world of PX4.

OmniNxt: A Fully Open-source and Compact Aerial Robot with Omnidirectional Visual Perception

Peize Liu et al, HKUST Aerial Robotics Group, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

It’s always exciting to see a full-fledged open source drone platform in a paper. Here, the researchers showcase a multi-fisheye camera setup utilizing a Jetson Orin NX capable of omni-directional perception. This low SWaP setup is capable of indoor navigation in cluttered indoor environments at speeds up to 1.0 m/s while avoiding obstacles.

The paper also claims the platform demonstrates superior VIO accuracy compared to limited-FoV stereo systems. Notably, the omnidirectional perception allows the drone to fly without yaw rotation for trajectory following, which improves both localization accuracy and energy efficiency. The project makes omnidirectional perception more accessible to the broader research community through complete open-source hardware and software and we’re excited to see what the team does next.

A Neural Network Mode for PX4 on Embedded Flight Controllers

Sindre M. Hegre et al, Autonomous Robots Lab,  Norwegian University of Science and Technology

This paper presents a significant advancement by creating a neural flight controller for PX4. The key innovation is developing a custom module that enables TensorFlow Lite neural networks to run directly on embedded microcontrollers (like the STM32H743), completely replacing the traditional cascaded PID control system with an end-to-end neural controller that directly outputs motor commands.

The system as described by the paper demonstrates remarkable efficiency with inference, showing successful simulation-to-reality transfer while preserving PX4’s safety features. Flight controllers are extremely resource constrained compared to the devices neural networks (and other AIs) usually run on, so this progress is noteworthy, especially considering it was achieved without the need for a companion computer to offload processing. 

Trajectory Planning and Control for Differentially Flat Fixed-Wing Aerial Systems

Luca Morando et al, The agile robotics and perception lab, New York University

Presented at the ICRA 25 Aerial Robotics Workshop and main conference track, this paper introduces a novel approach to fixed-wing navigation using differential flatness and Bernstein polynomials similarl to “minimum snap” method widely used in quadrotors. The implementation is dynamic and adapts to the curved trajectory constraints of the aircraft while adhering to the optimal path. This could potentially enable aggressive flight paths for fixed-wing platforms and enhanced maneuverability overall. 

Beyond the practical results, the methodology behind the research can also lead to faster deployments. They trained their system in Gazebo and the results show a very close sim-to-real gap. This assures a smoother transition when moving out of the simulator and into the real world.

Dynamic End Effector Trajectory Tracking for Small-Scale Underwater Vehicle-Manipulator Systems (UVMS): Modeling, Control, and Experimental Validation

Niklas Trekel et al, Institute of Mechanics and Ocean Engineering, TU Hamburg

Sometimes it seems like the UAVs get all the attention, but PX4 also gets utilized in AUVs in maritime environments. This research showcases improved trajectory tracking for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMSs) on the BlueROV2 platform from our friends over at BlueRobotics. Even small disturbances can significantly impact the operation of manipulators or really any moving part of the AUV, so to see such buttery smooth motion from on the arm in this video is impressive. This represents important progress in making underwater manipulation more accessible through commercial, lightweight platforms rather than requiring expensive, large-scale research vessels.

Looking Forward

What makes this wave of research particularly exciting is its commitment to open-source accessibility, ensuring these cutting-edge capabilities reach the widest audience possible, and pushing the limits of what PX4 controllers can do.This is just a small slice of the great work being done, so feel free to share with us other interesting research or your own projects on social media or in the Dronecode Discord channel. If we get enough feedback, we’ll be sure to highlight ongoing research more often!

The Dronecode Foundation is excited to team up with the Zephyr Project for our first-ever joint meetup in Mexico, taking place in Guadalajara on July 8th at the NXP Offices. This is a fantastic opportunity for developers, contributors, and users of both ecosystems to connect in person, share their work, and explore how open source is driving innovation in drones and embedded systems.

We are actively looking for speakers—if you’ve been working on something cool with PX4, Pixhawk, Zephyr RTOS, or related technologies, we want to hear from you! Submit your proposal via the CFP form. And whether you want to present or simply attend and network, be sure to register here —space is limited.

I’ll be attending the meetup in person and look forward to connecting with the local community. If you’re in the area, come by and say hi—it will be a great evening of tech talks, collaboration, and tacos. See you in Guadalajara!

The Northeast Meeup, held on March 26th at University of Pennsylvania Pennovation Works gathered the PX4 community, roboticists, engineers, students and researchers for a day packed with in-depth technical presentations and unrivaled networking. The event established new connections for the local PX4 contributors and reaffirmed longstanding relationships in the open source community. 

Event Overview

Expanding on the schedule from our previous meetup, the East Coast edition featured a giant lineup of legendary speakers. It covered everything from groundbreaking research to advanced real-world applications that exemplify the power of PX4. Here’s a recap of the sessions:

Deep Dive into the PX4 Autopilot (10:00 AM)

Ramon Roche, General Manager of the Dronecode Foundation, kicked off the technical sessions with an in-depth exploration of the PX4 Autopilot. He emphasized the importance of collaboration and open standards in driving innovation in the drone industry. Ramon’s talk highlighted how the PX4 community continues to push the boundaries of autonomous flight and how attendees could get involved in shaping the future of open-source drone technology.

10 Years of PX4 at GRASP – An Overview (10:30 AM)

Fernando Cladera, PhD Student at GRASP Lab, UPenn, presented a comprehensive overview of the decade-long journey of PX4 at the GRASP Lab. Fernando’s presentation provided historical context and showcased the evolution of PX4 technology within the academic research environment at UPenn.

Wildland Fire Management and Avalanche Mitigation with Drones (11:00 AM)

Max Tubmann, Director of Integrations at Drone Amplified, delivered a compelling talk on practical applications of drone technology in emergency response scenarios. Max discussed innovative approaches to wildland fire management and avalanche mitigation, demonstrating how drones are transforming these critical safety operations.

Deploying QGC in a SteamDeck (11:30 AM)

Conor McCaffey, CEO of UAX Technologies, shared insights on the novel implementation of QGroundControl in the Steam Deck platform. Conor’s presentation showcased the versatility of modern drone control systems and the potential for consumer gaming hardware to serve professional drone applications.

Lunch & Networking (12:00 PM)

Attendees enjoyed a lunch break that provided an excellent opportunity to connect and exchange ideas before the afternoon sessions.

Using Simulation to Develop Real-World Robotic Intelligence (12:45 PM)

Parv Kapoor, PhD Student at CMU and Research Intern at Scaled Foundations, discussed the critical role of simulation in developing robust robotic intelligence. Parv’s talk emphasized how simulation environments accelerate development cycles and enable safer testing of advanced drone capabilities.

Towards Safe and Efficient Real-Time Motion Planning in Windy Urban Environments (1:15 PM)

Spencer Folk, PhD Candidate at GRASP Lab, UPenn, presented cutting-edge research on motion planning for drones operating in challenging urban wind conditions. Spencer explained how sophisticated algorithms can enhance drone navigation safety and efficiency in complex environments.

Real-Time Image Stabilization Using VOXL 2 AI Autopilot (2:15 PM)

Alex Kushleyev, Technical Advisor at ModalAI, delivered a technical deep dive on real-time image stabilization technologies. Alex discussed how the VOXL 2 AI Autopilot enables superior image quality in dynamic flight conditions, opening new possibilities for aerial imaging and data collection.

Live Demonstrations & Hands-on Activities (2:45 PM)

The formal presentations concluded with an exciting session of live demonstrations at the Pennovation outdoor net, where attendees witnessed heavy-duty drone and satellite navigated drone flights.

Extended Networking Session (3:30 PM)

The event wrapped up with an extended networking session, providing attendees additional opportunities to engage with speakers, fellow enthusiasts, and industry professionals over refreshments.

Community Engagement and Collaboration

The Northeast Meetup exceeded expectations in fostering meaningful dialogue among participants. Throughout the day, the Treehouse buzzed with energy as seasoned professionals exchanged insights with curious newcomers. Technical discussions spilled over from formal sessions into animated group conversations, where attendees freely shared challenges from their own projects and received immediate feedback from peers. This organic knowledge exchange exemplified the collaborative spirit that makes the PX4 ecosystem thrive and demonstrated how regional gatherings can strengthen the broader open-source movement.

Acknowledgments

A special note of gratitude goes to the University of Pennsylvania Pennovation Works for providing their exceptional Treehouse space for our gathering. This world-class innovation hub proved to be the perfect setting for a day dedicated to cutting-edge discussions and demonstrations. The venue’s support team went above and beyond to ensure everything ran smoothly from setup to conclusion.

We’d also like to personally thank Vijay Kumar Nemirovsky Family Dean, SEAS, and Fernando Cladera, Robotics MSE ’19; PhD, CIS, for their hands on work to make this event possible and coordinating all the stakeholders at UPenn. Their ongoing support of the PX4 community is exemplary. 

We’re deeply indebted to our remarkable roster of speakers who traveled from across the country to share their expertise with the Philadelphia community. Their willingness to engage with attendees long after their sessions had ended highlighted the genuine passion that drives our industry forward.

Looking Ahead

The Philadelphia Meetup was proof of the region’s strong influence in driving the industry forward. We look forward to seeing you at a meetup in the future. If you’d like to host your own, let us know in the Dronecode Discord server! We’re happy to help you get started.

The Dronecode Foundation is delighted to announce that Nanoradar has joined as a Silver Member. Known for its innovative millimeter wave radar technology, Nanoradar’s commitment to open-source development aligns perfectly with Dronecode’s mission to foster innovation within the global PX4 ecosystem.

Nanoradar specializes in high-quality millimeter wave radar products that provide advanced obstacle avoidance and altitude measurement capabilities for civilian UAV applications. With a strong focus on precision measurement and intelligent perception, Nanoradar has successfully developed robust solutions such as the MR72 obstacle avoidance series and the NRA24/NRA15 fixed-height radar products. These solutions cater primarily to industries including agricultural plant protection, surveying and mapping, and industrial inspection.

By integrating Nanoradar’s technology into the PX4 open-source flight control platform, developers and users will benefit from enhanced sensing capabilities, enabling more efficient, stable, and cost-effective UAV operations. Nanoradar’s expertise will significantly enrich the PX4 ecosystem, providing users globally with reliable and accessible radar-based solutions.

“Joining the Dronecode Foundation as a Silver Member underscores our commitment to advancing open-source drone technology. PX4’s robust and diverse ecosystem allows Nanoradar’s innovative millimeter wave radar products to rapidly integrate, enhancing obstacle avoidance and altitude measurement for UAV users worldwide. We are excited about collaborating closely with the community to drive further innovations in unmanned aerial sensing.” — Mr. Li, Nanoradar

We warmly welcome Nanoradar and eagerly anticipate the impactful contributions and innovations that will arise from this partnership.

We are thrilled to welcome Zebu Intelligent Systems to the Dronecode Foundation as our newest Silver member. Its work on autonomy, swarm intelligence, and ground control software, make them a perfect addition to our growing community of drone technology innovators.

Founded with a mission to deliver transformative impact across industries and domains, Zebu Intelligent Systems specializes in seamlessly integrating hardware and software to create robust and adaptive systems that can meet the demands of complex missions and tasks. Their product portfolio includes cutting edge solutions like long-endurance UAVs, swarms-based systems, and multi-utility multicopters.

“Joining the Dronecode Foundation aligns with our commitment to advancing drone technology through collaboration and innovation,” said Santosh Balajee Banisetty, Founder of Zebu Intelligent Systems. “Open-source platforms accelerate progress, and we’re excited to contribute our expertise to strengthen the ecosystem. Together, we can drive the future of autonomous systems and unlock new possibilities in aerial solutions.”

Zebu enables drones to operate independently with great precision by leveraging its expertise in areas like artificial intelligence, swarms, autonomous navigation, and propulsion. Its focus on collaboration to support the strength and growth of open source ecosystems resonates with Dronecode’s core values. 

The Dronecode Foundation enthusiastically welcomes Zebu Intelligent Systems and looks forward to their contributions in shaping the future of autonomous aerial robotics.

The Dronecode Foundation is thrilled to announce that Firestorm will be joining as a Silver Member. Firestorm is establishing itself as an innovative manufacturer, and its addition to the Dronecode membership marks a milestone in advancing uncrewed aerial systems design.

Firestorm produces mission-adaptable aerial vehicles and distributed manufacturing solutions. Its approach can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership while dramatically increasing production speed and flexibility. The company’s flagship product, the Tempest drone, exemplifies its commitment to modular, open-system approaches that allow for rapid deployment and mission customization. Its OCTRA flight controller and mission computer supports advanced capabilities, such as increasingly important use cases like GPS-denied navigation.

“The future of UAS technology will rely on open architectures and flexible integration capabilities,” says Ian Muceus, Co-Founder, Lead Inventor, and CTO at Firestorm. “Joining the Dronecode Foundation aligns perfectly with our vision of creating mission-adaptable platforms that can be rapidly manufactured. The PX4 ecosystem provides an ideal foundation, enabling us to deliver solutions that empower our clients in the field.”

The company’s commitment to open-system software and hardware approaches aligns perfectly with Dronecode’s mission of advancing drone technology through open-source collaboration. Their OCTRA system, which is built on open architecture principles, promises to enhance the capabilities of the PX4 ecosystem while providing new opportunities for integration and customization.

We welcome Firestorm to the Dronecode Foundation and look forward to seeing them lend their innovative mindset to the PX4 ecosystem!

The South California Meetup, held on February 19th in San Diego, California, brought together drone enthusiasts, industry professionals, and open-source advocates for an afternoon of insightful presentations and networking. Sponsored by Dronecode and Firestorm, the event showcased the latest advancements in drone technology and fostered meaningful connections within the community.

Event Overview

The meetup featured a stellar lineup of speakers who shared their expertise on everything from open-source ecosystems to cutting-edge hardware innovations. Here’s a recap of the sessions:

Opening and Networking (3:00 pm PST)

The event began with a warm welcome and networking session, allowing attendees to connect and exchange ideas before the presentations kicked off.

Dronecode: The Latest on PX4 and the Open Ecosystem (3:30 pm PST)

Ramon Roche, General Manager of the Dronecode Foundation, opened the technical sessions with an update on PX4 and the open-source ecosystem. He emphasized the importance of collaboration and open standards in driving innovation in the drone industry. Ramon’s talk highlighted how the PX4 community continues to push the boundaries of autonomous flight and how attendees can get involved in shaping the future of open-source drone technology.

Meet Firestorm (4:00 pm PST)

Ian Muceus, CTO of Firestorm, took the stage to introduce Firestorm’s mission and projects. Ian’s presentation focused on the company’s efforts to develop scalable and efficient drone solutions for various applications, from logistics to disaster response. He also shared insights into Firestorm’s approach to integrating advanced technologies into their platforms.

Hardware Accelerated Image Pipeline for Multi-Cam VIO (4:30 pm PST)

James Strawson, Director of Software at ModaIAI, delivered a fascinating talk on hardware-accelerated image pipelines for multi-camera visual-inertial odometry (VIO). James explained how leveraging hardware acceleration can significantly enhance the performance of drone navigation systems, enabling more precise and reliable operations in complex environments.

High Altitude Anti-icing Quadrotor (5:00 pm PST)

Jackson Shultz (Head of Engineering) and Jordan McMillan (Chief Engineer for UAS) from Rainmaker presented their groundbreaking work on high-altitude anti-icing quadrotors. They discussed the unique challenges of operating drones in extreme weather conditions and shared innovative solutions to prevent icing, ensuring reliable performance at high altitudes.

Closing Remarks and Networking Hour (5:30 pm – 7:00 pm PST)

The formal sessions concluded with closing remarks summarizing the key takeaways from the day. The event wrapped up with an extended networking hour, where attendees had the opportunity to engage with speakers, sponsors, and fellow enthusiasts over refreshments.

Community Engagement and Collaboration

One of the highlights of the meetup was the vibrant discussions and connections formed during the networking sessions. Attendees had the chance to share their experiences, ask questions, and explore potential collaborations. The event underscored the importance of community-driven innovation and the role of open-source projects in advancing the drone industry.

Acknowledgments

We extend our thanks to our sponsor and host, Firestorm, for their unwavering support in making this event possible. Their commitment to fostering innovation and collaboration is truly commendable. We also want to thank our speakers for sharing their knowledge and inspiring the community with their groundbreaking work.

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who attended the meetup. Your enthusiasm and participation made the event a resounding success.

Looking Ahead

The South California Meetup was proof of the power of the region on driving the industry forward. As we reflect on the success of this event, we are already looking forward to future meetups and opportunities to bring the community together.

Next Meetup

Join us for an exciting community meetup in Philadelphia! This event will take place on March 26, 2025, at the UPenn Pennovation Works Treehouse. This is a great opportunity to connect with fellow enthusiasts, share knowledge, and network with like-minded individuals in the tech and open-source communities. Stay tuned for more details, including the agenda and featured speakers, as we get closer to the date. Don’t miss out on this chance to engage with the community and enjoy some refreshments while you’re at it!

We are excited to announce that Ascend Engineering has joined the Dronecode Foundation as a Silver member, bringing its expertise in custom drone integration services to the PX4 community.

Ascend Engineering is a leading provider of specialized drone solutions, offering a range of services including sensor and camera integration, software engineering, companion computer integration, communications integration, and QGC customization. Ascend’s experience with the core PX4 ecosystem projects positions them as a welcome addition to the Dronecode membership.

The Ascend Engineering team will lend this wealth of expertise and contribute its Flight Testing operations for the upstream PX4 and QGroundControl projects in coordination with the PX4 & QGC maintainer teams. The testing will directly improve the upcoming PX4 v1.16 and QGC v5.0 releases and is a welcome addition to the community resources.

“Ascend Engineering joined Dronecode to help companies develop PX4, QGroundControl, and MAVLink-based projects while contributing back to open source. As we explored how to make the biggest impact, flight testing emerged as the best way to validate new changes and updates to the PX4 and QGroundControl codebases, ensuring they are tested in real-world conditions before reaching the market.”

Andrew Wilkins, co-founder of Ascend Engineering

Ascend Engineering’s skill set and commitment to real-world testing will be invaluable to the PX4 community. We warmly welcome Ascend Engineering to the Dronecode Foundation and look forward to the innovative contributions they will bring to open source drone technologies.

Dronecode and the broader Linux Foundation community were thrilled to participate in FOSDEM 2025, joining thousands of open-source developers in Brussels for a weekend fueled by a shared passion for open technology. For those who haven’t experienced FOSDEM, it’s hard to capture the unique energy of this open, inclusive, and registration-free event; you really have to experience it yourself. Picture developers enthusiastically moving between buildings at the Université libre de Bruxelles, diving into talks and connecting over their love for innovation. It’s a one-of-a-kind gathering that truly embodies the spirit of open-source collaboration.

“This is my first time at FOSDEM, and I came mainly because my friends dragged me along—though people have been recommending it to me for years. After experiencing the first day, I can see why. FOSDEM is incredible because it brings together so many people who are deeply passionate about open-source software and sharing what they create. The idea that anyone can inspect, adapt, and build on the code is powerful, and it’s amazing to have a place where this community can come together.” said Roland Merteens, Robotics Engineer, and first time participant. “I also discovered some cool projects I hadn’t seen before, like someone running JavaScript on microcontrollers. It sounds a bit wild, but it’s fascinating because it lowers the barrier for people getting started with microcontrollers. Overall, FOSDEM has been a great experience, and I’m glad I finally made it!”

Exhibits from Sponsors

One of the standout surprises was the bustling exhibit area, where the halls were packed with attendees eagerly engaging with exhibitors showcasing some of the most prominent projects and foundations in the ecosystem. It was nearly impossible to walk through without getting caught in the excitement! The FOSDEM community clearly embraced the swag culture, proudly sporting T-shirts and stickers collected from various booths. A particular crowd favorite was the Linux Foundation Europe booth, which drew a constant stream of visitors with its array of merchandise from top CNCF projects and exclusive discounts on training and certifications available only to FOSDEM attendees. The energy and enthusiasm around the exhibits were a testament to the vibrant spirit of the event.

Embedded, Mobile, and Automotive

The Embedded, Mobile, and Automotive devroom at FOSDEM 2025 was a hub of innovation, bringing together a vibrant community of developers and enthusiasts to explore the latest in open-source technologies. The program was packed with engaging talks, covering everything from CubeSat communication systems and general-purpose humanoid robotics with dora-rs to dual A/B update solutions for embedded Linux. Standout sessions included Thibault Poncelet’s deep dive into automotive communication systems with Reverse Engineering CAN Communication and Building ECUs Using Elixir and the BEAM, and Florian Limberger’s exploration of Bluetooth Low Energy applications in Developing BLE Host Applications with Zephyr. Attendees also got a closer look at the integration of MicroPython in embedded systems and enjoyed a lively update on the Zephyr RTOS during its dedicated roasting party. With a full house for nearly every session, the devroom highlighted the rapid advancements in embedded technologies and the critical role of open-source collaboration in shaping the future of the industry.

“FOSDEM is one of the most important open-source gatherings in the world, and this year was no exception,” said Walt Miner, AGL Community Manager at the Linux Foundation, devroom co-chair.  “I came to host the Embedded, Mobile, and Automotive devroom, as well as the Automotive BoF, but it’s also the best place to connect with a wide variety of experts across countless projects. What makes FOSDEM so special is its diversity—it’s not tied to a single project or technology, and every year brings new devrooms and discoveries. This year, I was excited to learn more about OpenPilot and meet some of the people using it.”

Miner continued, “In the Embedded, Mobile, and Automotive devroom, Zephyr was a recurring theme, with so many great talks that we could easily justify a dedicated Zephyr devroom next year. The devroom was a huge success—our 210-seat room was packed for every session, and we had three times more talk submissions than we could accommodate. It’s inspiring to see such enthusiasm and expertise in the community, and I’m already looking forward to next year!”

Robotics and Simulation

The 2025 edition of FOSDEM marked a significant milestone for the robotics community by introducing its first dedicated Robotics devroom. This exciting addition brought together over a hundred developers, offering a program filled with insightful and educational content on some of the most impactful open-source projects in robotics. A central theme throughout the devroom was the Robot Operating System (ROS), with many featured projects showcasing compatibility with this widely adopted platform. The aerial robotics space was also well-represented, featuring two standout talks: “Ardupilot: Trusted, Versatile, and FOSS Autopilot for All and Everything” by Pierre Kancir and “Build, Launch, and Soar with Dronecode: The Infrastructure Ecosystem for Aerial Robotics Development.” Additionally, Jan Hanca’s talk, “O3DE: Creating Realistic Simulations with Open-Source Game Engine,” highlighted the growing intersection of robotics and simulation, demonstrating how open-source tools like O3DE can be leveraged to create highly realistic and scalable robotic simulations.

“FOSDEM is a great conference with a different vibe that fits well with the open source community. It’s free, held on a weekend, and accessible even on a limited budget. It’s a fantastic place to catch up with others in the community and connect with developers behind your favorite open source projects.” — Marcus Eliasson, Co-Founder of Bitcraze

The success of this year’s Robotics devroom has set the stage for an even more significant return in 2026. We’re already looking forward to coming back and hope to see the robotics community grow even stronger, with more developers, projects, and groundbreaking ideas taking the spotlight.

“I learned about FOSDEM one or two years ago from some folks on our Weekly Robotics slack, and instantly had a huge FOMO. FOSDEM is a truly open-source conference that does not discriminate, with a retro-hacker vibe that makes you feel like everything is possible. I loved that we had some robotics rockstars present in our devroom, and the fact that we managed to cover different technologies during the event. I hope we can bring more robots to the room next years.” Mateusz Sadowski — Founder Weekly Robotics, Robotics and Simulation Devroom Co-Chair.

Videos from Dronecode’s Talks

Both talks from Dronecode’s participation at FOSDEM 2025 are now available on the PX4 YouTube channel.

Build, Launch, and Soar with Dronecode, The Infrastructure Ecosystem for the Development of Autonomous Aerial Robotics

In this session, Ramón Roche, General Manager of the Dronecode Foundation, provided a rapidfire rundown of the Dronecode ecosystem of projects and their history. Watch to learn important statistics about the projects like their 30,000 contributors and 60 million lines of code as well as to get a breakdown of each of the projects including PX4 (flight control software), Pixhawk (open hardware standard), and MAVLink (messaging protocol).

Link to Session description and Slides on FOSDEM 25 website.

Infra for Drones: Lessons Learned from 15 Years of Open Source Robotics

In this talk, Roche brought attendees through the Dronecode Foundation’s journey in open source drone development and testing infrastructure. Since 2009, the project has grown to supporting over a million vehicles across 80+ board variants. This presents obvious challenges and Roche walks through how Dronecode works to address each of them, including tactics like grouping manufacturers and reducing integration test times among many others. Give this video a watch to learn more about the challenges of robotics testing and the impact community support like yours can enhance a project’s testing infrastructure.

Link to Session description and Slides on FOSDEM 25 website.

Are you heading to Brussels for FOSDEM 2025, February 1-2? We hope to see you there to hang out at one of the largest free-to-attend open source events in the world. 

The Dronecode Foundation is proud to share its expertise at FOSDEM 2025 with two scheduled talks showcasing the latest developments in open source drone technology and aerial robotics software. It’s a great honor to be recognized for our contributions to open source with our acceptance to the program.

Dronecode Talks at FOSDEM 2025

Build, Launch, and Soar with Dronecode

Track: Robotics and Simulation
Room: UB2.147
Day: Sunday, Feb 2, 2025
Time: 16:45 – 16:50

This comprehensive overview will introduce attendees to the Dronecode ecosystem, with a special focus on PX4 Autopilot and Pixhawk. You’ll learn how our projects have evolved from DIY foundations to supporting a mature industry that serves thousands of developers and companies worldwide. The talk will include a unique behind-the-scenes look at our maintainer team and provide guidance on how you can contribute to these exciting projects.

Infra for Drones: Lessons Learned from 15 Years of Open Source Robotics

Track: Testing and Continuous Delivery
Room: UD6.215
Day: Saturday, Feb 1, 2025
Time: 17:30 – 17:55

This talk offers a candid look at the challenges and solutions in maintaining infrastructure for a complex robotics project. You’ll hear about our journey with continuous integration, including the transition from Jenkins to GitHub Actions, managing hardware-in-the-loop testing, and supporting our growing community of contributors. It’s a must-attend session for anyone interested in the operational aspects of large-scale open-source robotics projects.

Can’t Miss Social Event

Also, the Linux Foundation will be hosting a get together that we can connect at!

Date: February 1st, 2025
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Location: Au Bassin, Quai Aux Briques 74, Brussels
Note: Free attendance but registration is required

This is an excellent opportunity to connect with maintainers, contributors, and fellow drone enthusiasts in a relaxed setting. You’ll have the chance to discuss everything from PX4 development to the future of autonomous aerial robotics.

Looking Forward to Meeting You

Whether you’re an experienced drone developer and have been part of the PX4 community for years or are simply curious about open source aerial robotics, we’d love to connect at FOSDEM 2025. Ramon Roche, General Manager at Dronecode will be available to answer your questions about PX4, Pixhawk, and the rest of the Dronecode ecosystem of projects. Which aspects of open-source drone development interest you most? Are you building something exciting with PX4? We’d love to hear about it when we meet at FOSDEM 2025!

In the world of aerial robotics, progress isn’t measured by individual breakthroughs but by the collective advancement of an entire ecosystem. The Pixhawk open standards exemplify this philosophy. When hardware manufacturers, software developers, and drone engineers align around common standards, we create something more valuable than any single proprietary solution – we create possibilities.

Introducing the Pixhawk FMUv6X-RT Standard

Today, we’re excited to announce the release of the Pixhawk FMUv6X-RT standard, building upon the success of the FMUv6X platform while introducing powerful new capabilities for real-time applications. At the heart of this new standard is the NXP IMX RT1176 processor, bringing enhanced processing power and real-time performance to the Pixhawk ecosystem.

The FMUv6X-RT standard emerges from the collaborative efforts of the Pixhawk Special Interest Group hosted by the Dronecode Foundation, developed through extensive discussions and technical workshops during our FMU Workgroup meetings. This latest advancement in the Pixhawk Open Standards family represents months of careful planning and engineering from our community of experts. Like all our standards, development participation remains open to all Dronecode Foundation members, ensuring diverse perspectives from across the industry shape our technology.

Community Collaboration

Dronecode members and partners collaborated to bring together the DS-020 standard, with Dronecode member NXP leading the effort.

“The new V6X-RT standard represents an exciting addition to the Pixhawk Ecosystem. By including the NXP MCIMXRT1176 and other i.MX RT family parts, this opens the path for multi core and GHz compute speed while also significantly easing memory constraints and enhancing features with improved interface robustness and hardware-backed security. Other additions include CAN-FD with Signal Improvement CAN (SIC) as well as introducing 100Base-T1 two wire Ethernet capability. The ecosystem including Holybro and Agam have already produced commercial offerings, and we are very much looking forward to seeing additional commercial derivatives of the published reference design MR-VMU-RT1176.”

Iain Galloway, Mobile Robotics Domain Lead, Drones and Rovers, NXP Semiconductors

Key Features of FMUv6X-RT

The FMUv6X-RT represents a significant advancement in drone flight controller technology, offering:

• The first NXP-based MCU on a Pixhawk: IMX RT1176
• Secure Operations: Integrated secure element (SE051) for secure authentication
• High-Speed Connectivity: Ethernet interface for advanced mission computer integration
• Triple Redundancy: Completely isolated sensor domains with separate buses and power control
• Advanced Sensor Suite:
  • Redundant IMUs including Bosch BMI088, TDK ICM-42688-P, and ICM-42686-P
  • Bosch BMM150 compass
  • Bosch BMP390 pressure sensors
  • Dual GPS with external magnetometer and barometer support
  • High-accuracy barometric sensor
  • Calibration EEPROM for both baseboard and high-accuracy sensors

Technical Innovations

At the technical level, the shift from the STM32H7 to the NXP IMX RT1176 processor increases the options available in the Pixhawk ecosystem by introducing a new level of real-time computing capability. This transition is accompanied by an upgrade to the memory interface, moving from standard SPI to FLEXSPI2 for FRAM access, which provides enhanced data throughput for configuration and parameter storage. The pin assignments have been extended to take advantage of the RT1176’s expanded I/O capabilities, though care has been taken to ensure that the core Pixhawk interfaces remain consistent with existing implementations.

Standards Access

The FMUv6X-RT standard documentation is now available for everyone to download from the Pixhawk GitHub repository.

• DS-020 Pixhawk FMUv6X-RT (PDF)
• All Pixhawk FMUv6 Open Standards on GitHub
• Additional 6th Generation Pixhawk Standards
  • DS-012 Pixhawk FMUv6X (PDF)
  • DS-018 Pixhawk FMUv6C (PDF)

Commercial Offerings

Some commercial offerings are available for developers and users looking for an FMUv6X-RT implementation for purchase.

• Holybro Pixhawk 6x-RT (Official Pixhawk®)
• Agam Autopilot v6X-RT
• multiple implementations currently in the works.

Join the Ecosystem

Are you interested in building products using any Open Source technologies hosted by Dronecode? Here’s how to get started:

1. Join the Droneode Foundation Discord channel
2. Participate in the weekly coordination calls.
3. Consider becoming a Dronecode Foundation member.

The FMUv6X-RT standard represents a significant step forward in flight controller technology. It offers enhanced real-time capabilities while maintaining the open, collaborative spirit that has made Pixhawk the de facto standard in drone flight controllers. We look forward to seeing the innovations our community will build using this new platform.

We are excited to announce RIIS LLC has joined the Dronecode Foundation as a Silver Member, bringing their extensive experience in drone software development to the PX4 community.

RIIS is a leading provider of specialized software development services with a proven track record for delivering advanced solutions to prominent players from all corners of the drone industry, including Teal, Aerodrome, Darkhive and more. The company’s portfolio of projects utilizing PX4, QGroundControl, and MAVSDK, and its work assisting companies in advancing their UAS products and applications make them a valuable addition to the Dronecode Foundation members.

Godfrey Nolan, President of RIIS, shared his excitement about the news: “Joining Dronecode represents a significant milestone for RIIS, allowing us to give back to the open-source community,” Nolan said. “It’s our way of acknowledging the benefits and advancements we’ve gained from the PX4 ecosystem and its communities over the years.”

RIIS’ extensive background in enterprise-level drone software development and their understanding of manufacturers’ needs position them uniquely to contribute to the advancement of open-source drone technologies. This experience will be invaluable to the PX4 community now and in the future.

We warmly welcome RIIS LLC to the Dronecode Foundation and look forward to the innovative contributions they will bring to open source.

We are thrilled to announce that Zingto has joined the Dronecode Foundation as a Silver Member. This partnership marks an exciting development for both organizations, promising to enhance the landscape of UAV technology through collaboration and innovation.

Zingto is a high-tech company specializing in the design and production of gimbaled imaging systems for both crewed and uncrewed aircraft. Their expertise lies in developing advanced optical systems that are MAVLink compatible and optimized for Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C), making them ideal for a wide range of aerospace applications.

Mr. Li, the founder of Zingto, expressed his enthusiasm about joining the Dronecode community, “It is a great honor to join the Dronecode-supported PX4 open-source ecosystem, which helps customers quickly and deeply adapt to the features and technologies needed for different types of projects, deepens cooperation between parties, and promotes industry development,” said Li.

Zingto’s product line includes a variety of high-performance optical payloads ranging from single sensor to multi-sensor arrays designed for uncrewed aerial systems. This includes products, such as the INYYO A12 4K AI electro-optical payload and the INYYO QO2 MINI AI dual-optical payload, which showcase the company’s commitment to making enviable commercial grade sensor packages.

The company’s expertise in gimbaled imaging systems and their focus on MAVLink compatibility aligns perfectly with the ongoing development of Dronecode’s open source projects like PX4, MAVLink, and QGroundControl. Zingto’s knowledge in these domains are poised to bring significant value to the PX4 ecosystem, and we look forward to its investment in the PX4 community and open source.

We extend a warm welcome to Zingto and look forward to the exciting innovations that this member will bring to the PX4 ecosystem! 

We are thrilled to announce that ZeroOne has joined the Dronecode Foundation as a Silver Member. This partnership marks a significant step forward for both organizations, promising to enhance the landscape of UAV technology through collaboration and innovation.

ZeroOne is building cutting-edge UAV solutions, focusing on the development of advanced avionics systems. Their range of products and services include flight controllers like the X6 and X6 Nano, GPS, data links, and the customization of ground control software. 

According to Zane Rick, Director of Operations at ZeroOne, “ZeroOne has been engaged in UAV research for many years. We are committed to providing customers with stable and reliable avionics systems, such as flight controller, GPS, RTK, data link, and ground control software development. The PX4 open-source ecosystem supported by Dronecode provides a powerful platform and functions for our work and customers, allowing us to quickly develop on this basis to meet the requirements of the project. I think joining Dronecode is a good start for both parties, making our connection closer and enriching the industry ecology. Let users have more and better product choices. ZeroOne strives to create a complete UAV solution for users, which is stable, reliable, and customizable, making it possible for users to do anything!”

ZeroOne’s membership in Dronecode is poised to bring several benefits to the PX4 developer community. Enhanced collaboration between ZeroOne’s expertise in flight controllers and the ongoing development of open-source projects like PX4, MAVLink, and QGroundControl will drive innovation and customization. The collaboration is expected to enrich the open source drone development ecosystem, providing users with a wider range of high-quality product choices.

We extend a warm welcome to ZeroOne and look forward to the exciting innovations that this partnership will bring. Together, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of UAV technology and providing users with the best possible tools to achieve their goals.

For more information about ZeroOne and their contributions to the PX4 ecosystem, please visit their website at ZeroOne.

Neros Technologies is a cutting-edge startup that is revolutionizing the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry. Founded by Soren Monroe-Anderson and Olaf Hichwa, two former teenage drone racing champions, Neros is focused on vertically integrating the development and manufacturing of unmanned defense systems in America. 

The company’s mission is to enable mass production of cost-effective unmanned defense systems, with a particular emphasis on securing the supply chain within the United States.

Neros’ commitment to innovation and rapid development aligns perfectly with the Dronecode Foundation’s goals. By joining as a Silver Member, Neros is demonstrating its dedication to open-source collaboration and standardization in the drone industry. 

Olaf Hichwa, Co-Founder & CTO of Neros, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership: “Neros Technology is working on integrating the latest Pixhawk Open Standards into our autonomy stack to help with the rapid deployment of UAVs. We are happy to join the Dronecode Foundation and contribute to the growing community of Aerial Robotics technologies at the forefront of innovation.” 

This integration of Pixhawk Open Standards into Neros’ autonomy stack represents a significant step towards interoperability and standardization in the UAV industry. It also highlights the growing importance of open-source technologies in driving innovation and efficiency in drone development.

We look forward to the contributions Neros will make to our community and the advancements we can achieve together. Their expertise in rapid development, real-world deployment, and scaling production will be invaluable as we work towards our shared goal of advancing open-source drone technologies.

VayDyn Technologies has joined Dronecode to harness both entities’ collective knowledge and skill to produce state-of-the-art flight controllers and enable manufacturers throughout the APAC region to soar.

At VayDyn Technologies, we are dedicated to advancing UAV technologies and making them more accessible for manufacturers and enthusiasts. Partnering with Dronecode Foundation, we aim to leverage the combined expertise of both organizations to design and manufacture cutting-edge flight controllers, facilitating the production of high-quality UAVs that meet global standards and empowering manufacturers in India and the broader APAC region.

Nilesh Chavhan, Director Engineering.

VayDyn is a startup at the IISc(Indian Institute of Science)-supported non-profit organization AI and Robotics Technology Park (ARTPark) whose UASs combine high-precision sensors with artificial intelligence to perform complicated multidimensional tasks. Its tech was recently utilized by the Bengaluru civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for the purpose of counting animal populations, but this example only demonstrates a small fraction of what VayDyn expects its drones to be used for. As it says on its website, “..we are moving closer towards complete autonomy in unmanned aerial systems,” and as members of the Dronecode Foundation they plan to contribute to the PX4 community and open source drone ecosystem.

We highly appreciate the Dronecode community’s wealth of experience and commitment to making technology accessible. Excited to be part of the community, we look forward to contributing and playing a role in fostering the growth of the UAV industry through innovation.

Nilesh Chavhan, Director Engineering.

Macfos Electronics Pvt Ltd (Robu.in) has joined Dronecode to create stronger bonds with the international open source drone developer community and the Indian drone industry.

We at Robu, have been serving the Indian drone industry for quite a long time by providing ‘Hard to Find’ materials and parts, and our ties to the local market are stronger than ever. With this partnership we aspire to be a key player of innovation within the global UAV industry and subsequently become a bridge between the PX4 ecosystem and Indian communities. The vast amount of experience and resources of the Dronecode Foundation will surely be the key factor in this journey. 

Nilesh Chavhan, Director Engineering.

Founded in 2014 Robu.in has grown to become India’s largest robotics e-commerce platform featuring a vast selection of electronic components and parts for robots, drones, embedded systems, RC, and IoT devices. Focused on serving the DIYer, Robu.in even provides services like PCB manufacturing, 3D printing, and laser cutting. Carrying an enviable array of flight controllers, sensors, rotors, antennas, gimbals, and even GPS modules, companies, and drone developers can derive significant benefits from accessing the Robu.in site. Macfos Electronics Pvt Ltd (Robu.in) joining the Dronecode Foundation shows their continued commitment to serving the people who are building the innovative drone technology that will shape the future.

We very much value the increased access to the open source drone ecosystem and the opportunity to engage with the drone developer community that this membership will bring to the table for us. We look forward to this experience and will surely try to do our best in terms of driving  innovation. The time for us becoming a part of theDronecode community could not have been better. Exciting times ahead!

Nilesh Chavhan, Director Engineering.

The Dronecode community came together to celebrate another successful year at the PX4 Developer Summit in New Orleans on October 21-22. Hosted next to ROSCon 2023 with the generous help of the Open Source Robotics Foundation we secured space at the Hyatt Regency. Together, we managed to bring close to a thousand robotics engineers to the Big Easy. Thanks OSRF!

We also want to thank the fantastic Linux Foundation Events team for running another flawless event and taking care of every small detail to ensure everyone felt included and part of the celebration. Similarly, I (Ramón) want to thank the Dronecode Staff who helped me run this event, once again pushing the boundaries with very few resources. Lastly, we want to thank our Sponsors for their commitment to open source and for believing in our humble community of aerial robotics professionals.

Over the two days at the summit, attendees enjoyed 45 talks, including 27 breakout sessions, 11 keynotes, five lightning talks, and two incredible workshops, thanks to the support of 54 speakers. Like last year, the Call For Proposals had tremendous success, receiving more than 50 applications, which the Program Committee reviewed and voted on, accepting 34. Thanks to the increased quality of the proposals received this year, we had the most challenging time putting together the program. Given time constraints, we couldn’t fit all the proposals that came through the CFP into the schedule. However, we are proud of the results as the program reflected the maturity of our community and signaled a bright future for the technology.

The summit was kicked-off with the opening remarks by our General Manager (Ramón Roche) who then introduced the keynote track. He was followed immediately by Hrishikesh Ballal Co-Founder and Lead Developer, Openskies Aerial Technology, who discussed the importance of UTM and regulation will have for opening up advanced UAV operations including BVLOS.

This rest year’s keynotes focused on fostering greater collaboration between the general and aerial robotics engineers, and highlighted the amazing work of the leaders in the open source drone development community.

Dr. Satya Mallick, CEO of OpenCV, Davide Faconti, Robotics Architect and Staff Engineer at PickNik Robotics, Chris Lalancette, ROS 2 Technical Lead, Intrinsic, and a Developer Panel with PX4 and ROS maintainers Daniel Agar, Thomas Statsny, Tully Foote, and Geoff Biggs all talked about the importance of building bridges between our communities and provided clear paths forward to build a roadmap together.

Dr. Lorenz Meier, CEO and Founder of Auterion, Inc., Robert Cheek, Chief Operating Officer, UVify, Vince Poon, CTO, Holybro, and Chad Sweet CEO and Co-founder, ModalAI, showcased the landmark work and important developments that will lay the groundwork for the next phase of drone development.

Thanks to the Scholarships program, which provides funding for underrepresented groups in our community and those who couldn’t attend otherwise, Dronecode was able to help six members of our community with travel and tickets to the summit. We were thrilled to see the group come together, a set of brilliant engineers who will undoubtedly shape the future of the robotics industry.

At the end of Day 1, our Platinum sponsor UVify hosted a 500 drone light show above the Mississippi River, greeting us with a fantastic display full of surprises with familiar shapes that our community cheered and celebrated, marking a tremendous high point to an already remarkable beginning to our event.

Special thanks to CubePilot for sponsoring our event t-shirts designed by criobravo, outfitting our attendees with a jazzy piece of art befitting of New Orleans. We’d also like to thank ARK Electronics for sponsoring the session recordings, which we are releasing on our YouTube channel.

It’s hard to overstate just how amazing the networking at the event was this year. Participants from over 30 countries came together to share knowledge and make connections. Careers got off the ground and new business relationships were forged. The event truly felt like a bridge between academia and industry. Special thanks to UVify and Rajant who sponsored the official after party at Fulton Alley. It was the perfect end to the weekend and a great final chance to hang before all heading off.

By the way, don’t miss out on all the photos taken during the event. Thanks for everything. We hope to see you next year!

The PX4 Autonomy Developer Kit by ModalAI, Inc. is the latest development kit for the PX4 Autopilot, tailored for those at the forefront of autonomous navigation solutions. Powered by the industry leading VOXL^Ⓡ 2, the kit offers a ready to develop UAS for GPS-denied navigation and aerial AI development, ensuring high performance and seamless integration targeted for the PX4, ROS, and TensorFlow communities. 

The Autonomy Kit was meticulously pre-configured with Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP)-optimized sensors, ensuring developers have the best tools without exhaustive customization. Whether the task involves developing navigation for intricate indoor spaces or vast outdoor terrains, the PX4 Autonomy Developer Kit by ModalAI is built by and for developers to handle the challenge.

Developers will be able to harness the latest PX4 Autopilot changes, thanks to ModalAI’s commitment to supporting PX4 upstream, which means you can run the latest and greatest contributions, making it perfect as a fast prototyping developer kit bundled with the newest sensor suite. This integration promises sustainability for current projects and paves the way for future innovations.

In collaboration with the Dronecode Foundation, the Autonomy Kit provides a ready-to-fly development platform that bridges the gap between PX4 and ROS, made for those looking to push the limits of autonomy and significantly improve their time to market.

The base model features an impressive 30+ minutes of flight time on a 210mm airframe weighing only 265 grams. The Autonomy Developer Kit also houses a 12.3 megapixel Sony^Ⓡ IMX412 sensor, VOXL ESC Mini, and an STM VL54L1X Rangefinder landing sensor—just what you need to succeed in your PX4 development journey.

“Since its founding, ModalAI has been committed to advancing the computer vision capabilities of the open source UAS community,” said Chad Sweet, CEO and co-founder of ModalAI “We expect the PX4 Autonomy Developer Kit to significantly accelerate that mission.”

Chad Sweet, CEO and co-founder of ModalAI

“Easing the journey into aerial robotics development is one of the largest barriers to growing the ecosystem. Developers are constantly faced with many challenges while getting projects off the ground such as choosing components, determining software support and dealing with the constantly evolving codebases. The field is ripe for vendors to target the ever-growing developer workforce in the drone industry,” said Ramon Roche, General Manager of the Dronecode Foundation. “The Dronecode Foundation is excited to welcome the PX4 Autonomy Developer Kit to the PX4 hardware ecosystem, helping bring down the barrier of entry for newcomers getting started in aerial robotics with an RTD (Ready to Develop) option backed by ModalAI.”

Ramon Roche, General Manager of the Dronecode Foundation

The Dronecode Foundation and ModalAI plan to offer and support this configuration at least through 2025, supporting PX4 and ROS 2 and maintaining a dedicated forum channel for direct communication between developers and ModalAI engineers. The new PX4 Autonomy Developer Kit is available to order beginning today starting from $2,749.99 at www.modalai.com/px4-autonomy-dev-kit

ARK Electronics has joined Dronecode to reaffirm its commitment to open source and to continue its support of the open drone hardware community.

ARK Electronics is excited to finally join the Dronecode Foundation after years of collaboration. We view this partnership as not merely a business arrangement but as a pivotal catalyst for innovation. The profound impact of open technologies at ARK Electronics cannot be overstated, fostering a culture of collaboration and transparency that has elevated our product development. Working with Dronecode and open source has been a huge benefit to ARK Electronics growth in the drone industry. We look forward to continuing to work with Dronecode to enable companies to get to market quicker with open source technology.

CEO of ARK Electronics – Alex Klimaj

Known for its enviable flight controllers and sensors, ARK Electronics has made a name for itself in the five years since its founding. Its hardware is designed, manufactured, and tested in the USA, even offering flight controllers that meet the strict requirements to be rated as NDAA compliant for clients engaged in supplying the federal government. Its owner, Alex Klimaj, has earned a great reputation in the PX4 developer community for his contributions and will continue to offer his expertise now as a proud Silver Member of the Dronecode Foundation.

For years now, the Dronecode team has regularly attended the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas. We travel to the event annually to take advantage of the opportunity to meet the PX4 community in person and foster direct connections with members, maintainers, and other ecosystem players face-to-face.

We’ve partnered with Commercial UAV Expo once again this year to co-promote each other’s events, and we are looking forward to attending once again. If you want to meet us there this September 5-7 at Caesar’s Forum, you can use the code SAVE100 for $100 off a conference pass or a free exhibit hall pass!

At this year’s show, you’ll be able to see some great firms showing off amazing hardware built on top of open standards. Freefly Systems, Sony, Watts Innovation, and Wingtra all utilize PX4 or the Pixhawk standard and have booths at the show. You may even see the Dronecode Foundation’s General Manager, Ramón Roche, walking the floor and interviewing innovators from every corner of the industry.

Conferences provide an unrivaled opportunity to get face time with leaders in the space, whether it’s during the sessions or in the exhibit hall. Last year, Ramon interviewed Bobby Watts, CEO and Principal Engineer of Watts Innovation, while at the event, and Bobby was kind enough to share the entire origin story of the company and the reasons why they adopted PX4.

The commercial drone sector never stops evolving, and Commercial UAV Expo provides one of the best chances to see the next generation of UAS technology hitting the market. In total, it brings together 250+ vendors providing solutions for fields as diverse as agriculture, construction, surveying and mapping, infrastructure inspection, and public safety. If you’re an engineer or company looking to meet your end-user, this is the spot to do so.

It’s certainly going to be an exciting fall event-wise for drone developers. We hope to see you IRL at the Commercial UAV Expo this year or this October 21-22 in New Orleans at the PX4 Developer Summit.

Hello Dronecode community,

We are thrilled to announce an exciting development in our mission to foster open-source software for uncrewed vehicles. Two web empower tools, MAVLink2Rest and MAVLink Camera Manager, have officially migrated from their original creators to the MAVLink organization.

A Brief History

MAVLink2Rest and MAVLink Camera Manager were initially developed by Patrick Pereira (patrickelectric) as proof of concept for the companion system for Blue Robotics, the project now known as BlueOS. MAVLink2Rest aims to provide a RESTful API over the MAVLink protocol, facilitating seamless communication between uncrewed systems and web applications. MAVLink Camera Manager is an extensible, cross-platform camera server with a RESTful API to control and create camera streams, providing MAVLink integration with ground control stations that implement the MAVLink Camera Protocol.

The move is a significant step forward. It recognizes the tools’ importance in the community and ensures their continued development and maintenance under the new organization. This move will facilitate greater collaboration and ensure their alignment with the broader MAVLink ecosystem.

A Word of Thanks

We want to thank Patrick for his contributions to the MAVLink organization. His work on MAVLink2Rest and MAVLink Camera Manager has paved the way for innovative web-based drone solutions. We also want to thank Blue Robotics for their financial support in developing these tools. Their commitment to open-source solutions continues to drive the industry forward for open skies and open waters.

Looking Ahead

As we embark on this new journey, we look forward to the continued growth and development of MAVLink2Rest and MAVLink Camera Manager under the MAVLink organization. We are excited about this migration’s possibilities and can’t wait to see where this journey takes us.

Stay tuned for more updates, and as always, happy flying!

SIYI Technology has joined Dronecode as a Silver Member to invest in bringing its users a next-level experience and expand upon its already respected product line by integrating closely with the PX4 ecosystem.

SIYI Technology relies on wireless HD image transmission technologies, gimbal control and motor drive technologies, camera imaging technologies, control system, AI algorithms, and built-smart robotic ecology. Grateful for the support and trust of customers, SIYI can maintain mutual-benefit interaction with the PX4 community through the actual application of our products in a large number of scenarios.

CEO of SIYI Technology – Mr Luo Xiaogang

SIYI’s suite of products already features a wide range of top-tier drone hardware from autopilots and gimbals all the way up to complete multirotor drone packages. Its airframes, gimbals, and sensors are deployed in a variety of enterprise applications, from agriculture to commercial inspection. Both the PX4 ecosystem and SIYI will benefit greatly from the cross-pollination of ideas and new solutions SIYI will bring to the PX4 developer community as a member of Dronecode.

We believe that establishing direct contact with the Dronecode Foundation can greatly enhance the user experience of SIYI products under the PX4 ecosystem and significantly promote the prosperity and development of the open-source ecosystem of drones and smart robots. In the coming period, SIYI’s development team and manufacturing department will collaborate to launch many interesting, competitive, and high-quality products. Stay tuned!

CEO of SIYI Technology – Mr Luo Xiaogang

Are you a software or hardware developer excited about new technologies and the prospects of robotics, whether on the ground or in the air? Are you eager to share your knowledge with colleagues in the field and learn from them? Is open source your jam? Then mark your calendar for October 18-22, 2023 — because that’s when the events begin! Two major robotics events come together: ROSCon 23 and the PX4 Developer Summit for one innovative week packed with thought-provoking keynotes, insightful workshops, hands-on learning sessions, and the opportunity to engage with an array of experts, pioneers, and fellow enthusiasts in the open-source robotics world.

Register for both conferences to take advantage of our special promotion – and prepare to embrace the future of robotics!

When you register for either the PX4 Developer Summit or ROSCon 2023, you’ll receive a $100 discount code to use with your registration for the other event!

A Combination of ROSCon 23 and PX4 Developer Summit

Get ready for an exciting week that combines two of the biggest names in the world of robotics! ROSCon, renowned for being the meeting point of the brightest minds in the Robot Operating System (ROS) community, will now coincide with the PX4 Developer Summit, the preeminent event known for its influence in the aerial robotics and overall uncrewed vehicle developer community.

This week-long celebration promises to be a hub of innovation, showcasing the latest open source robotics technology advancements. With an impressive lineup of speakers, insightful presentations, and practical demos, this event is a “can’t miss” for anyone interested in robotics.

The two events together will cover an extensive array of topics, including but not limited to:

• The latest advancements in the ROS and PX4 ecosystem
• Real-world applications of all types of robots, including mobile and non-mobile ones
• Artificial Intelligence and machine learning in robotics
• Emerging trends and future directions in open source robotics
• Ethics and social implications of robotics and AI

Join us as we convene a community of like-minded experts, discover new ideas, and shape the future of robotics together.

The Unique Opportunity to Attend ROSCon and the PX4 Developer Conference in One Trip

ROSCon and the PX4 Developer Conference are must-attend events for anyone looking to stay ahead in the robotics industry. The opportunity to attend both events in one trip is convenient and a budget-saver, but it also offers a unique chance to learn from some of the brightest minds and cutting-edge technologies in the field. With ROSCon’s focus on Robot Operating System and PX4 Developer Conference’s focus on open-source flight control software, the combination of the two events is a perfect blend of expertise from different aspects of the industry. Take advantage of this incredible opportunity to learn and network.

Hear Best Practices, Connect with Professionals, and Network

In today’s tech-driven world, open source software is taking center stage. To stay ahead of the game, hearing best practices, connecting with professionals, and engaging with the community are essential; in-person gatherings have a unique value. Collaboration is vital to developing innovative solutions and creating impact. Engaging with professionals from different industries expands your network and offers opportunities for growth and development. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, there’s always room to learn and connect. Don’t miss the opportunity to collaborate with others you wouldn’t usually see at your conference.

Enjoy the City of New Orleans While Attending the Conferences

New Orleans is a city that captivates visitors with its blend of old-world charm and modern-day excitement. From historic sites and world-famous cuisine to world-renowned live music venues, this city offers something for everyone. Wander the streets, sample delicious Creole cuisine, or jazz up your night at one of the many live music venues that pepper the city. Take a peek at Visit New Orleans.

Get a Discounted Rate for Attending Both Conferences

Mark your calendars for an excellent opportunity to immerse yourself in the full breadth of the field of robotics at a discounted price. When you register for either event, you’ll receive a special discount code to save $100 off the price of the other. 

Learn more about and register for ROSCon 2023 and the PX4 Developer Summit.

We hope you can join us for both.

We would like to welcome two Board members elected to serve as representatives of silver and gold members: Gerald Peklar and Chad Sweet. The election was held over the past few weeks, and the new Board members will start this month. 

Gerald Peklar – Gold Member Representative

Gerald Peklar is a project and technical solutions manager of mobile robotics at NXP Semiconductors in Hamburg, Germany. Gerald has a background in electronics engineering and has worked at NXP since 2014, leading publicly funded projects and open reference design hardware and software solutions within the mobile robotics team. He also holds EASA remote pilot certificates and is a drone test pilot for all NXP internal developments. This is the first time Gerald has served on the Board. He is an RC model and race drone enthusiast, so he is fortunate enough to make his hobby his profession.

Chad Sweet – Silver Member Representative

Chad Sweet is the CEO & Founder of ModalAI. Before ModalAI, he worked at Qualcomm in San Diego from 1998 through 2018, where from 2012, he led robotics R&D focused on drones. Since 2014, he has collaborated with PX4 leaders to understand the needs and requirements of drone hardware and software that will help developers accelerate the development of autonomous drones. Through ModalAI, Chad oversees the development of their autonomous VOXL autopilots, specifically designed to be open and developer friendly. Over 500 global developers are using VOXL with PX4 flight control as the core of their drones, and ModalAI works with these manufacturers and ecosystem contributors to incorporate and promote Dronecode hosted projects like PX4, QGroundControl, MAVSDK, and MAVLink.  Chad served on the Board for the past two years and was reelected. 

See Behind The Tech Episode #3 featuring Chad Sweet.

We also want to thank Vince Poon, the CTO of Holybro, for his willingness to serve on the Board. He is a valuable community member, and we hope he can serve in the future.

A Heartfelt Thanks to Our Departing Board Members 

As we welcome new faces to our Board, we must also take a moment to express our deepest gratitude to those who are stepping down: Hyon Lim of UVify and Paul Stubbs. 

See Hyon’s keynote at the PX4 Developer Summit 2022 in Austin, Texas.

We extend our sincerest thank you for your unwavering dedication, invaluable contributions, and countless hours you devoted to the Dronecode Foundation. Your commitment to fostering an open-source community, your leadership in navigating the complexities of the drone industry, and your passion for innovation have left an indelible mark on our Foundation. Perhaps we will be fortunate enough to see you on the Board again.

See Paul’s talk at the PX4 Developer Summit 2022 in Austin, Texas

The Current Board of Directors

The 2023 Board of Directors are:

• Lorenz Meier (Community Director) — Chairman
• Daniel Agar (PX4 Maintainer) — TSC Chairman
• Markus Achtelik (Auterion) — Platinum director
• Gerald Peklar (NXP Semiconductors) — Gold director
• Chad Sweet (ModalAI) — Silver Director

The next elections for the Board will be held in April 2024. Silver and Gold director’s positions will be up for election. Look for a call for nominations in March 2024.  

As we welcome our new board members, we look forward to the fresh perspectives and ideas they will bring to our foundation. We are confident that under their leadership, the Dronecode Foundation will continue to thrive and set new standards in the drone industry.

Understanding the Role of Our Board of Directors

The Board of Directors of the Dronecode Foundation is not merely a governing entity; it is the strategic nucleus of our organization. They are entrusted with strategic supervision, ensuring our unwavering commitment to our mission and the continuous cultivation of community and innovation.

The significance of a board of directors is particularly pronounced in open source foundations like ours. Such foundations offer a vendor-neutral platform that champions transparency, inclusivity, and equitable opportunities indispensable for the growth and innovation ly aspire to. By fostering a collaborative environment for developers, end-users, and vendors to propel the industry forward, we can guarantee that our endeavors genuinely reflect the community’s needs and we share in the collective innovation. 

We have come so far, and we can’t wait to see what is to come.

The Importance of Membership

Members are even more critical than the board. Membership in the Dronecode Foundation is an opportunity to take an active role in supporting the growth and evolution of the open drone ecosystem. Members are even more critical than the board. Our members are part of a vibrant community, working together to advance the drone industry through open source. Learn more here. 

The HoverGames 3 challenge kicked off on October 6th, 2022, run by Gold member NXP Semiconductor and our partner Hackster.io, as an effort to help developers innovate using world-class technology and open source to help secure a sustainable food production future.

Challengers could use a Quadcopter or a Rover, loaded with fantastic hardware, including Bosch BME688, FMUK66, and NAVQ+ by NXP, controlled by the PX4 Autopilot, with some challengers going as far as running ROS 2 + PX4 setups to reach their goals.

The top three winners receive cash prizes and free tickets to the PX4 Developer Summit in October, with the first-place team receiving a travel scholarship to the event, by Dronecode Foundation.

But that’s not the only prize, the three runner-up projects each received $500. Lastly, Bosch awards $500 to the most innovative use of sensors, and the Dronecode Foundation awards a project for contributing to open source a prize of $500.

The team of judges consisted of industry experts from NXP Semiconductor, Bosch, and Dronecode Foundation. The challenge was tough, but twenty-eight teams persisted, making the judges’ job even harder. 

Nevertheless, the winners were announced today. We couldn’t be happier with the results, especially with the Open Source Award Winner, who built a PX4 driver for the Bosch BME688 with a uORB pipeline built for his application.

Join us in congratulating the winners, who are all invited to join us at the PX4 Developer Summit next October for FREE, with first-place winners earning travel to NOLA to showcase their project to the whole open-source robotics community.

Lastly, we want to thank NXP for the opportunity to be part of this great challenge and Hackster for being the best partner. Congratulations to both on another great season of HoverGames. We can’t wait for what you come up with net year!

Top three challengers

• 1st Place: agriHoverGames – a smart drone that solves farmer’s problems
• 2nd Place: Autonomous soil Quality assessment (AutoSQA)
• 3rd Place: Crop Mapping and Survey Drone

Runner Ups

• Salt Water Tracker (SWT)
• HoverGames #3: Guardian of the Field – Buggy QXA3
• Cigritous: Crop Monitoring with Automated UAV Spray Response

Bosc Sensortec Sustainability Award

• Drones for Efficient Fertilization Monitoring – DEF

Dronecode Foundation Open Source Award

• HoverGames #3: Guardian of the Field – Buggy QXA3

Are you a software or hardware developer working with drones? Are you interested in contributing to the future of autonomous flight? 

The 2023 PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit is the perfect opportunity for you to network, learn, and collaborate with other drone developers from around the world. The Summit is an annual event that brings together the PX4 community to share their insights, knowledge, and experiences across the entire Dronecode ecosystem, including PX4 Autopilot, MAVLINK, MAVSKD, QGroundControl, and Pixhawk. BONUS: It is being held adjacent to ROSCon 2023, so you can attend both in one trip.

This year’s Summit will offer attendees the chance to meet other developers in person and gain new insights into the latest advancements in autonomous flight. Read on to learn more about what to expect and the value of participating.

It is really cool to meet the community, the developers that, early on, you have just met on calls or via GitHub panels.

Michael Achtelik, Vice President, Engineering, Auterion

What is the PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit?

The PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit is an annual event that brings together the PX4 community, including software and hardware developers, researchers, and enthusiasts. The Summit allows attendees to network, learn, collaborate with other drone developers, and gain new insights into the latest advancements in autonomous flight.

It also provides a platform for participants to share their insights, knowledge, and experiences in drone development. The event features keynote speeches from industry experts, technical talks and workshops, exhibitions and demonstrations of the latest technologies, and networking opportunities.
Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting in the field of drone development, the PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit is the perfect opportunity to gain new skills, share your knowledge, and connect with other professionals in the industry. So, mark your calendars for October 21-23, 2023, and join us in New Orleans at the 2023 PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit for an unforgettable experience.

What to Expect at the Summit?

The 2023 PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit offers attendees a variety of exciting and informative activities, including:

Keynote Talks from Industry Experts

The Summit features keynote speeches from industry experts who will share their insights and experiences in drone development. These talks are an excellent opportunity to learn from the leading experts in the industry and gain new perspectives on the latest advancements in autonomous flight.

Technical Talks and Workshops

These sessions provide attendees with the opportunity to learn about the latest technologies, best practices, and emerging trends in the industry. Experts lead the talks and workshops in their respective fields; attendees can ask questions and participate in discussions.

Exhibitions and Demonstrations of the Latest Technologies

The Summit features exhibitions and demonstrations of the latest technologies and products related to drone development. They allow attendees to see the latest innovations in the industry and gain hands-on experience with new products.

Networking Opportunities

We meet in person to network. Attendees will have ample opportunities for “hallway sessions” to meet and connect with other developers and engineers from around the world. Who knows what future collaborations will come from it?

Really interacting with a lot of smart people to talk PX4, drones, and really jumping in quickly to great conversations

Chad Sweet, CEO and Co-founder, ModalAI

Overall, the 2023 PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit is an exciting and informative event that offers attendees a unique opportunity to network, learn, and collaborate with other professionals in the industry. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or engineer or just starting in the field, this event is a must-attend.

Call for Proposals

The Call for Proposals (CFP) for the 2023 PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit is now open, and we are inviting developers, researchers, and enthusiasts to submit proposals for talks, workshops, and panel discussions. 

Why should you submit a proposal to present?

Showcase your work: The Summit provides a platform for you to showcase your work, share your knowledge and experiences, and gain recognition from the community.

Expand your network: Presenting at the Summit offers the opportunity to expand your network, connect with other professionals in the industry, and build collaborations.

Enhance your skills: Preparing a proposal and presenting at the Summit is a great way to enhance your skills in public speaking and delivering technical information to a diverse audience.

How to submit a proposal

Visit the CFP page on the PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit website and follow the instructions to submit a proposal. The proposal submission form includes the following information:

• Title of the presentation
• Presenter’s name and contact information
• Presentation abstract
• Presentation outline
• Presenter’s biography
• Proposed length of your presentation (in minutes)

Suggested Topics:

• Any talks related to the open source projects hosted within the Dronecode Foundation umbrella: PX4 Autopilot, Pixhawk, MAVLink, QGroundControl, MAVSDK
• ROS, ROS 2, Gazebo, DDS
• Open Standards
• Open Hardware
• Offboard control
• State Estimation
• Simulation
• Hardware integration
• Computer Vision, VIO, Obstacle Avoidance
• AI / ML
• Deep Learning
• Cloud / Edge
• Advancements in hardware development for Drones
• Academia/Research submissions are highly encouraged

And these are the types of submissions we consider: 

• Session Presentation (typically 30 minutes in length)
• Panel Discussion (typically 30 minutes in length)
• Lightning Talks (typically 5-15 minutes in length)
• Workshops (typically 1.5 to 2 hours in length)

Importance of submitting

Submitting a proposal is essential to the success of the Summit. Participating in the Summit allows you to share your knowledge and experiences with other professionals in the industry. So, submit your proposals today, and join us at the 2023 PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit! With your contributions, the event is possible.

How to Register for the Summit

Registering for the 2023 PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit is easy. Follow these simple steps to secure your spot:

• Visit the registration page on the PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit website.
• Fill out the registration form with your personal and payment information.
• Review your registration information and submit your registration.
• You will receive a confirmation email with your registration details.

Fees

• Early Bird Registration (until June 30th, 2023): $400 USD
• Standard Registration (until September 30th, 2023): $550 USD
• Late Registration (after October 1st, 2023): $600 USD

Academic Fees

• Early Bird Registration (until June 30th, 2023): $300 USD
• Standard Registration (until September 30th, 2023): $400 USD
• Late Registration (after October 1st, 2023): $550 USD

Scholarships 

The Dronecode Foundation offers scholarships and financial aid to support individuals from traditionally underrepresented and/or marginalized groups and to whoever is not being assisted or sponsored by a company or organization who may otherwise be unable to attend the Summit due to financial constraints. To apply for financial assistance, please visit the “Scholarships and Financial Aid” page on the PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit website.

Scholarship Timeline

• Application Deadline: August 20th, 2023
• Applications Notified: Week of August 25th, 2023

Accommodation Options for Attendees

The Summit will be held at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. We secured a room block at the hotel, a special nightly rate of $229 + tax. The hotel room block is limited and will likely sell out in advance.

Get all the details on the event venue & travel page.

Deadlines

• Early Bird Registration Deadline: June 30th, 2023
• Standard Registration Deadline: October 15th, 2023
• Late Registration Deadline: After October 15th, 2023 (Onsite Registration Available)

It is really good to meet people. We had a fantastic drone light show last night, running PX4, so every single aspect of the past two days has exceeded my expectations

 Lorenz Meier, Founder and CEO, Auterion

Don’t miss the opportunity to participate in the 2023 PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit! Register today to secure your spot and take advantage of the early bird registration fee. We look forward to seeing you at the event.

DroneBlocks has joined Dronecode to better integrate open source technologies into STEM classroom environments. They have created software, drone simulation, and a custom tailored curriculum laser-focused on making it as easy for students to jump into drone development with as little friction as possible. By joining the Dronecode Foundation, they will establish a stronger path from early STEM education to successful engineering careers.

“At DroneBlocks we have been at the forefront of creating engaging STEM learning experiences with drones, block coding, and curriculum. It is with great enthusiasm that we join the Dronecode Foundation. We have followed the community for many years and benefitted from several projects hosted by the Foundation. Our intent is to increase our footprint by making the DroneBlocks app compatible with PX4-based drones and bring them into the classroom. We look forward to giving back to the community that has been instrumental in moving the open source drone industry forward.”

Dennis Baldwin, Founder

From drag and drop coding to modular drone kits, the work DroneBlocks has done to make drone development accessible to all age groups and skill levels is truly phenomenal. Utilizing drones, students receive tangible feedback on their programming and are empowered to learn through action and experimentation. 

Sunflower Labs today joins Dronecode to continue supporting the open-source community. They are the creators of the Beehive, a powerful drone-in-a-box solution for security applications. They are a long time supporter and users of PX4 and Pixhawk, with their membership they aim to continue their support and to collaborate with the wider community.

“It would have been impossible to build a product such as the Sunflower Labs autonomous security drone without the open source community. Amazing contributions of thousands of individuals to the Dronecode projects advanced the development of UAS vehicles by decades. We have greatly benefited from these generous contributions, as well as the interactions with the community. While we are officially joining as members today, we have been participants and contributors of the Pixhawk project for years and we are proud to be a part of it.”

Nicolas de Palézieux dit Falconnet, VP of R&D at Sunflower Labs

Sunflower Labs is excited to implement the latest Pixhawk Standards on their new products, and is working closely with Dronecode to help expand the Pixhawk Ecosystem for the greater good of our community and industry.

Read more about Sunflower Labs and their recent developments on their website. https://sunflower-labs.com/

The beauty of open source is that innovation is fueled by a group of individuals coming together around a common goal to build a shared resource. Then, individuals innovate on top of that. The beauty of open standards, in particular, is that the community has settled on a consistent way hardware and software integrates together so that components from different companies can consistently work together. This interoperability through collaboration builds everyone up and drives the innovation we see in drones and uncrewed vehicles.

Open standards begin with an open process. At the Dronecode Foundation (DF), we foster the Pixhawk FMU (Flight Management Units) Open Standards with contributions and participation from the Pixhawk Special Interest Group during FMU Workgroup meetings. Participation is open to all members of the Dronecode Foundation. It is a mature community with a proven ecosystem of tools and services. 

Why adopt open source?

Choosing to adopt a robust and mature open-source community, like here at DF, can help organizations and developers get started quickly, thanks to the vast tools and rich feature set already available from decades of architectural improvements, critical safety considerations, the many challenges that we overcame that helped us get to where we are today, as well as a continuously growing ecosystem of hardware options to choose from.

Speaking of mature and proven, the 6th-generation of Pixhawk flight controller of open standards is now available, including several hardware products already being manufactured. But, first, what is Pixhawk?

Pixhawk Open Standards

Pixhawk is not a specific product; it is a set of open standards endorsed by major semiconductor manufacturers, software companies, and drone engineering companies. These de facto standards cover requirements for many aspects of hardware and electronics design in drones. The Pixhawk Special Interest Group is in charge of developing the latest standards through recurring public meetings hosted by the Dronecode Foundation.

The Open Standards are implemented by manufacturers, many of which are DF members, such as Auterion, ARK Electronics, Holybro, ModalAI, CUAV, 96Boards, and NXP Semiconductor. They release products or reference implementations for end-users or other organizations, all based on the Pixhawk standards. The Pixhawk ecosystem has been growing for over a decade and has achieved great success. We estimate more than a million Pixhawk-based devices in the field as of this writing.

FMUv6X & FMUv6C—Sixth Generation Pixhawk’s

Now, the 6th generation of Pixhawk FMU’s is available in two versions: 

• FMUv6X: the high-end version made for performance and reliability (see features below)
• FMUv6C: made for the cost-conscious end of the market. Reliable and cost-effective

Every version of Pixhawk ships with the latest supported version of the PX4 Autopilot (v1.13) by default.

Which companies are making hardware for Pixhawk 6th gen?

As of this writing, four companies are manufacturing hardware utilizing the Pixhawk 6 standards

• Auterion – Skynode
• Holybro – Pixhawk 6X & Pixhawk 6C
• CUAV – CUAV Pixhawk FMUv6X
• ARK Electronics – ARKV6X

In addition, some companies are creating new baseboards with companion computers, such as Raspberry Pis, and Nvidia Jetson’s that run Linux, allowing you to use an API instead of modifying the PX4 Flight Controller code. This increases the availability of options and showcases how innovation can build on top of open-source technology. Companies offering baseboards with Pixhawk Autopilot Bus compatibility include: 

• Auterion –  Skynode, and AI Node
• Holybro – Default, Mini, RPi CM4
• CUAV – Default
• ARKElectronics – Default

How are the new Pixhawk standards making a difference? 

Let’s go straight to those who are offering new products utilizing these standards and see how the enhanced standard is making more possible. 

“Auterion is continuously supporting Dronecode, and its projects, our commitment to open source and standards is part of our DNA. At Auterion, we take the invaluable work of a community of innovators, we integrate it with different services that create value for the end user, and deliver it to the wider market as an enterprise-ready product. The newest generation of FMUv6X is another great advancement, and we are looking forward to the value it will bring our customer base in future release cycles”

Lorenz Meier, co-founder and CEO of Auterion

“CUAV Pixhawk 6X is the result of close cooperation between CUAV and Dronecode. We implemented the mature and reliable FMUv6X open standard. CUAV has leveraged its in-house hardware design expertise to create a unique autopilot with very reliable sensors (IMU, barometer, RM3100 magnetometer) and a new shock absorption system. This makes it possible to extend its use to more industrial fields, making your imagination possible.”

Ray Bin, Founder and CEO of CUAV

“The ARKV6X flight controller is the perfect combination of advanced technology and versatile design, offering users the best of both worlds. Open standards are the foundation of a healthy and innovative industry, allowing for collaboration and progress without the constraints of proprietary technology.”

Alex Klimaj, Founder of ARKElectronics

“The Holybro Pixhawk 6X and Pixhawk 6C Flight Controllers have implemented the FMUv6X and FMUv6C open standards. We have followed the Pixhawk standards since 2018 and have continued to work closely with the PX4 Team and Dronecode to improve on them. It is great to see how far we have come with all the companies joining in on this effort to benefit the community as a whole.”

Vince Poon, CTO of Holybro

“From the very beginning our system was built with the Pixhawk flight controller at its heart. Upgrading to v6 will allow us to take the Sunflower Labs Beehive to a new level of autonomy, reliability and flexibility to meet our customer’s needs. The increased redundancy, computing power, hardware standards and incredible community support makes this an easy decision. We are proud to support and contribute to Pixhawk and the community that built it.”

Alex Pachikov, CEO at Sunflower Labs

Enabling a Pixhawk Ecosystem

Pixhawk Autopilot Bus Verification by Dronecode

Additionally, Dronecode can help validate standards implementation to guarantee cross-vendor compatibility of PAB modules and baseboards, enabling an ecosystem. For a small fee, we can help verify your implementation is up to standard; we test against a known reference implementation and verify cross-compatibility with other validated hardware available to us. After all, cross-vendor compatibility is a crucial benefit of using open standards.

How can manufacturers adopt the standards and become part of the community?

Are you interested in how to build your own drone flight controller utilizing the Pixhawk standards? You have a couple of options.

Build your own using the Open Standards

If you would like to adopt the standard, start here, join the DF Discord channel, and participate in the monthly coordination calls for the FMU workgroup.

The best way to contribute to the open efforts hosted under the Dronecode Foundation is to become a member. By becoming a member, organizations can help support open standards and guarantee the continued success of the open-source projects hosted under our umbrella. Join The Dronecode Foundation Today.

The standard is now available for everyone to download

• All Pixhawk FMUv6 Open Standards on GitHub
• DS-010 Pixhawk Autopilot Bus (PDF)
• DS-012 Pixhawk FMUv6X (PDF)
• DS-018 Pixhawk FMUv6C (PDF)

Partner with a verified Pixhawk manufacturer

You can partner with manufacturers who are experts (who contributed to the development of the standards). They include: Auterion; ARKElectronics; Holybro; and, CUAV. All hold a Dronecode membership and help to maintain the standards.

Design your own using the reference Schematics

In either case, an exclusive benefit for Dronecode Foundation members is access to the reference schematics. Leverage access to the reference implementation of the open standards and boost your time to production.

Access to the Pixhawk Trademark

Once your flight controller is market-ready, Dronecode can help you access the Pixhawk trademark to help you demonstrate your Pixhawk standards-compliant hardware is tested as 100% compliant. It is an exclusive benefit for Dronecode members at an additional cost. If you are interested in exploring any of the Pixhawk services (Validation / Access to Schematics / Trademark License) we offer and/or joining the Dronecode Foundation, please reach out to Ramón Roche ([email protected]).

About the Dronecode Foundation

The Dronecode Foundation (DF) hosts open-source and open-standard projects and their communities, forming an ecosystem of critical components to the Drone Industry. DF is a vendor-neutral foundation for open drone projects and is part of the Linux Foundation. We work with developers, end-users, and adopting vendors worldwide. DF provides a neutral space for collaboration in the development of open standards between engineers and organizations members of the drone community, nurturing an open ecosystem providing open alternatives of hardware and software components key to the development of Uncrewed Vehicles. www.dronecode.org

About the Pixhawk

The Pixhawk project has provided readily available open standards for drones and open hardware for more than a decade. The Pixhawk SIG was formed to tackle the lack of specifications and guidelines for drone systems development and is supported by Dronecode Foundation members who support Open Standards. Pixhawk is a registered trademark of the Dronecode Foundation.  pixhawk.org

Watts Innovations today joins Dronecode to collaborate with the open-source community. They are the creators of PRISM SKY, which DroneUp uses for drone deliveries. By joining the Dronecode Foundation, they aim to promote the ongoing advancement of open standards for the overall betterment of the industry.

“​​We are thrilled to announce that Watts Innovations has joined the Dronecode Foundation as a Silver member partner. We understand the importance of standards and open-source development in driving innovation and growth in the drone industry. Through collaboration with the PX4 community and other industry leaders, we aim to shape the future of the unmanned vehicle ecosystem and provide advanced, reliable solutions to our customers. We look forward to contributing to the Dronecode platform and working with the community to drive further innovation and growth in the industry.”

said Bobby Watts, CEO & Principal Engineer

Watt’s products are used everywhere, from the sets of Hollywood to deliveries from retail giants; their drones are trusted by large-scale commercial enterprises where reliability can’t be an afterthought.

Watts Innovations is best known for its excellent hardware, with NDAA-compliant products such as the WATTS Smart LiPo for heavy lift aircraft that leverages DroneCAN, KONTACT, a handheld ground control station harnessing the power of QGroundControl, and the PRISM SKY, the latest iteration of their PRISM platform made for cargo.

Innovation is more than just a part of the Watts name. From its genesis as a garage project to building drones modified to handle unpredictable shooting and delivery environments, it has advanced the field of aerial robotics by answering directly to clients’ needs.

Watch Bobby Watts, CEO of Watts Innovations, on Episode #6 of our podcast Behind The Tech, where he breaks down the importance of standards for the drone industry and their motivations behind embracing open technologies.

https://wattsinnovations.com/

NXP’s HoverGames design challenge is back! This time the contest theme is supporting sustainable food production by using mobile robotics technology. 

Up to $9500 award money will be sponsored by NXP, and Dronecode Foundation is sponsoring prize winners to attend the PX4 Developer Summit 2023. 1st prize winner of Hovergames 3 will receive complimentary tickets + travel stipend/scholarship for up to 2 people. 2nd and 3rd prize Hovergames 3 winners will get free tickets.

This contest gives developers access to the first release of NXP’s all-new NAVQPlus(NAVQ+) mission computer, which features a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), hardware accelerated multimedia (incl h.265), Edgelock secure element with NFC interface, dual MIPI-CSI camera port, dual Ethernet –  “IX industrial” Gigabit Ethernet & “Two wire” 100base-T1 Ethernet, dual CAN-FD, Wi-Fi 6 / Bluetooth 5.1 on board. 

Bosch Sensortec is adding a sustainability award to the prize pool this year for applications demonstrating the best use of its sensor AI technology. For example, in a drone or rover application, the presence of volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) can be used as an indicator for bacteria growth in food crops. The all-new BME688 AI-enabled environmental gas sensor can detect a broad range of gases in the part per billion (ppb) range, and the gas scanner can be customized for sensitivity, selectivity, data rate, and power consumption and can be trained to a specific application using the Bosch BME AI-Studio tool. 

100 proposals will be selected to be rewarded with free sensor components and coupons for purchasing the drone/rover hardware bundle. 

Learn more about the contest and apply for hardware before November 21th here: Hardware Application

Together with our partner communities from OpenCV and Open Robotics / ROS, we put together a long overdue meetup in the heart of San Francisco on August 11th. We were lucky to be met with an incredible response from the community in San Francisco. The event was made possible thanks to Noisebridge and Hackster, who helped us provide great content, the venue, food, and beverages for our guests.

Katherine Scott from Open Robotics was our host for the night. She thanked our guests and introduced us to our speakers for the day. Our GM Ramón Roche followed Kat, who presented the PX4 Autopilot demonstrating the multiple capabilities through example applications by commercial adopters. Ramón was followed by Phil Nelson, Director of Content and Creative at OpenCV and co-host of OpenCV Weekly. Phil gave a fun and engaging talk guiding us through the multiple contests at OpenCV and all the great things happening with computer vision development in their community. He was followed by the excellent Alex Glow, robot nerd, and host of Hackster Cafe. She gave us a tour of the Hackster community platform and the many projects she’s worked on, including her adorable robotic companions who stole our hearts that evening. Lastly, our host and chief troublemaker, Katherine Scott, took the stage. She gave a quick overview of the latest and greatest ROS developments and demoed the new development platform, the Turtle Bot 4.

After the main speakers, we hosted a show and tell from our guests, who showcased terrific projects using open source, including Lauren Young from ModalAI, who presented their latest platform, VOXL2, and other guests with their robotics projects.

Events like this are vital to bringing the community together and inspiring developers. Seeing what everyone is working on in-person sparks new ideas, and a single spontaneous conversation can provide solutions to problems teams have been facing for months. With the Open Robotics, OpenCV, and PX4 developer communities collaborating on events like this, we set an excellent precedent for the future development of autonomous systems.

This is just the first of many meetups to look forward to! We’d again like to thank Noisebridge and Hackster for making this meetup possible in the first place, and we look forward to seeing you all at the next one! The Dronecode Foundation is excited to collaborate with the Open Robotics team on more upcoming events, including meetups and conferences in Japan, Chicago, and San Diego.

Join us in Japan for ROSCon 2022

Dronecode Foundation is proud to sponsor ROSCon 22, the ROS yearly event for its worldwide community happening in Kyoto, Japan, October 19-21. Are you planning to attend? Let’s meet up.

“Joining the Dronecode Foundation as a Silver Member allows us to help the community extend PX4 components to work in safety-critical applications, including ultimately human-carrying aviation such as air taxis,“ said Chris Anderson. “We plan to contribute and work with the community to expand PX4’s codebase to handle the distributed and modular sensor systems that eVTOLs demand and improve its overall security and reliability,” he said.

Chris Anderson COO & Chief Product Officer at Kittyhawk

Kittyhawk is currently working on what will be the first commercial air taxi. The H2 has proven in trials its ability to fly at speeds up to 180 mph for distances ranging as far as 100 miles. In 2020 they joined the Air Force Research Laboratory’s AFWERX Agility Prime program, which has helped it accelerate testing.

It currently has 16 H2s which have covered thousands of miles over hundreds of flights between them. Kittyhawk targets a travel cost of less than $1/mile, less than rideshare services, truly disrupting transportation as we know it.

Kittyhawk sponsored the PX4 Developer Summit 2022, which took place June 23-24 in Austin, Texas, and online virtually. Their engineering team led sessions at the show, including Federated PX4 with Ian Dougherty and BoF: Model-based Control in PX4 and High(er) Fidelity Simulation with Gabriel Bousquet.

The #PX4DevSummit 2022 was produced by the DF in partnership with the Linux Foundation Events Team, and special thanks must go to the events team for their support and attention to detail to make the event run smoothly.

This year’s keynotes featured guest speakers highlighting PX4’s place in the larger open-source ecosystem and the drone industry, opportunities for growth and business, and the roadmap for the PX4 ecosystem. Keynote speakers included (in order of appearance) Ramón Roche, General Manager, Droneode Foundation, Hilary Carter, VP Research at The Linux Foundation, Hyon Lim, CEO and Co-Founder of UVify, Dr. Lorenz Meier, Founder of the PX4 ecosystem and CEO and Founder of Auterion, Brian Behlendorf General Manager, OpenSSF, Markus Achtelik Vice President. Engineering, Auterion, and Michael Blades Senior Director, Platforms, DroneUp.

With the help of a content committee formed by leaders from our community and sponsors, we put together a program with 40+ sessions, including eight keynotes and two workshops led by more than 50 speakers representing the best from our community.

Day 1 closed with a drone light show brought to us by 300 UVify IFOs over the skies of Austin, with attendees and onlookers captivated by the fleet of UAVs aligning into delightful 3D formations like TUX the Linux penguin and pride-filled “We Love Open Source” message.

The in-person event featured top-notch networking with parties hosted by Auterion and Guinn Partners. Capital Factory and Guinn Partners invited attendees to the Center for Autonomous Robotics located on the edge of Lake Austin to tour the facilities and check out the robotics labs and fields on site.

Once again, we want to thank the attendees of the summit and everyone who helped us put this event together. And one last thank you to our sponsors who went above and beyond this year, Auterion, UVify, NXP Semiconductors, Holybro, Kittyhawk, Modal AI, Technology Innovation Institute, TDK InvenSense, CUAV, and Guinn Partners.

What was your favorite moment? Let us know on social media using the hashtag #PX4DevSummit

The videos from the conference will be published on the PX4 Autopilot YouTube channel daily, starting with Dr. Lorenz Meier’s great Keynote on Day 1, published today. 

This past week, we lost our dear friend, colleague, and true champion of the open source community. Stone White passed away suddenly in the company of his family.

Stone was a wonderful human being and a strong supporter and believer of our open source community. He believed open-source could be used to build a better future through collaboration by allowing everyone to participate.

Many of our community members worked with him through his efforts; most prominently, he led the translation of all of our documentation and QGroundControl into Chinese. Contributions that helped thousands of people and will continue to do so.

You will be forever missed, Stone.

Sharing Memories

Please submit a pull request on Github here if you want to leave a memorial message for Stone. We will ensure his family gets a copy of the messages from our community.

Memorial Fund

Dronecode has arranged with his family to establish a memorial fund to support them. Donations can be made to his family here.

Blog sponsored by Auterion, PX4 Developer Summit 2022 Sponsor

Pixhawk and PX4 are now ubiquitous drone technologies. They help create an ecosystem of interoperability which leads to users having more choice and flexibility. Creating an open drone ecosystem around these technologies was the goal, and it’s finally happening! 

This blog post highlights what the Dronecode Foundation and its member companies, like Auterion, are facilitating in conjunction with the open source community for real companies and end users.

Building the Foundation

The intention behind the creation of Pixhawk was to make drones fly autonomously using computer vision. But the drone computing power and technology we take for granted today didn’t exist in 2008. Auterion’s now CEO, Lorenz Meier, was a student at the time and set out to build the necessary flight control software and hardware. Realizing the task’s scale, he sought the help of fourteen fellow students, many of whom were more experienced than him, to make it happen.

Together, they not only built Pixhawk but kick started an open source community around various technologies. Lorenz enabled talented people worldwide to collaborate and create a full-scale solution that was reusable and standardized. By giving their technology a permissive open source license, they opened it to everyone for use and collaboration. 

A lot has happened since then. Here are a few milestones:

• 2011: Birth of PX4
• 2014: Dronecode Foundation Creation
• 2019: MAVSDK now under MAVLink project
• 2021: Launch of Pixhawk Payload Bus Standard
• 2022: Dronecode Foundation has over 33 participating members

Benefits of Openness in the Real World

There are proprietary drone solutions out there but the innovation and technological backbone are thanks to open software hardware and standards. It took a while to get here, but we’re at a point where the benefits of an Open Ecosystem are visible and growing fast.

Companies now see the benefits of using open technologies and what was a foundation for the drone industry, is being infused into every crevice.

Here are two interviews with companies discussing the benefits of standardization and an open ecosystem in the real world.

Freefly Systems 

Max Tubman from Freefly Systems discusses open standards and how it is enabling interoperability of various payloads amongst partners in the Open Ecosystem.

Watts Innovation

In this interview, Bobby Watts of Watts Innovation, explains the power of standardization and how it has streamlined their interoperability with other ecosystem partners like Gremsy and Drone Rescue Systems.

The Dronecode Foundation is vital to a healthy open drone community and the developer community is key to its success and agility. Auterion believes open source is the winning approach to building software, including drone software and that companies need to work in tandem to create the best technologies.

Auterion’s Role

Open source was always a part of Lorenz’s vision but he wanted to make it sustainable and scalable long term. That’s why, in 2017, he and Kevin Sartori launched Auterion; a company committed to maintaining the open source ecosystem and distribution model, that supports other companies to use it in their products and services.

Open source and standards form the technical foundation of the drone industry, but it needs a little more work to be made ready for end users. That’s where Auterion and other companies come in, with open source at the core of what we do. 

Auterion brings the fantastic work of a global open source developer community around PX4, MAVLink, and other projects and puts them into a productized form that we maintain for end users so they can focus on their business. By making open source software as easy to adopt as a commercial product, it removes barriers for the enterprise users. 

The Open Ecosystem enables a symbiotic relationship between developers and the enterprise, bringing the best out of both worlds. A lot of Auterion’s work flows back into the open source community and enables those developers and technologists to make the next move: to build a rover, a VTOL or a more interesting drone configuration. 

During those years, the industry has faced multiple challenges, and our community has pitched in to help solve the most complex aspects of managing aerial vehicles. We plan to continue working with our members to support the industry by keeping open technologies aligned with current industry needs, looking beyond what lies ahead, and providing new opportunities and solutions.

The PX4 Autopilot revolutionized the landscape thanks to its innovative software architecture by providing a real-time-based modular design with a publish-subscribe-based middleware layer. The project has rapidly evolved from a flight stack to an ecosystem of open tools and projects that further strengthen the benefits of PX4, with Open Standards such as the Pixhawk FMUv5X, and Payload Standard taking center stage in shaping the next wave of development and manufacturing.

Our focus on creating accessible technology lead us to expand on the Pixhawk lineup of open hardware by forming workgroups with some of our most active members. Over the last twelve months, together with our partners, we released the first standards from the Pixhawk workgroup, confirming our commitment to supply the broader drone industry with impactful open technologies:

• FMUv5X
• FMUv6U
• Payload Interface
• Radio Interface

“PX4 is providing a widely adopted autopilot solution for a global development community including enterprises, academia, and developers. We have always co-developed hardware standards, initially by creating the Pixhawk autopilot. We are now building on that success with more hardware standards that cover“

Lorenz Meier, Chairman of the Droneco de Board of Directors, and Founder of Auterion

What’s in store for 2022 and beyond

First, we are expanding our efforts on open standards, doubling down on the work we have been carrying out over the last two years. We strongly believe standards are the way forward for our industry, and we want to open the doors to any organization to collaborate with us.

Next, with the extra responsibility involved in leading the open standards expansion effort, we are delighted to announce that Ramón Roche will be taking the General Manager role under the stewardship of the board of directors. Ramon will ensure our mission remains aligned with the greater industry and help grow our fantastic community, affirming our commitment to the industry.

We look forward to meeting face-to-face with our community in June for the PX4 Developer Summit, where we will be sharing our in-depth plans and progress in the company of our members and many outstanding companies from our ecosystem.

“The drone industry has a massive impact on multiple commercial and industrial verticals, helping automate and derisk jobs, enabling businesses to offer life-changing technology. Organizations are looking at open technologies to help them reach their goals faster and safer, leading to the mass adoption of open source,” said Roche. “As the new general manager of the DF, I am determined to continue expanding the community and supporting the industry in the adoption of open source.”

Ramón Roche, General Manager, Dronecode Foundation

After five months of product development, the team at Viewpro is finally ready to launch this powerful 4K dual-sensor drone gimbal camera – Q20KTIR.

Viewpro focuses on research and development to meet the extensive requirements of industrial drone applications.

Like other Viewpro gimbal cameras, Q20KTIR is MAVlink compatible, features lightweight, high compactness, and multi-function.

• EO: SONY 1/2.5″ “Exmor R” CMOS module
• 20x Optical Zoom, 30x with super-resolution
• 4K Output and Storage
• IR: 640*480 25mm IR thermal camera
• Object tracking on both EO and IR camera
• Output: HDMI / IP
• Control method: PWM/S.BUS/TTL/TCP
• Compatible with Viewport and Viewlink
• NW: 883g

They are designed for surveillance, search and rescue, inspection, environment investigation, and surveying in various domains such as defense & security, firefighting, environment protection, energy, infrastructure, and many more applications.

We are guided by customer needs and manufacture high-quality gimbal cameras to fulfill the daily updated market requirements. We are positively willing to share and exchange with other members in Dronecode Foundation, carry out more extensive cooperation, and make progress together.

by Steven Xue, founder of Viewpro.

For more information, please visit: 

www.viewprotech.com

www.viewprouav.com

Thank you, Sponsors & Partners

This event was made possible thanks to the enormous support from our Sponsors and Partners.

Diamond

Platinum

Gold

Silver

Students and Academia Scholarship

After-Party Sponsor

T-Shirt Sponsor

Media Partners

The Latest member of the Pixhawk FMU Family

The new generation of Pixhawk FMU brings the proven features from previous generations to a hardened form factor. We are building on top of the battle-tested functionality of the FMUv5, with a modular design and triple redundancy.

Enabling extensibility and cross-vendor compatibility

The new modular design of the Pixhawk FMUv5X Open Standard features a System-on-Module (SOM) thanks to the Pixhawk Autopilot Bus (PAB). The SOM design allows for the development of baseboards that can extend the functionality of Pixhawk to include companion computers or customized form factors from vendors—guaranteeing cross-compatibility between manufacturers who follow the standards.

The FMUv5X delivers incredible performance and reliability, thanks to the STM32F7 and the unique sensor sets available for the standard, including sensors from Bosch®, and InvenSense®, giving you the flexibility to control any autonomous vehicle.

Proven Hardware Interface

• Secure element for secure authentication of the drone
• Ethernet interface for high-speed mission computer integration
• Three redundancy domains: Completely isolated sensor domains with separate buses and separate power control.
• It has redundant sensors on separate buses, allowing parallel and continuous operation even in the event of a hardware failure.
  • Some of the possible sensor configurations:
  • Bosch BMI088 accelerometer (vibration isolated)
  • Invensense ICM-20602
  • TDK Invensense ICM 42688-P
  • Bosch BMM150 compass (vibration isolated)
  • Two Bosch BMP388 pressure sensors
  • GPS external mag + baro #1 
  • GPS external mag + baro #2 
  • Calibration EEPROM for baseboard sensors 
  • On-IMU calibration EEPROM memory for high-accuracy sensors 
• Automated sensor calibration eliminating varying signals and temperature
• FRAM memory for configuration data
• Operating temperature -40 to +85°C
• Extensive power monitoring
  • Two smart batteries on SMBus or more on UAVCAN
  • 5V rail monitoring
  • 3.3V rail monitoring for CPU
  • 3.3V rail monitoring for each sensor domain
• External sensor bus (SPI)
• Redundant power supply: The autopilot can be powered from up to two power sources and every sensor set is powered by an independent LDO with independent power control
• Battery-backed real time clock for running security applications without GPS coverage
• NFC reader support

Fully compatible with PX4 Autopilot

The FMU5X Open Standard is fully compatible with the latest release of the PX4 Autopilot (v1.12), allowing for bigger workloads and task-intensive applications, providing a stable and safe baseline for manufacturers who wish to implement the standard—offering complete compatibility with our ecosystem of open source projects.

The first implementations are now available, more available soon

Auterion Skynode

• Integrated Mission Computer
• 4x Redundant IMU sensors
• Built-in Ethernet, USB, WiFi, 4G
• Auterion Enterprise PX4

Learn more https://auterion.com/drone-manufacturers/skynode/

Pixhawk 5X by Holybro

• Vanilla FMUv5X implementation
• Ethernet
• System-on-Module design
• Robust baseboard with multiple connectors, drop-in replacement for a Pixhawk 4

Learn more http://www.holybro.com/product/pixhawk-5x/

Made possible thanks to the Pixhawk SIG

The DS-011 standardization process took over twelve months of development, with contributions and participation from Dronecode Foundation members within the Pixhawk Special Interest Group during the FMU Workgroup meetings.

Dronecode Foundation members develop Pixhawk Open Standards to drive interoperability of the drone ecosystem through open-source. The DF facilitates an open process to develop open standards. The standards enable multiple implementations to be delivered into the market to benefit users and developers by enabling choices in a marketplace.

The standard is now available for everyone to download

Visit Pixhawk.org to Download the Standard

Have any questions regarding the spec, or want to help us build the next generation of Pixhawk? Join the monthly coordination calls from the FMU workgroup, organized by the Dronecode Foundation.

The best way to contribute to the open efforts hosted under the Dronecode Foundation is to become a member. By becoming a member, organizations can help support open standards and guarantee the continued success of the open-source projects hosted under our umbrella. Join The Dronecode Foundation Today.

About the Dronecode Foundation

The Dronecode Foundation (DF) hosts open-source and open-standard projects and their communities, forming an ecosystem of critical components to the Drone Industry. DF is a vendor-neutral foundation for open drone projects part of the Linux Foundation. We work with developers, end-users, and adopting vendors from around the world. DF provides a neutral space for collaboration in the development of open standards between engineers and organizations, members of the drone community, nurturing an open ecosystem providing open alternatives of hardware and software components key to the development of Uncrewed Vehicles. www.dronecode.org

About the Pixhawk

The Pixhawk project has provided readily available open standards for drone and open hardware for more than a decade. The Pixhawk SIG was formed to tackle the lack of specifications and guidelines for drone systems development and is supported by Dronecode Foundation members who support Open Standards. pixhawk.org

As our world becomes increasingly digital with a greater reliance than ever on sophisticated technology such as AI and autonomous drones for everything from reconnaissance missions in security industries to drone delivery of groceries and pharmaceuticals, one thing is clear. This is a world that will require us to update our know-how on an almost continuous basis to ensure we are able to maximise the gains from such technology.

Secure Systems Research Centre (SSRC) is one of the seven initial dedicated research centres of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a global research hub and applied research arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), the overarching entity mandated to drive the R & D priorities and shape a research ecosystem in the UAE.

At SSRC, our work in advanced autonomous systems, cyber-physical systems and in shaping smart cities means we are more aware of the hyper-connected world we live in today. As part of our core mandate, we pursue applied research in building a more secure tomorrow and helping the global community realise the true potential of the 21^st century. 

One of the systems we are actively focused on in our research endeavours is the PX4 Autopilot system, with a view to ensuring its security and resilience. We headlined a presentation at the virtual PX4 Development Summit titled ‘Toward a more secure, resilient, and safer PX4 Autopilot system’. The focus of the presentation was on how to use the PX4 Firmware to enable drone security research and to outline the basic security improvements that are being developed for encryption, memory protection, and more secure hardware.

Unsecure drone systems can pose threats to our privacy, cyber security, and our physical safety. SSRC is keen to improve the current drone platform to make it more secure, resilient, and safe for hobbyists, commercial entities, and governmental authorities to use. Our aim with this presentation was to highlight how to use the PX4 Firmware to enable drone security research. We also outlined the basic security improvements that are being developed for encryption, memory protection, and more secure hardware. 

In addition, SSRC presented a security-enabled hardware platform onto which the PX4 Autopilot software was ported to achieve extremely high performance. The hardware platform is based on RISC-V application grade CPU cores, and it is capable of running multiple operating systems in parallel. What’s more, the hardware platform integrates hardware-accelerated cryptography onto a single Security Operations Centre. Porting the PX4 Autopilot onto this new platform enables new exploratory paths in drone software development for SSRC’s research partners. For more information about the presentation, you can access it here.

At Secure Systems Research Centre, as part of our umbrella mission, we are driving end-to-end security and resilience in cyber-physical and autonomous systems that will ensure safety and enrich lives in the UAE and worldwide. To get in touch or collaborate with us, please visit https://securesystems.tii.ae/ 

Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is now working directly with our members in the security space, bringing to the forefront their efforts and experience over the years in drone technology.

TII was established in November 2020, and is the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). The global research institute works at the intersection of breakthrough technologies to find solutions to the world’s greatest challenges through partnering with top talent from around the world and collaborating with leading academic and scientific institutions.

Comprising seven initial dedicated research centres – Quantum, Autonomous Robotics, Cryptography, Advanced Materials, Digital Security, Directed Energy, and Secure Systems, TII is well equipped to help advance open source community goals.

The Secure Systems Research Centre (SSRC) is focused on enhancing the security and resilience of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems, and helps lead the Security SIG together with Auterion, in working on Cryptography, Memory Protection, and carrying out Code Analysis on the PX4 Autopilot.

“Unsecure drone systems may pose threats to our privacy, to cybersecurity, and to our physical safety. We want to be involved in making the current drone platforms better, more secure, and resilient for the safe use of hobbyists, commercial and governmental authorities,” said H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General of ATRC “At TII’s Secure Systems Research Centre (SSRC), we pursue research that is building a more secure tomorrow and helping the global community realise the true potential of the 21^st century. We look forward to working closely with the Dronecode Foundation to significantly enhance the resilience and security of drone systems.” 

said H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General of ATRC

TII’s Secure Systems Research Centre is also participating in the Hardware Work Group, helping to advance the newly released Pixhawk open standards.

“As part of our endeavour to shape a global centre of excellence in the development of end-to-end security and resilience for cyber-physical and autonomous systems, SSRC is committed to the success of PX4 and Pixhawk open source as they will enable the pervasive use of drones,” said Dr Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar, Chief Researcher at SSRC. “In keeping with SSRC’s focus areas across platforms, software, and data integrity, we prioritise the secure fleet management of drones. As Dronecode is setting standards in the drone industry, TII is pleased to collaborate with this foundation.”

said Dr Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar, Chief Researcher at SSRC.

The Dronecode Foundation is thrilled to welcome TII to our growing community of partner organisations as a Silver member, working closely with its top scientists and community contributors on our Work Groups and Special Interest Groups.

About TII

The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) aims to become a leading global research centre dedicated to pushing the frontiers of knowledge. Our teams of scientists, researchers, and engineers work in an open, flexible, and agile environment to deliver discovery science and transformative technologies. Our efforts ensure that we are not merely preparing for the future, we are working to create it. We are committed to inspiring innovation for a better tomorrow. 

Dronecode Foundation members develop Pixhawk Open Standards to drive interoperability of the drone ecosystem through open-source. The DF facilitates an open process to develop the open standards. The standards enable multiple implementations to be delivered into the market to benefit users and developers by enabling choices in a marketplace. We are happy to announce the release of the Pixhawk FMUv6U Open Standard.

The Latest member of the Pixhawk FMU Family

The Pixhawk FMUv6U Open Standard builds on the battle-tested functionality of the FMUv5 and the newer architecture of the upcoming FMUv5X and adds a slight increase in processing power and High-Speed USB.

Enabling advanced computing opportunities on-board

The addition of the USB-HS support enables implementers of the open standard to think outside the box and expand their creations with extra functionality that wouldn’t be possible before. Manufacturers can augment their offerings with AI or ML components or a robust computer vision pipeline.

Proven Hardware Interfaces

• USB-HS Support
  • SMSC-USB2517 (ULPI)
• Redundant sensors on separate buses.
  • Bosch BMI088 (SPI3)
  • TDK Invensense ICM-42605 (SPI2)
  • TDK Invensense ICM-20602 (SPI1)
  • Bosch BMM150 compass (I2C4)
  • Bosch BMP388 pressure sensor (I2C4)
  • GPS external mag + baro #1
  • GPS external mag + baro #2
  • FRAM memory for configuration data (SPI5)
• Extensive power monitoring
  • 5V rail monitoring
  • 3.3V rail monitoring for CPU
  • 3.3V rail monitoring for sensor domain
• External sensor bus (SPI6)
• For NFC, one external I2C port needs to have an additional GPIO line and 5V to supply the external NFC reader.

Fully compatible with PX4 Autopilot

The FMUv6U takes full advantage of the latest PX4 autopilot feature set, providing a stable and safe configuration for manufacturers who wish to implement the standard—offering complete compatibility with our ecosystem of open source projects.

Made possible thanks to the FMU Workgroup

The Pixhawk FMUv6U Open Standard standardization process took over 12 months of development, with contributions and participation from Dronecode Member companies and the PX4 Maintainers.

DS-016 design Lead by Silver Member Gumstix

Our silver member Gumstix contributed most of the work behind the standard and has included the work on Upverter, their simplified design tool for electronics. You can now build a custom Pixhawk board based on the FMuv6U standard using Upverter.

Gumstix has the first implementation of the standard available for sale

The CM4 + Pixhawk FMUv6U carrier board supports development, prototyping, or production-grade hardware for new drones and includes the following features:

• STM32H753 MCU
• 2x MIPI-CSI lanes for high-resolution imaging
• BMM150 three-axis geomagnetic sensor
• microSD card slot with isolated CD pins
• USB Type-C port
• 2x FTDI FT232RQ USB to UART interface
• Coral TPU via USB3

The standard is now available for everyone to download

Have any questions regarding the spec, or want to help us build the next generation of Pixhawk? Join the monthly coordination calls from the Payload workgroup, organized by the Dronecode Foundation.

Help Drive the Future of the Drone Industry.

Enjoy the benefits of membership!

The best way to contribute to the open efforts hosted under the Dronecode Foundation is to become a member. By becoming a member, organizations can help support open standards and guarantee the continued success of the open-source projects hosted under our umbrella.

Join The Dronecode Foundation Today.

State of the Community 2021 Survey

Complete the Questionnaire for a 20% discount on our store

Community, the Dronecode Foundation Community Survey is an effort to get to know you better and understand how to serve you best.

We put together a yearly Survey to measure some key metrics, including Inclusion, diversity, project adoption, and learn a few ways to use our projects.

The evaluation is entirely anonymous, we won’t track anything (even your IP), and we will publicly share the data on Dronecode Foundation’s GitHub on a new Repository exclusive for Surveys.

We estimate the Questionnaire takes around 20 min to complete, and we are hoping to get answers to the following questions (in between others):

• We want to know who’s part of our community and what type of company you work for.
• How’s the progress on our projects going, and how are you using them (PX4, MAVLink, MAVSDK, QGroundControl, and Pixhawk.)
• Diversity and Inclusion, are we setting up an inclusive environment for everyone?
• Are we reaching our community through the proper channels?
• What type of content should we focus on?

Ten (10) lucky community members get FREE #PX4DevSummit 2021 Tickets.

As an incentive and thank you for volunteering your time in completing the Questionnaire, we are giving away a 20% discount to our online store to everyone who completes the Survey within the next two weeks and will raffle (10) FREE tickets to the #PX4DevSummit 2021. And as such, you will be asked to enter your personal details on the last page. 

Please Note: It’s entirely optional to claim the incentives above, but your data won’t be shared publicly with anyone and won’t be part of the published Survey data. So we are only using your data for:

1. Send you your unique discount code.
2. Enter you on the raffle for the event tickets.

Take the Dronecode Foundation Community Survey

Click the link below when you are ready to start the Questionnaire. Don’t worry, it will only take a few minutes.

Get the latest PX4 merch from the official store, and help sustain the open-source Community.

We are finally launching our merch store. After years of only having shirts and decals available at in-person events, usually meetups or trade shows such as InterDrone, or AUVSI Xponential, we decided to host our shop. It’s been our goal for a few months now, and we are happy to have found a great partner to help us with production, warehousing, kitting, and fulfillment (Woah!)

As usual, all of the money we collect will continue to go to the efforts of the Dronecode Foundation to support the open source and open standard projects under our umbrella. 

When you purchase a shirt, the new Hoodie, or some stickers, you are giving to a good cause, and as a perk, you will end up looking good too!

But wait, before you stock up!

As a special THANK YOU gift for being a fantastic community, we are running a special launch campaign with a 15% discount code valid until June 11th.

Use code JuneLaunch2021 at check-out

Don’t wait until it’s too late though, we are running limited supply runs, and we will have a rolling cycle of designs coming up every few months.

Now, what are you waiting for? Click the link below to get your gear!

Visit the Dronecode Foundation Store »

Our Program Manager wins Airwards Industry Impactor Award.

Congratulations to our program manager Ramón Roche for winning the Airwards People’s Choice award for Industry Impactor. We are delighted to have you among us.

On behalf of the board of directors, I would like to congratulate you and thank you for all your hard work. We applaud the determination and effort you have demonstrated while working for the Dronecode Foundation, championing our cause and the open-source community.

Thank you for your hard work and dedication. We hope to continue being first-hand witnesses of your success.

Dr. Lorenz Meier
Chairman of the Board of Directors, Founder of PX4 Autopilot, and Co-Founder of Auterion.

About Airwards

Airwards is a not-for-profit awards platform dedicated to identifying, recognising and championing positive drone use. The first digital awards platform of its kind to champion positive drone use cases internationally, Airwards is open to a range of individuals and companies, including drone specialists transforming an industry, startups using drone technology for creative solutions, and large corporations driving innovation.

Winners successfully met the Airwards criteria, centred on:

• Innovation: promoting pioneering ideas that are successfully challenging the perception of what a drone is and can be.
• Responsibility: recognizing this key aspect of every drone flight to advocate legitimate behavior as best practice standard).
• Impactful real-world solutions: asking: ‘How are drones making a difference?’ by demonstrating quantifiable outcomes and real-world solutions.

Airwards judges include global leaders, pre-eminent drone experts, and industry specialists curated to reflect the diverse range of innovation and incredible work accomplished by the international drone industry. They are committed to sharing positive use cases and cross-sector knowledge, inspiring different industries to collaborate and innovate, facilitating commercial opportunities, and educating the wider public on drones as safe solutions to real-world problems.

For more information on the Airwards 20/21 winners, visit www.airwards.online/winners20-21/all.

The multidisciplinary nature of drones brings community members from many areas of the technology spectrum, and our community welcomes everyone by offering an inclusive and accessible space to collaborate. (See our Code of Conduct, and pledge to our community)

I frequently see members struggle in some areas and excel at others. For most, it feels like starting in a totally foreign area. Developing circuit boards and integrating hardware modules onto a board is one of the areas most are not experts.

The Open Source Path

The main benefit of choosing to work with an open-source community is the openness and collaboration across the board. It’s essential to choose a mature community with a proven ecosystem of tools and services that can help you achieve your goals.

When starting drone projects, it is important to understand the challenges you are trying to accomplish. I frequently see many make the mistake of focusing on the wrong problems and eventually see them reinventing the wheel (sort of speak) after having spent vast engineering resources.

Choosing to adopt a robust and mature open-source community can help organizations and developers get started quickly, thanks to the vast tools and rich feature set already available thanks to decades of architectural improvements, critical safety considerations, the many challenges that we overcame that helped us get to where we are today, as well as a continuously growing ecosystem of hardware options to choose from.

Creating the next generation of advanced robotics

For robotics and drones, the computational challenges can be even more significant than the electronics challenges if you don’t have the hardware and firmware support you need. If you’re developing a new drone, you can cut down your development and build time if you can leverage some proven production-grade firmware for your system.

PX4 is an open-source flight control software for drones with support for many configurations of multicopters, fixed wings, VTOLs, Rovers, and even unmanned underwater vehicles. Its source code contains everything needed to configure a vehicle, run it autonomously and also control it from an external source through an SDK (companion computer, over a telemetry link, or even through the cloud thanks to LTE or 5G).

If you are interested in learning how the PX4 Autopilot works, check out the amazing community-driven documentation, which is kept up to date by volunteers from all over the world at docs.px4.io. The PX4 source code is available on GitHub.

PX4 and the Dronecode Foundation

The PX4 Autopilot is hosted under the Dronecode Foundation. DF is a vendor-neutral foundation for open drone projects part of the Linux Foundation. Our mission is to nurture communities around the open-source projects, and to foster collaboration between the many contributors from the industry to continuously improve the projects.

The Projects under the ecosystem umbrella include:

• PX4 Autopilot Flight Stack
• MAVLink the protocol for drones.
• QGroundControl MAVLink based Mission Planner.
• MAVSDK, the standards compliant SDK for MAVLink.

PX4, together with the rest of the projects hosted under the Dronecode Foundation, gives creators a proven solution that can be immediately deployed for prototyping or production. This ecosystem provides an open-source solution for building solutions thanks to its modular architecture, developers can easily add hardware components without requiring major redesigns to the code architecture or losing core functionality.

The Dronecode Foundation offers a rich set of critical components for Drone Developers

Pixhawk Open Standards

Pixhawk is not a specific product; it is a set of open standards endorsed by major semiconductor manufacturers, software companies, and drone engineering companies. These de facto standards cover requirements for many aspects of hardware and electronics design in drones. The Pixhawk Special Interest Group is in charge of developing the latest standards through recurring public meetings hosted by the Dronecode Foundation.

The Open Standards are implemented by manufacturers, many of which are DF members, such as Auterion, Holybro, ModalAI, CUAV, 96Boards, NXP Semiconductor. They release products or reference implementations for end-users or other organizations, all based on the Pixhawk standards. The Pixhawk ecosystem has been growing for more than a decade and has achieved great success. We estimate more than a million Pixhawk based devices in the field as of writing.

Designing Compatible Drone Hardware

Designing and choosing the right components can be underwhelming when you have so many options, but luckily new open programs by the DF and new design tools by our members make it much easier to build a PX4 compatible drone.

Even if you’re not a PCB designer, you’ll still need a circuit board to hold all your electronics, and you’ll need to have it manufactured. If you want to innovate alongside significant players in the drone industry, it’s best to work within the Pixhawk Standards, as they have seen tremendous success and become an industry benchmark. As such, you’ll either need to purchase an existing solution or design your own board to support a PX4-based drone.

Here’s some of the options you have when adopting the Pixhawk Open Standards to design a PX4 compatible drone.

Manufacturing your own implementation

Dronecode Foundation members that are part of the Pixhawk Special Interest group and actively participate have access to the resources needed to manufacture hardware based on the latest Pixhawk Open Standards. The Dronecode Foundation will work with it’s members to certify compliance with the standards, and help them go to market, helping you navigate the Pixhawk trademarks and the many licensing options available.

Interested in becoming a member? Apply online today.

Building a Custom Board using Upverter

Another straightforward option to design a board without a DF membership, that doesn’t involve buying an expensive design application, or learning PCB design is to use the modular design tools in Upverter Modular thanks to our Silver Member Gumstix.

Everything in Upverter Modular happens in your web browser, and the drag-and-drop interface makes it simple to add hardware onto a circuit board. Upverter Modular works using multiple hardware modules with standard interfaces, where the electrical connections between different modules are created automatically.

You don’t need to worry about routing or signal integrity as you create your drone board. Instead, you can worry about designing the features and functions you want in your new system.

To get started in Upverter Modular, you can jumpstart your design from reference templates or open up a new board and search for a Pixhawk module. You can then drag this module into the board layout. This module includes all the hardware you need to support the PX4 Autopilot:

An example of a supported sensor set:

• STM32H753 Processor
• USB3300 USB Hi-Speed Transceiver
• FM25V02A 256Kb FRAM
• InvenSense ICM-42605 6-axis IMU
• InvenSense ICM-20602 6-axis IMU
• Bosch BMI088 6-axis IMU
• Bosch BMM150 Magnetometer
• Bosch BMP388 Barometer

To finish up the board, just add a power regulation module and any other cameras, sensors, or other components you want on the board.

The image below shows an example board we created in Upverter using the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 COM. This board is ideal for image capture and processing directly on the drone, thanks to the onboard Jetson COM.

Pixhawk Reference Implementations

Gumstix CM4 + Pixhawk FMUv6 Board

For a prepackaged PX4 compatible board with additional features and embedded AI capabilities, check out the Gumstix CM4 + Pixhawk FMUv6U. This board follows the Pixhawk FMUv6U Open Standards and includes an SMT32 MCU that supports the PX4 Autopilot.

It also lets you build more extensive applications using the new Raspberry Pi CM4 module as the companion computer and a Coral TPU from Google, which supports advanced computer vision applications.  Gumstix is the first manufacturer to implement greater than USB 2.0 speeds between the Raspberry Pi CM4 module and the Coral Accelerator module.  This allows for faster inferencing and improved performance.

This board is a great tool for building a production-grade autonomous drone platform with custom applications using the PX4 Autopilot.

The CM4 + Pixhawk FMUv6U carrier board supports development, prototyping, or production-grade hardware for new drones and includes the following features:

• STM32H753 MCU
• 2x MIPI-CSI lanes for high-resolution imaging
• BMM150 three-axis geomagnetic sensor
• microSD card slot with isolated CD pins
• USB Type-C port
• 2x FTDI FT232RQ USB to UART interface
• Coral TPU via USB3

Customize Your Own CM4 + Pixhawk FMUv6 Board

If you want to create your own CM4 + Pixhawk FMUv6 carrier board for a new drone, Upverter Modular lets you customize your own version of the Pixhawk board. You can add modules, change the board shape, modify the component arrangement, swap out the CM4 connector for a different COM, and quickly place an order for your customized Pixhawk board.

In addition to the drone hardware options listed above, Upverter’s drag-and-drop interface gives you access to a range of other modules for wireless communication, sensors, digital interfaces, and much more.

These modules and other hardware can be grouped with the PX4 module to satisfy the Pixhawk standards for drone hardware. If you’re ready to start designing electronics for a new PX4 drone, try using the drag-and-drop board design tools in Upverter Modular. You’ll have access to a range of industry-standard COMs and popular modules to create a new prototype board or production-grade customized FMU for your next drone project. You can design your own carrier board based on the FMUv6U carrier and instantly place it into production.

The advantage of open robotics

There are many options when it comes to building a robotics project, and at the Dronecode Foundation, we are working hard to keep an open option available by building a sustainable ecosystem that hosts developers, manufacturers, vendors, service providers, and end-users. Our efforts can be easily measured by the huge impact we have on the Drone Industry, from the first open hardware flight controllers to the cutting-edge rich feature set of PX4 and the vast tools for developers and makers.

• An unmatched ecosystem.
• A community of Thousands of developers
• Millions of Pixhawk devices in the field
• A flagship yearly event for developers
• Multiple industry events where you can meet the community

Take advantage of the opportunities our network of projects and developers have to offer, and become part of our community.

Help Drive the Future of the Drone Industry.

Enjoy the benefits of membership!

Help us on our mission to enable the industry to build and run safe and scalable drone applications in modern and trusted hardware solutions. The technologies hosted under our umbrella empower developers to produce reliable projects in an open ecosystem.

By becoming a member, you help sustain the day-to-day operations of the open-source community and the Foundation.

The Dronecode Foundation is happy to bring back the PX4 Developer Summit Online on September 14 – 15. After great success in 2020, we are back with the third iteration of our flagship event for the PX4 Autopilot community.

Please visit the official website of the event.

The PX4 Developer Summit is the perfect opportunity to network, learn, and interact with adopters and end-users of our projects. We put together a comprehensive experience for everyone to enjoy learning and networking opportunities to help you in your career and get you closer to the community.

Registration is open!

The registration fee for this year’s event is $100 for individuals and $150 for corporate attendees. Which will cover the two days with more than 8+ hours of content each day. From featured keynote speakers, project roadmap discussions, tutorials, featured community projects, breakout rooms for smaller focused discussions, a virtual job theater, and an official after-party on the last day. By registering for the event, you are also contributing to the open-source community.

Limited opportunity

We are offering $10 registrations for a limited time thanks to the help of our sponsors, a massive discount only for individual and corporate attendees who register before May 24th using the code PX421EB. The early-bird deal is a limited opportunity that won’t be coming back. Make sure to register before the deadline.

Early Bird Discount Code PX421EB

But that’s not all. The surprises don’t end there.

Students and Full-time faculty members with a valid ID can register for FREE thanks to the Students and Academia Scholarship Sponsored by Auterion. We partnered with our Platinum Member to guarantee all students and faculty members will join at no cost. No deadline and no discount code. Just make sure to upload a valid ID. (see the registration page for more details), and don’t forget to thank our Sponsor!

Financial Aid Scholarship

This year we are introducing a Financial Aid Scholarship to support the minorities in our community. It’s vital for the success of our community that everyone who wants to participate feels welcome regardless of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, dis/ability, race, ethnicity, age, religion, or economic status. We want to remind everyone we are guided by a Code of Conduct that outlines our expectations for all participants and the consequences of unacceptable behavior.

We hope the Financial Aid Scholarship helps community members who might not otherwise be able to attend—applications for the Financial Aid Scholarship close on July 30th (see the event website for more info). 

Showing your gratitude and making a statement

For all of the community members who have expressed their wish to donate to the open-source projects directly, we are introducing the PATRON registration fee for $500, with all PATRONS getting special recognition throughout the event and our never-ending gratitude.

All the proceeds from the registrations are going straight to supporting the open-source projects. By registering for the event at any level, you are contributing to the open-source community.

An Improved Online Experience

We wanted to let you know we partnered with the Linux Foundation Events team to offer an overall improved experience to attendees, sponsors, and members. This partnership will allow us to focus on what matters most (you) and leverage the years of experience from the Linux Foundation on developer events.

As a result of the improved program changes and our partnership with the Linux Foundation Events team, and to guarantee we can deliver on our ambitious goals, we are moving away from YouTube to an Events Platform designed for Virtual events.

We are sure this year’s event will allow our community to come together and focus on enjoying content from across the wide range of applications and allow for more opportunities to network. Form connections, increasing the open, collaborative nature of our community.

And if that wasn’t enough, we are also planning to host special keynote speakers introduced in the weeks before the event, who will bring a unique perspective to the event program.

Sponsorship Opportunities

The PX4 Developer Summit wouldn’t be possible without the help of Sponsoring organizations. We offer limited opportunities in the form of sponsorship packages to allow companies to engage with our community in impactful ways. And for the first time, we are also allowing for a few limited experience and promotional marketing sponsorships.

The sponsorship opportunities are not limited to Dronecode Foundation members, but our members enjoy unique benefits. For example, all Silver members enjoy a 25% discount on all the Sponsorship Packages.

You can download the Sponsorship Prospectus document directly from the event website, together with some statistics from last year’s event. Our event is the only drone development event that can guarantee you the exposure your brand needs, and our staff will work with your marketing and product teams to meet your goals.

All of the sponsorships are available in limited quantities, and the unique opportunities are, in some cases, only available for one or two Sponsors. Lastly, we are honoring requests on a first-come-first-served basis. Please reach out to our team directly at [email protected] with any inquiries.

This is just getting started.

We have more coming your way in the coming weeks and months, and as the event gets closer, we expect to have more opportunities for community members to participate.

We are thrilled to finally unveil the master plan and can’t wait for your feedback. Let us know what you think. Feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions or feedback.

For more information on the event and the latest updates, check the event website.

Ramón Roche
Program Manager, The Dronecode Foundation
[email protected]

Launch Sponsors

DIAMOND

PLATINUM

Dronecode Foundation members develop Pixhawk Open Standards to drive interoperability of the drone ecosystem through open-source. The DF facilitates an open process to develop the open standards. The standards enable multiple implementations to be delivered into the market to benefit users and developers by enabling choices in a marketplace. 

Payloads are one of the essential components of drone systems. New product development or system integration also demands investing heavy engineering resources due to its diversity and complexity.

Enabling payload interoperability with a unified API

The DS-014 Payload Bus Standard gives design guidance to provide full interoperability between different camera models by defining a standard mechanical interface, the electronics, and MAVLink based camera protocol. The spec was designed with mid-sized payloads like full-frame DSLR cameras, medium-sized LIDAR scanners, or other custom sensors.

Comprehensive Hardware Interface

The electrical design is based on a 40 pin connector that exposes the features you need to develop a multi-payload interface with support for modern sensors

• Ethernet
• USB2.0
• CAN FD
• UART
• TRIG
• CAPTURE
• GNSS_PPS
• VCC_BAT

The specification is specifically designed with gimbals carrying mid-sized payload cameras in mind, with a number of possible configurations, ranging from a modern Ethernet + UART or USB + UART to a classic USB + VBUS + TRIG + CAPTURE, or even a UAVCAN based configuration.

MAVLink Based Software Interface

The Payload bus adheres to the latest MAVLink protocols for Cameras. Gimbals, and Actuators, you can expect out-of-the-box compatibility with any MAVLink compliant autopilot, mission planner app, or MAVSDK based system.

Made possible thanks to the open collaboration of our members

The DS-014 standardization process took over 18 months of development, with contributions and participation from Dronecode Foundation member companies and PX4 contributors. The Workgroup was led by Platinum member Auterion and Silver member Freefly Systems, who also were the top contributors to this standard.

“Auterion firmly believes that an ecosystem of open hardware and software standards increases the efficiency of all involved parties. Standards like the new Pixhawk Payload Bus standard allow every partner in the ecosystem to focus valuable engineering time on their own core product and make the product compatible automatically. We are excited to be adding many PPB compatible payloads to our Skynode powered drones.”

Thomas Gubler, Head of Avionics at Auterion

Integrating new payloads has never been this easy.

Thanks to the DS-014 Payload Bus Standard, the industry now has a recognized, proved, and tested framework for unified payload integration. Adopters can benefit from plug-n-play interoperability and significantly reduce their R&D requirements by using the standard. 

The first reference implementation is available in FreeFly Systems Astro, their latest commercial drone platform with RTK, and support for multiple payloads such as Wiris Pro, Sony A7R4, Flir Duo Pro R, and custom payload solutions.

“The DS-014 Payload Bus Standard allows us to offer different payload options to our customers and users. This open standard is a milestone for the whole industry and will save adopters tremendous R&D time on integration.”

Cory Schwarzmiller, Principal Embedded Systems Engineer at Freefly Systems

The standard is now available for everyone to download

Want to participate in the Payload Workgroup?

Have any questions regarding the spec, or want to help us build the next generation of Pixhawk? Join the monthly coordination calls from the Payload workgroup, organized by the Dronecode Foundation.

The best way to contribute to the open efforts hosted under the Dronecode Foundation is to become a member. By becoming a member, organizations can help support open standards and guarantee the continued success of the open-source projects hosted under our umbrella.

Viewpro joins as a Silver member to collaborate with the community and accelerate the development of Open Standards that enable stable, practical, and highly cost-effective payloads for industrial and commercial applications.

“We would like to share the results and experience we already got in the payload field with the community and reach more progress and success with other members in Dronecode Foundation in the near future.”

by Steven Xue, founder of Viewpro.

Established in 2005, Viewpro is a Hi-tech manufacturer specializing in R&D and manufacturing cutting-edge zoom gimbal cameras for industrial and commercial Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAV).

With a strong R&D team, Viewpro focuses on research and innovation at image processing, optical zoom algorithm, object tracking, object GPS location resolving, and camera stabilizing solutions based on direct drive brushless motors.

“Viewpro is an industry leader and manufacturer that brings years of experience in the payload sector to our workgroups and special interest groups, and we are thrilled with their support.”

Ramón Roche, Program Manager, Dronecode Foundation

Viewpro has an extensive product range of professional-grade gimbal cameras used daily on Helicopters, Fixed Wings, and Multi-Rotors, through our industry’s many verticals, such as Construction, Defense, Security, Energy, and Infrastructure, to mention a few.

All of the Viewpro gimbal cameras are MAVLink compatible. Their products cover various frequently required functions, including object tracking, EO and IR dual sensors PIP display, laser rangefinder, and IR laser illumination for night vision.

In May 2020, Viewpro launched a new service for its gimbal camera users called Viewlink. With lots of praise from the community. Viewlink is a comprehensive application that supports control via IP/TCP Ethernet and Serial Port. Viewlink helps their customers with firmware upgrades, updating camera settings, and enables remote control of channel settings.

Viewlink wasn’t their only release last year. They also introduced Viewport, a quick setup and release mechanism designed by their R&D team. The light design and convenient operation method made it highly popular among their customers, and its rapidly becoming their defacto standard.

The HoverGames Challenge 2 “Help Drones, Help Others During Pandemics” has officially ended, and we have the final results. We couldn’t be happier with the level of participation from the wider robotics community. 

The challenge consisted of coming up with innovative ways for drones to help people in need, in any way possible, while using the HoverGames Hardware Kit, which consisted of:

• NXP Drone Kit (HGDRONEK66) with the latest PX4 Autopilot pre-installed.
• NavQ Vision System (i.MX 8M Mini)
• MIPI-CSI (Camera) & MIPI-DSI (Display)
• Google Coral camera module

With more than 600 participants and 55 submissions, the HoverGames challenge was a total success.

We want to congratulate all the contestants, in particular, the winners three the contest, all using the latest PX4 Autopilot and MAVSDK releases to achieve their goals:

• Team SCAREcrow’s solution enabling Sentinal Conservation via Aerial Reconnaissance and Escort
• Dobrea Dan Marius’ Drone to Sustain a Quarantine Zone
• Fabian Pichardo’s Drone for Mental Health Rescue

We also want to recognize the tremendous effort by the “Drone Coder” award winner: A Multifunctional Community Helper Drone

We encourage our readers to take a deep dive into the magnificent submissions on the huckster website, we are sure you are going to find more than a few that are more than noteworthy.

Gumstix joins the Dronecode Foundation as a Silver member to collaborate closely with members on the next generation Pixhawk Open Standards, bringing their years of experience in the Linux space to the Drone Industry.

Gumstix Inc. was founded in 2003 on the belief that market demand for next-generation computing, particularly products that support open-source solutions such as Linux, would drive modular device components requirements.

Today, Gumstix focuses on creating embedded hardware designed for rapid prototyping and deployment. All Gumstix devices are designed in Upverter, an open-source, browser-based design tool. All Upverter reference templates can be quickly copied and customized to users’ specific requirements.  

Introducing the latest Pixhawk Standard FMUv6U

Traditionally the Pixhawk project has seen a single major product release with each FMU iteration. Starting this year, we are extending the Pixhawk family with multiple variants, and today Gumstix is officially launching FMUv6U, making it available to all Upverter users.

Gumstix hopes to change the way users prototype and build drones, thanks to the FMUv6U. The addition of the FMUv6U into Upverter gives users the tools to achieve their custom design while adhering to the Pixhawk Standards. We hope this leads to a quantum leap in the number of different drone designs and will ultimately improve the wider community.

“The Dronecode Foundation is thrilled to have Gumstix as a partner, creating new designs based on the Open Standards designed under our workgroups, with collaboration from our members. With the addition of the FMUv6U into Upverter, we hope to streamline the manufacturing process for makers, benefiting the wider Drone industry.”

Ramón Roche, Program Manager, the Dronecode Foundation.

The FMUv6U module is now available in the Upverter module library. Gumstix engineers are very excited to be contributing to the Pixhawk project and the wider Dronecode Foundation community by implementing the FMUv6U standard in Upverter, hoping to facilitate the rapid development of new and innovative PX4 Autopilot based drone designs.

“One of the many privileges of working at Gumstix is seeing the ingenious designs made in Upverter. I’m eager to see how the addition of the FMUv6U into Upverter inspires the next generation of drone systems.”

Andrew C. Smith, Manager, Product Development and Engineering, Smart Manufacturing, Altium. 

The Pixhawk FMUv6U is available today.

To showcase the FMUv6U module, Gumstix designed a state-of-the-art FMUv6U-based board that leverages the power of the Raspberry Pi CM4 with Coral Intelligence, the Gumstix Raspberry Pi CM4 + Pixhawk FMUv6U comes with the PX4 Autopilot pre-installed and is available for purchase today.

• Raspberry Pi CM4 connector
• Dual raspberry Pi Camera connectors
• Serial console over USB
• USB Type-C power delivery
• STMicro STM32H753 MCU
• Pixhawk GPS, analog power, RC, and CAN connectors
• 8 PWM outputs
• On-board accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscope
• On-board barometer
• Google Edge TPU

About Upverter

Upverter is a browser-based electronics design environment for creating and manufacturing embedded systems and printed circuit boards—all from a single application. Users of all levels can layout PCB designs in minutes, preview 3D designs, and receive real-time validation. Free instant design documentation, on-demand pricing, and software support packages are available for reviewing and sharing. Upverter manufacturing automates the PCB routing, BOM, fabs, and assembly process. All Upverter boards are delivered pretested and fully assembled, reducing engineering costs and design errors. Upverter is an Altium brand. Visit Upverter

By joining Dronecode Foundation, AmovLab hopes to expand its market to the global developer community and share its experience developing hardware projects and products.

“We want to design more integrated modules with the PX4 Autopilot”. 

AmovLab also hopes to participate in the Pixhawk Special Interest Group discussions, establish industry-level open-source flight control standards, increase adoption by evangelizing the open standards, and contribute back to the open-source community. 

AmovLab is a company based in Chengdu, China, dedicated to advancing AI education courses and developing R&D equipment. It was established in 2016 and launched its open-source autonomous drone project “Prometheus,” a ROS-based UAV development platform in 2019. The company produced the P-series UAV, specifically designed for scientific research and experimentation. Many well-known universities and research institutes in China adopted the P-series.

AmovLab also operates as an educational training provider that holds various online and offline training courses for robotics developers.

The Amov Community is a rapidly growing and active technology exchange forum in China with more than 30,000 alumni from institutional training and 4,000 registered BBS users.

AmovLab also develops UGVs and USVs based on the PX4 Autopilot and modular components designed for robot development.

The team also develops solutions for drone formation control, autonomous identification, and tracking of drones through their self-designed modems and PTZ cameras.

“AmovLab, since its inception, has been a fierce supporter of open source and has shared technological achievements on various platforms. We hope to make R&D easier for drone and robot developers through our hardware platforms and courses. By collaborating the open source way, researchers benefit from our technology sharing and then contributing their innovations. Our vision is to become an organization that advances AI education and a company that produces high-quality R&D robotic hardware.” 

Xiao Qi, Founder of AmovLab.

Resources

• Homepage: https://www.amovlab.com/zh-CN 
• Amov Community: https://bbs.amovlab.com/ 
• Prometheus Project: https://github.com/amov-lab/Prometheus 

At the Dronecode Foundation, we are really excited to celebrate another terrific year of contributions to the open-source projects under our umbrella. Last year we received tremendous support from our community, with more than +300 unique contributors submitting more than +7,000 commits upstream. Our great community managed to exceed our expectations in remarkable ways and is keeping the projects on the edge of technology for the coming years.

We put together a report with the Technical Steering Committee and the project maintainers’ help, outlining the top metrics that demonstrate the tremendous pace we are keeping and surpassing year after year.

This report is focused on measuring contributions in commits, the single and most basic unit in version control. We recognize contributions came in many ways last year, such as participation in Standard setting groups, and we will be producing a separate report to celebrate those contributions.

We want to thank the hundreds of developers who helped shape our projects over the last year, particularly the dozens of organizations that poured multiple and vast resources into our community.

The Dronecode Foundation wants to reaffirm its commitment to promoting innovation and driving for more open and accessible technology to support the Drone Industry at large.

This report was made possible thanks to the patronage of our members, who continue to support our mission.

SAN FRANCISCO, February 3, 2020 – The Dronecode Foundation, the vendor-neutral Foundation for open source drone projects, announced three new directors elected to its Board of Directors. The Board of Directors represents the wider PX4 community. It will guide the Foundation as it executes its mission to enable widespread adoption and accelerate the development of open standards.

Newly appointed directors

Newly elected to serve on the board is Paul Stubbs, who will represent the Gold members. Paul is currently a Director of AI & Innovation Marketing for the Microsoft Business AI team, focusing on autonomous systems, such as vehicles, drones, industrial robotics, and simulators, including working with the Microsoft AirSim team. Paul has been active in the community since Microsoft joined as a Gold member in 2019.

“I am honored to be appointed to the board of the Dronecode Foundation. We are at an exciting inflection point in the history of flight, and the Dronecode Foundation is changing how the world codes, trains, simulates, certifies, and flies both piloted and autonomous drones.”

Paul Stubbs, Director of AI & Innovation Marketing for Microsoft Business AI team.

Chad Sweet and Hyon Lim are the Silver member representatives on the board, bringing their years of experience in the field of robotics to the Board of Directors.

Chad Sweet is the co-founder and CEO of ModalAI^Ⓡ, a Blue UAS Framework manufacturer of American-made, autonomous autopilots for drones and ground robots. Sweet is highly experienced in robotics R&D, and during his 20 years at Qualcomm, led efforts in computer vision and wireless communications with 15 patents granted. He was responsible for groundbreaking projects such as the Snapdragon Flight, which is currently en route to Mars via NASA’s Ingenuity. Sweet is committed to advancing the U.S. drone industry by providing innovators with ModalAI’s open robot and drone perception and communications systems manufactured in the U.S.A. 

“Over the past year the drone industry has experienced a productivity transformation and I believe that open-source is the catalyst to further industry growth and integration. I am excited to join the Dronecode Foundation Board of Directors and look forward to working with the Dronecode Foundation team and fellow board members to keep up the momentum and propel the U.S. drone industry forward with open-standards and open-source.”

Chad Sweet, CEO and Co-Founder ModalAI

Hyon Lim is the CEO and co-founder of UVify, a manufacturer of drones for Fortune 500 companies, universities, research labs, and more. Hyon has been an active researcher in autonomous systems and his published computer vision and drone-related papers have been cited more than 1,110 times to date. Hyon also has been active in the community and has contributed to PX4 since 2012, which was around the start of the industry.

“I am pleased with the opportunity to join the Dronecode Foundation’s Board of Directors at such a challenging and exciting time. I am deeply passionate about our industry, and the importance of the role in setting standards in the drone industry. I am excited to work with my fellow board members to further expand the Dronecode Foundation and ensure that we set standards that benefit the Foundation and its members.”

Hyon Lim, CEO and Co-Founder UVify

The 2021 Board of Directors

The Dronecode Foundation board sets the business direction as well as oversees IP management, marketing, and events on behalf of the organization, and is formed by:

• Lorenz Meier, Chairman of the board – Co-founder and CEO, Auterion
• Kevin Sartori, Platinum board member – Co-founder, Auterion
• Paul Stubbs, Gold board member – Director AI Marketing, Autonomous Systems, Microsoft
• Chad Sweet, Silver board member – Co-founder and CEO, ModalAI
• Hyon Lim, Silver board member – Co-founder and CEO, UVify

Senior members of the board of directors welcome the newly appointed directors.

“As the drone industry keeps growing, the collaboration among industry players becomes increasingly important to ensure the development technology that is both safe and scalable.
I’m excited to work with the newly appointed board directors on serving the open source community and enabling the industry with open standards for new autopilots, smart batteries, cameras, and integrations of services. In 2021 an open approach beats closed ones.”

Kevin Sartori, Co-founder, Auterion

Building a healthy ecosystem

Since its inception in 2014, the Dronecode Foundation has been at the forefront of innovation, enabling the collaboration between developers, companies, and supporting organizations.

“The Dronecode Foundation has set with PX4, MAVLink, and Pixhawk the standards over the last decade in the drone industry. As drones find increased adoption in enterprise applications, standards, integrations into industry-leading drones and enterprise software and our permissive open source license are key factors for adoption.”

Lorenz Meier, Chairman of Dronecode, co-founder and CEO of Auterion.

The Dronecode Foundation is thrilled to welcome the newly appointed directors. Their terms are set to begin immediately and run through January 2022. We hope you will join us in welcoming the new directors.

About Dronecode Foundation

The Dronecode Foundation, a Linux Foundation project, promotes innovation through open source and open standards in the drone industry. It fosters collaboration to enable widespread adoption of open source technologies and helps accelerate the development of the PX4 Autopilot and the surrounding open source projects.
www.dronecode.org

Follow Dronecode for further updates.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

About Auterion

Auterion provides enterprise and government with an ecosystem of software-defined drones, payloads, and third party applications within a single easy to use platform based on open-source standards. The platform gives operators greater choice, flexibility, and assurance, to improve their drone workflows, from mapping to inspection, cargo, and ISR. With 60+ employees across offices in California, Switzerland, and Germany, Auterion’s global customer base includes GE Aviation, Quantum Systems, Freefly Systems, Avy, and the U.S. Government.
auterion.com

About the Business AI team at Microsoft

The Business AI team at Microsoft is part of the Microsoft Technology & Research division. The team drives research and new product incubations in emerging technologies such as autonomous systems to democratize and empower subject matter experts and Engineers to tackle real-world business challenges with AI.
Learn more about autonomous systems at Microsoft

About ModalAI

ModalAI^Ⓡ helps manufacturers and independent builders get to market quickly and affordably with Blue UAS Framework autopilots for drones and ground robots made in the U.S.A. Based in San Diego, California, ModalAI spun out of Qualcomm® in 2018 and leverages over five years of prior research and development in the drone and robotic markets.
www.modalai.com

About UVify

UVify^Ⓡ  is an American manufacturer of multi-award-winning aerial robot products that deliver peerless experiences by going above and beyond what you think drones can do. UVify drones are category leaders in the entertainment, civil, education, marketing, and research sectors. UVify’s research drones are the most widely used research drones in the world and are the platform of choice of many Fortune 500 companies, university research labs, and more.
 www.uvify.com

Contact us for more information.

Ramón Roche, Program Manager
[email protected]
Phone # +1 915 208 4951

Founded in 2018, Timatec is a company consist of IT professionals with Qt technology experts. They have been focusing on developing and distributing software for ground control station and advancing drone utilization in Korea.

“We are developing GCS software in various fields from educational to industrial purpose, and our R&D are projecting on technologies such as topographical analysis based on 3D modeling of images taken with drones.”

Recently, through researching deep learning’s object detection technology with drone operation, Timatec is focusing on developing safer and more autonomous drone operation technology.

By becoming a member of the Dronecode Foundation, they hope to work closely with the open source community of PX4 and QGC, to collaborate on more advanced technologies in the field of GCS and drone utilization pursued by Timetec, and contribute back to the community in a meaningful way.

“Timatec hopes that PX4 and QGC will become more popular in Korea, and we will perform well as a bridge between communities on the way of it.” from Sungho Kang, CEO of Timatec.

We welcome Timatec joining Dronecode Foundation, and looking forward to the collaborations!

The Ainstein’s UAV Standard Radar Altimeter US-D1 is a mmWave Radar sensor that is mostly used for terrain tracking commonly required for precision agriculture. In a recent collaboration with their customer Fairweather IT (aka: FIT) from Montana, Ainstein enhanced FIT’s scientists and engineers’ drone based Water Sampling Platform (WaSP) with their sensor technology. 

FIT’s drones are deployed in hazardous or inaccessible surface water bodies for routine sampling and monitoring.  For any of their UAV projects that didn’t involve water, lidar worked great as a rangefinder. However, since most of FIT’s critical tasks occurred over bodies of water, lidar was not a usable solution. “Many people use a laser or lidar range finder which works great on land. Once we flew over water though, the numbers went all over the place. We looked at other lidar range finders -potentially using different wavelengths of light. We looked at different powers. We even looked at sonar but unfortunately sonar’s got a very short range.”  Ainstein’s radar solution perfectly fitted their needs.

We are excited to share this success case study from our member company where the open drone ecosystem is creating value for the industry. By having interoperability parts like Pixhawk and Ainstein’s Radar Altimeter, enabling “plug-n-play” experiences for developers, allows the service providers to focus on their applications. 

See the whole discussion here: https://ainstein.ai/drone-fit/ and the demo video from Ainstein below.

Community and members of the Dronecode Foundation, as the year comes to an end, we are wrapping up our 2020 plan and set up the foundation for next year. Following our bylaws, we are calling for elections of Gold and Silver directors for the 2021 Board of Directors.

We want to start by thanking the current (and parting) Gold and Silver directors who represented their membership tier throughout the year.

• Gold Director: Larry Liu (Yuneec)
• Silver Director: Andreas Lamprecht (AirMap)
• Silver Director: Yan Li (Taisync)

The Dronecode Foundation Board of Directors is our Governing Board and is responsible for the operations, community outreach, and budgetary decisions for the foundation. The directors consist of:

• Community Director
• Representatives from each of the membership tiers (1 x Platinum, 1 x Gold, 2 x Silver)
• Technical Steering Committee(TSC) chair (Voted by open source maintainers)

It’s important to note that the Board of Directors does not make technical decisions for the community, other than working with the TSC to set the overall scope for the foundation.

Please refer to our bylaws for the specifics of how we run elections and the responsibilities of the board of directors.

The 2021 Board of Directors

Gold and Silver members will have the opportunity to represent their tiers during the 2021 year by participating in the board of directors.

The elected directors will need to meet bi-monthly to define and discuss board business to help with the organization’s general strategy lead by the board’s chairman.

There are currently three (3) open seats:

• One (1) representing the Gold member tier
• Two (2) representing the Silver member tier

Nomination and Election Procedures

Elections are crucial for the overall health of our growing community and one of the most significant benefits of members, which directly puts you in the driving seat to help influence the direction of the ecosystem.

Note: Voting is an exclusive benefit of Dronecode Foundation member companies. Please let us know if you are unsure of your current situation.

Nominations

Every Silver or Gold Dronecode member has the opportunity to nominate an employee, done via self-nomination by sending an email to the members-only mailing-list as described below.

• Send an email to the members-only mailing-list ([email protected]) with the following information.
  • The subject must follow the pattern “Nomination for Membership Level Director.”
    • Example: “Nomination for Gold Level Director”
  • Name and Job Title
  • Reasons for candidacy (why do you want to nominate)
  • Qualifications for the role (have you been involved with the community before?)
  • About my sponsors (the member company, list your company membership tier and reasons for candidacy)
• All emails received between November 23rd – December 11th will participate in the voting process.

Note: Dronecode Foundation staff will help guide the nominees best reach the community

Voting

Once the nomination period ends, Dronecode staff will reach out to every active Gold and Silver members with access to a Google Form where you will be able to cast your votes between December 14th – December 18th.

Note: It’s important to note that members will only be allowed to vote within their membership tier. Gold members won’t be able to vote on Silver elections or otherwise.

Results

After the voting timeframe closes, we will be looking at the final results and announcing the results on Monday, December 21st, welcoming the newly elected directors.

Election Timeline

• Nomination November 22nd – December 11th (three weeks)
• Voting December 14th – December 18th (one week)
• Results & Announcement December 21st

Questions

Our team is going to be personally reviewing the process. Please reach out to our staff if you have any questions regarding the election process or your current membership.

Not a member yet?

Join us and start collaborating with the leading companies in the industry, help us drive open-standards and, support the most diverse and inclusive open-source community in the Drone industry.

DS-015 UAVCAN Drone Standard, which defines the standardized application layer for drones and the suitable physical connectivity layer optimized for unmanned vehicles using UAVCAN v1 networks, is now available on Github in the Dronecode repository.

This is a milestone for the continued collaborative work done by the UAVCAN Drone Special Interest Group(SIG). The SIG is lead by Dronecode Foundation members Auterion, NXP, and Zubax Robotics, with collaboration from other industry partners and open source maintainers.

In the standard doc, you will find the general architecture and recommendations, while the data types and network services definitions can be found in the UAVCAN/public_regulated_data_types repo.

For further information, to join and support the effort of the SIG, please use any of the following methods to get in touch:
– Use the UAVCAN forum category related to the UAVCAN Drone Special Interest Group and open a new discussion topic (recommended)
– Open an issue in the DS-015 UAVCAN Drone Standard repository  
– For questions related to the data types or the network services, ideally use the UAVCAN forum, but you can also open an issue in the UAVCAN/public_regulated_data_types repository

Founded in 2009, MMC is a professional drone manufacturer specializing in the industrial-grade UAV systems. MMC is committed to the development of standardized and modular UAV systems and parts. The products and solutions of MMC are widely distributed in the public security, search & rescue, energy inspection and survey & mapping sectors. As a company with abundant manufacturing experience, MMC owns a 30000 sqft facility in Shenzhen, China and manufactures thousands of drones, payloads, ground stations and accessories in house each year.

Other than drone systems, MMC has also developed a series of open-source UAV controllers and ground stations adapted to the PX4 firmware. The newly launched Etlas Mobile 2 ground station is integrated with long-range 2.4GHZ video transmission module and the communication distance can reach up to 20KM. Etlas mobile 2 is also the first QGC based smart controller that supports dual control mode.

Upon joining Dronecode Foundation, MMC will participated in multiple open standard workgroups to further enhance the growth and standardization of the open drone ecosystem. MMC is also willing to share its manufacturing capabilities with the whole communities to develop and build the hardware that meet the DS standards.

“We look forward to enabling the whole drone community with our manufacturing capacity and shorten the process from prototype to production.” – Gary Gu, Vice President of MMC

Founded on a long list of Department of Defense and NASA sponsored developments, EpiSci is a multidisciplinary innovation company that designs Tactical AI-powered solutions for commercial and defense applications. Through years of high-risk, high-payoff Department of Defense and NASA-sponsored research and development efforts, EpiSci excels at building safe, trustable, modular, and resilient systems for a secure, autonomous future. EpiSci’s innovations include SwarmSense.ai, a platform-agnostic swarm enabling software solution that can be embedded to any PX4 and MAVlink based sUAS platform. 

EpiSci joined Dronecode Foundation to collaborate with the community and accelerate the deployment of safe, secure, and modular drone swarms for industrial and commercial applications, they have already established collaboration efforts with other Dronecode Foundation members Yuneec, ModalAI, and Auterion.

“Our strengths lie in designing modular systems for enabling rapid and low-cost multi-platform autonomy for the entire PX4 and MAVLink community. As the need for artificially intelligent drones rises, we would like to share with the community our expertise and also engage in the discussion surrounding open standards and software/hardware interoperability to enable seamless integration for scalable drone swarms. ” – Epiphany Ryu, Director of Operations & Strategy

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced $13.4 million in Title III investments as part of the national response to COVID-19, and to support the domestic small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) industrial base. The awards were provided under the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU’s) Commercial Solutions Opening.

“The investment will further enhance the U.S. warfighter’s situational awareness, improve human-machine teaming, and provide engineering support for aiding the integration of sUAS capabilities into DoD programs.”

Press Release from U.S. Dept. of Defense

Five (5) U.S.-based companies were awarded, representing a variety in the drone industry: unmanned traffic management (UTM), hardware, software, and sensors, which includes our embers ModalAI, AirMap, and Auterion as a subcontractor.

The grant will help save a total of 14 jobs and create at least 20 new positions in the 5-awarded companies. The D.I.U. expects the funding to support the domestic industrial base’s critical capabilities, which will continue enhancing the U.S. situational awareness.

Dronecode members receive U.S. DOD grants to support the domestic sUAS industrial base.

Silver Member AirMap

“We are proud to partner with organizations across the Department of Defense to rapidly prototype, deliver, and scale advanced commercial solutions,” said Larry Berkin, AirMap’s Executive Vice President of Global Business Development. “These innovations save lives, inspire new operational concepts, increase efficiency, and save taxpayer dollars.”

Larry Berkin, AirMap’s Executive Vice President of Global Business Development.

AirMap will be working with DIU to develop an Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) software platform. This technology supports the Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) Program and makes it possible for troops to maintain situational awareness, gather critical visual insights remotely without putting military personnel at risk, and conduct safe operations.

AirMap is working with the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, which strengthens national security by accelerating the adoption of leading commercial technology throughout the military, to develop an Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) software platform. This technology supports the Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) Program and makes it possible for troops to maintain situational awareness, gather critical visual insights remotely without putting military personnel at risk, and conduct safe operations.

AirMap is the leading digital airspace and automation company serving the drone economy. Airspace authorities and enterprises rely on the AirMap platform to safely operate drones in low altitude airspace and deliver critical business insights. AirMap offers best-in-class mission planning, flight and capture, and dataflow automation solutions to enterprises and third-party solution providers, who can connect their applications to AirMap’s open developer platform. AirMap’s UTM and U-space products are deployed in the Czech Republic, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, the United States, and available in over 30 countries. The company serves a global community of over 300,000 operators and 3,000 registered developers. AirMap is committed to advancing Urban Air Mobility (UAM) through ongoing standards development work, global research initiatives, and industry collaboration. Learn more at www.airmap.com.

Platinum Member Auterion

Platinum Member Auterion Government Solutions (Auterion GS) is under contract to ModalAI to integrate Auterion Enterprise PX4 into the Advanced Compute Flight Controller under the Blue UAS Architecture, for DIU.

We are very pleased to be working with DIU and ModalAi to integrate our latest flight control software and APIs with the latest in Edge computing and AI processing from the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 Platform. We are committed to creating an ecosystem of capabilities and standards that will propel the US drone industry into the next decade of autonomous operations, at scale.

Dave Sharpin, CEO of Auterion GS

Silver Member ModalAI

ModalAI is delighted to be working with DIU to grow its roadmap of US-made autonomous flight controller products. This effort will accelerate the development of SWAP-optimized aerial AI computing platforms and improve PX4 support for Qualcomm® Snapdragon^TM processors. Previous products that have come to fruition from the DoD’s support include VOXL Flight and Flight Core, which enable innovators to achieve autonomous drone flight using PX4, ROS, and MAVSDK.

Chad Sweet, CEO and Co-Founder.

ModalAI accelerates autonomy by providing innovators with robot and drone perception and communications systems that are manufactured in the U.S.A. From home and business security to retail and government applications, our highly-integrated AI-powered modules empower a variety of industries to utilize aerial and ground autonomous navigations systems that communicate on 4G and 5G cellular networks.  We offer start-to-finish custom design services and plug-and-play computing platforms. 

Based in San Diego, California, ModalAI spun out of Qualcomm® in 2018 and leverages more than five years of prior research and development in the drone and robotic markets. ModalAI helps manufacturers and independent builders get to market quickly and affordably. Find out more at www.modalai.com.

DIU, Defense Innovation Unit

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) was started in August 2015 to rebuild the department’s relationship with the commercial technology sector. As one of the first “experimental” innovation organizations, DIU connects its DoD partners with leading commercial technology companies. DIU is the only DOD organization focused exclusively on fielding and scaling commercial technology across the U.S. military at commercial speeds. DIU is primarily focused on five technology areas where the commercial sector is operating at the leading edge: AI, autonomy, cyber, human systems, and space. Learn more about portfolios and projects at www.diu.mil.

Source: DOD Announces $84.4 Million in Defense Production Act Title III COVID-19 Actions 

** Qualcomm® and Snapdragon^TM are registered trademarks of their respective companies.

We welcome Sojourn as a Silver member to the Dronecode Foundation. Founded by Sven Mesecke and Matt Freie in 2019, Sojourn is a ground-breaking computer vision and supply chain platform technology that provides a new layer within the drone navigation stack to enable precise and persistent delivery pinpoints.

Sojourn’s unique techniques form an end-to-end SaaS platform that aims to bridge the gap between human intent and drone purpose, allowing goods to be delivered via drone or human courier down to the exact location requested by a customer or operator. The solution offers an advanced computer vision stack that processes real-time on device in mobile, wearable and embedded systems with a secure cloud infrastructure accessible by operators via either API or CRM.

Sojourn discovered PX4 as the go-to solution for open source drone autopilots while researching autonomous architecture options last year. After attending PX4 DevSummit Virtual 2020, they decided to join Dronecode Foundation and collaborate with our community. 

“We are excited to support the work of Dronecode Foundation and to participate with other companies in the pursuit of open source innovations for the benefit of the autonomous industry,” said Sven Mesecke, CEO of Sojourn. The team hopes to contribute within both hardware and software standards workgroups and to commit previous standards development experience from the IEEE, the ISTA and various other successful industry SIGs. 

Sojourn is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. For more information please visit www.sojourn.ai.

We welcome Airial Robotics as a new silver member. 

Airial Robotics develops Gyrotrak technology that combines the advantages of the helicopter and gyrocopter. The team strives to produce high payload allowance, long endurance systems for the commercial UAV market that follows aviation standards. The vehicles are to be deployed in surveillance, mapping, agriculture, cargo applications. 

“We believe in open-source, transparency of code base, and documentation. It is essential for certified code and certification process that is required for future BVLOS operations.” – says Jörg Schamuhn, CEO of Airial Robotics.

The company is joining the Dronecode Foundation to collaborate with the PX4 community on standardization efforts for Battery Management System(BMS) , UAVCAN, and BVLOS. 

Learn more about Dronecode Foundation membership here.

Iris Automation Joins the Dronecode Foundation to help push forward regulations and collaborate with the community on new safe drone operations standards.

We are tremendously excited to welcome Iris Automation as a Silver member. Iris Automation is joining the Dronecode Foundation to collaborate with the PX4 community in creating new standards for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) safe drone operations. 

BVLOS operation is the first step to full autonomy in airspace and aviation, it is fundamentally required for many applications and industries including search & rescue in remote locations, scalable linear infrastructure inspection, package delivery, land and resource management, and urban air mobility. 

Iris Automation currently offers onboard detect-and-avoid systems for BVLOS drone flights and supports some of the best commercially validated UAV platforms, many of which are PX4 based.

James Howard, CTO of Iris Automation, recently joined the PX4 community during the PX4 Developer Summit and talked about what is practical BVLOS today and what’s next from a global perspective on different paths and approaches from regulators. 

“The future of BVLOS needs adoption of standards, expansion of permissions, and eventually moving to regulations, industry cooperation to build solutions, and regulatory certification of systems and subsystems. The standardization process will impact drone manufacturers, integrators, and operators, and adopting the standard proactively will help grow and further the industry and build trust with regulators.” 

Iris Automation sees PX4 and the open-source community already a global leader within the UAS market and will help make the shift that is needed. As a new member, Iris Automation would like to help advance the development priorities around emerging ASTM standards related to BVLOS, including WK62668 developed within the F38.01 sub-committee and contribute code directly to the PX4, QGroundControl, and MAVLink, and partnering through Dronecode on a potential BVLOS workgroup.

 Watch James Howard’s presentation at the PX4 Developer Summit Virtual 2020

The Ultimate guide to the Summit.

The 2020 edition of the PX4 Developer Summit was a huge success, made possible by the amazing community who came together for the two-days of content and interactions.

The Dronecode Foundation is incredibly proud to have had the opportunity to virtually host the event and provide a platform for our global community to learn together.

Brought to you by Dronecode

The PX4 Developer Summit 2020, was produced by Dronecode, and made possible thanks to the contributions of community volunteers, and the great effort by the Content Committee.

The Summit in Numbers

A total of 1,689 community members came together during the Summit to celebrate one more year of PX4. With a massive boost in views, follows, likes, and shares as a result.

Recordings

All of the sessions for both days are now up on the PX4 YouTube channel, all LIVE & PRE-RECORDED presentations are now available.

Can’t miss Moments

• Get an overview of the current state of all of our open source projects by Dr. Lorenz Meier on our Day 1 Keynote
• Live MAVSDK demo, live builds, tests, and pull request submissions (live!)
• Pixhawk SIG members share the latest from the Pixhawk Standards, for next-gen FMU, Payload, BMS, and the UAVCAN SIG.

Top Rated Talks by our Community

• Keynote: Setting the standards in the drone industry for a decade
• Towards a Lightweight Software Architecture for PX4 Computer Vision
• An In-depth Look at the Multicopter Control System Architecture
• Simulated Workflows using Software-In-The-Loop Simulations
• Embedded machine learning in practice
• The BVLOS future of drone software and industry standardization

Click Here to watch all of the videos

Community Feedback

Our awesome community shared some feedback with us through a post-event survey that we launched last week, and we had a total of 116 responses, here’s what some of them had to say.

75% are using PX4 for work

What did you like the most about the event ?

Variety of highly qualified speakers in their specialties and easy access to the event

Community Member, submitted through the post event survey.

There were many speakers with deep knowledge of what they were presenting. I surely learned a lot just watching their presentations. And the list of presentations with automatic adjustment for other timezones in the Sched website was fantastic.

Community Member, submitted through the post event survey.

96% are likely to attend another PX4 event in the future

Where can we improve?

What I would like to see more would be tutorial sessions and workshops.

Community Member, submitted through the post event survey.

KEEP DOING IT ONCE IN 6 MONTHS AND VIRTUALLY FOR THE WHOLE WORLD

Community Member, submitted through the post event survey.

94% would recommend the Summit to a friend or colleague

How can we make this event better? (Recommendations / Suggestions)

More live demos or simulations of current projects

Community Member, submitted through the post event survey.

I’m actually satisfied with this event. One of the most insightful summit i’ve attended. Thank you for organizing this!

Community Member, submitted through the post event survey.

Please keep it online and free as this time

Community Member, submitted through the post event survey.

Live Chat

The community followed the event through the PX4 slack channel #px4-dev-summit where our awesome team of volunteers ran fun surveys and collected questions some which got answered live on stream.

Join the PX4 Slack (it’s free)

News during the summit

Here’s what some of our members had to say during the summit.

After Party

The not-so-secret after-party was held as promised, we were joined by more than 20 community members ( and at least four dogs). It was the perfect way to end the Summit, chatting with friends and sharing PX4 stories.

See you soon.

We are excited about the PX4 Developer Summit 2021. We are hoping to host the event at ETH Zurich again next year. We will have more news as soon as the global situation calms down, and once travel restrictions have been lifted.

We want to bring you the best of both events and will be looking at more opportunities for the community to get access to the Developer Summit in the future.

Thank you, Sponsors & Partners

This event was made possible thanks to the enormous support from our Sponsors and Partners.

Platinum Community Champion

Gold Community Champions

Community Supporters

Partners

Announced during the PX4 Developer Summit 2020, Maxwell Innovations joined Dronecode as a Silver member, to help sustain the PX4 open-source ecosystem, and openly collaborate on hardware standards. Community, let’s give Maxwell Innovations a warm welcome.

Maxwell Innovations is an innovative aerospace company founded by Aeronautics, Astronautics, and computer science engineers, with previous experience on several military and civilian UAS systems.

They develop ruggedized UAVs and Payloads, for use in harsh environments, they have been successfully deploying vehicles to Antarctica for scientific explorations for the last three years.

The team at Maxwell innovations is really happy to join Dronecode and to contribute to the PX4 open-source ecosystem. We look forward to all the work coming out of your lab.

Click here to learn more about Maxwell Innovations.

Last year Microsoft joined Dronecode as a Gold Member to collaborate with the PX4 open-source community thanks to their AirSim integration into PX4. Since then, AirSim has passed 10,000 stars on Github, and we are seeing increased developer adoption of the AirSim/PX4 workflow for testing and simulation. 

Learn more about our continuous integration effort in Microsoft’s blog »

Catch-up on the #PX4DevSummit

Microsoft was a proud Gold sponsor of the PX4 Developer Summit last-week (July 6 & 7), where we had some key team members from the AirSim team present the latest developments.

• Microsoft AirSim: Applications to Research and Industry 
• Ratnesh Madaan, Research Software Development Engineer, Microsoft

• Guada Casuso, Principal Product Manager of Autonomous Systems, Microsoft; 
• Paul Stubbs, Director AI Marketing, Microsoft

Two of the leading members of the PX4 open source community announced last week during the PX4 Developer Summit | Virtual 2020, a collaboration to develop integrated hardware and software solutions for the UAV industry.

The addition of industrial and automotive parts from NXP Semiconductors portfolio enhances the security in drones and rovers. This relationship will ensure a bright future for the enterprise adoption of the PX4 Autopilot, where functional safety is paramount.

“This partnership will enable the mobile robotics community with the components meeting quality specifications needed to ensure functional safety and security in drones and rovers based on reliable long-life industrial and automotive parts and reference designs”,

“We have been participating in the open-source PX4 community for several years now and with this close relationship with Auterion, and Auterion Enterprise PX4, we are excited to work together to ensure these vehicles are prepared to meet current and future regulations and standards governing modular safe drone architectures.”

Iain Galloway, Drone Program Lead, Systems Innovation, NXP.

“Safety is the number one priority in commercial drone operations. NXP’s leading position as a semiconductor provider for safety-critical automotive applications is the perfect pairing for Auterion’s enterprise-grade drone software platform”,

“Together, we will be able to provide integrated hardware and software solutions to the drone industry that combine high-performance compute with safety-first engineering.”

Lorenz Meier, co-founder and CEO, Auterion.

Dronecode celebrates the agreement between the two giants and welcomes the effort to bring high reliable hardware and software based on open source to the industry.

Read the full press release here »

After the great success of the first HoverGames challenge “Fight Fire with Flyers,” the Drone team at NXP set out to inspire developers once again to help others by polishing their development skills, this time by creating new ways to use drones to help healthcare and frontline workers. Hosted by Dronecode partner Hackster.io.

HoverGames Challenge 2: Help Drones Help Others

NXP is inviting drone developers and roboticists to imagine new creative ways to help others during a pandemic. Some examples include disinfecting surfaces, medicine delivery, dispensing hand sanitizer, delivering nasal and throat samples for testing, or even connecting people in isolation.

An open invitation to the PX4 community of developers

Gold member NXP, and Dronecode want to extend an invitation to the PX4 community at large to participate in the challenge, we received tremendous support in the original challenge, and we are excited to announce that Dronecode will be a judge once again.

Contest Judges

• Arm
• Platinum Member, Auterion
• Dronecode
• Emcraft
• Gold Member, NXP

You have to act fast before they are gone.

Similar to the first challenge, you are required to use the HoverGames hardware to compete in the challenge. The HoverGames drone development kit is a modular open development platform that contains everything you need to compete on the challenge, the package includes:

• A Flight Management Unit (RRDRONE-FMUK66) with the latest stable release of PX4 Autopilot pre-installed.
• A sturdy carbon fiber quadcopter frame
• Telemetry radio and remote (RC) control
• New to this challenge, an 8MMNavQ companion computer, using NXP i.MX 8M Mini Vision development board, with a camera module that runs Linux and ROS
• All of this for $300 (a $400 discount!)

Best of all, if you already have a HoverGames kit from the previous challenge, you can upgrade your equipment for $50, and receive an 8MMNavQ companion computer.

Incredible Prizes

• 1st Place – $3,000 Electronic Visa Gift Card
• 2nd Place – $2,000 Electronic Visa Gift Card
• 3rd Place – $1,000 Electronic Visa Gift Card

Bonus Prizes

• 40 winners will receive up to $100 worth of NXP hardware
• 4 winners will receive a $1,000 special price from NXP Partners, rewarding the most innovative idea, best use of PX4, and more!

Qualcomm, a longtime ecosystem partner of PX4, released the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform. The first of its kind to bring together 5G and AI to empower developers and manufacturers to create the next generation of high-compute, low-power robotics.

The Qualcomm Robotics RB5 Development Kit utilizes 96Boards Consumer Edition Specification, which helps offer versatility for creating innovative proofs-of-concept and rapid prototyping.

The Dronecode community of members and partners came together to support the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform’s announcement:

Platinum Member Auterion

“The new Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform is a game-changer for drone and autonomous robotics, as its machine learning accelerators will allow adopters to replace manual inputs with AI,”

Dr. Lorenz Meier, chief executive officer, Auterion and Dronecode chairman.

Gold Member 96Boards

“We are very excited to support the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform as the latest addition to the 96Boards.AI initiative,” said Dr. Yang Zhang, director, 96Boards. “Qualcomm Robotics RB5 featuring QRB5165 Robotics Processor, is the first 96Boards compliant platform offering 5G, AI, Heterogeneous Computing, Computer Vision Engine, Advanced ISP Multi-Camera Concurrency for a large range of applications. With our partners, we believe this product will revolutionize the robotic and drone market as we know today. We are pleased to see our member Qualcomm Technologies continue to deliver its commitment to the wider developer ecosystem, with a clear path for production.” 

Dr. Yang Zhang, director, 96Boards.

Silver Member FLIR

“We believe the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform will offer a critical advantage for our next-generation unmanned systems,”

Roger Wells, vice president and general manager, unmanned systems and integrated solutions, FLIR.

Silver Member ModalAI

“The incredible amount of AI processing and 5G capabilities built into the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform will enable new autonomous drone experiences, such as navigating quickly through tight spaces while mapping the environment for objects of interest. We look forward to working with Qualcomm Technologies and integrating the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform to build off of our existing work with the Defense Innovation Unit to expand the capabilities of our sUAS platforms,”

Chad Sweet, chief executive officer, ModalAI.

Ecosystem Partner Open Robotics

“Open Robotics is the hub of a global community, creating and applying open software and hardware platforms for robotics. In our work we aim to lower the barrier to entry into the field for students, researchers, application developers, and entrepreneurs alike. So I’m excited to see the release of the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform, which will help to spur yet more innovation in robotics across a variety of application domains,”

Brian Gerkey, chief executive officer, Open Robotics.

96Boards and Dronecode have come together to collaborate on open drone standards. To further strengthen the relationship between 96Boards and Dronecode, 96Boards is pleased to announce that the company has become a Gold Member of Dronecode, and respectively, Dronecode is proud to announce that it has become a member of 96Boards and will join the steering committee. 

96Boards will incorporate different components of the Pixhawk hardware standard in forms of mezzanine products, and new specifications, further enhance the growth and standardization of the open drone ecosystem.

96Boards is well respected within the industry for providing innovative and flexible solutions. It provides a range of hardware specifications created by Linaro to make the latest ARM-based processors available to developers at a reasonable cost. The specifications are open and define a standard board layout for SoC-agnostic (processor independent) development platforms that can be used by software application, hardware device, kernel and other system software developers. Boards produced to the 96Boards specifications are suitable for rapid prototyping, hobbyist projects or incorporation into new systems for a wide range of applications including desktop and laptop computing, the digital home, digital signage, point of sale (POS), high-end audio, robotics and drones, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, IoT and industrial control. Standardized expansion buses for peripheral I/O have led to a wide range of compatible add-on mezzanine boards that will work across a variety of 96Boards products. Users have access to a wide range of boards with different features at various price points. In addition, some SoC vendors have announced long term availability of the SoC to encourage their use in products with long life cycles.

“We are very excited to join Dronecode in helping define the standard for next phase mass adoption of the open source drone technology.” said, Dr. Yang Zhang, Director of 96Boards, “96Boards as the largest cross silicon platform standard organization is uniquely positioned to help Dronecode to achieve such ambition.”

Dr. Yang Zhang, Director of 96Boards

Dronecode is a US-based non-profit, and vendor-neutral foundation for open source drone projects. Dronecode helps nurture the open-source communities, guides project governance, provides infrastructure, and critical services to mass adoption. Some of it’s supported projects include PX4 Autopilot, MAVLink, QGroundControl, and MAVSDK. The PX4 Autopilot is the most widely adopted open-source flight controller. It has a complete ecosystem of components that has been driving industry standards for unmanned vehicles, ranging from protocols for onboard and intra-vehicular communications to UI and SDKs that provides full flight control and mission planning. Pixhawk open standards provide hardware specifications and guidelines for drone systems, such as the most advanced flight controllers in the industry, an ecosystem of payload interfaces, and smart battery management. The Dronecode foundation creates a sustainable collaboration framework for the ecosystems’ advancement and adoption. The entity is funded through yearly memberships by organizations that support open ecosystems and standards. Dronecode is part of the non-profit Linux Foundation. 

“The Dronecode Foundation is thrilled to join 96Boards, and collaborate on the development of open hardware standards for the PX4 Autopilot ecosystem, the largest commercially adopted open-source flight stack.” said, Dr. Lorenz Meier, Chairman of Dronecode, “Dronecode with the help of its member organizations, are openly collaborating in the development of the Pixhawk standard, we welcome 96Boards and thank them for their support.”

Dr. Lorenz Meier, Chairman of Dronecode

Join us at the PX4 Developer Summit

96Boards will join Dronecode and the PX4 community at the second edition of the PX4 Developer Summit, streamed LIVE on July 6 & 7. The PX4 Developer Summit is a drone development conference targeted towards professional and aspiring drone developers, roboticists, software engineers, researchers, students, and academia. The event, streamed live for free, is the yearly check-in for the PX4 community at large. Learn more about the PX4 Developer Summit.

The San Diego based ModalAI spun out of Qualcomm® in 2018 and is leveraging the five years of prior research and development in the drone industry. 

The team at ModalAI is putting all that experience to work on VOXL Flight. They developed a plug-and-play open-development platform for GPS-denied autonomous drones and robots, running PX4, capable of autonomous drone navigation.

ModalAI offers a combination of companion computer and flight controller for safe indoor flying. VOXL Flight enables a wide range of applications, from indoor navigation to large scale, 4G-connected BVLOS.

Learn more about VOXL Flight on their Press Release below

VOXL Flight Combines Companion Computer and PX4 Flight Controller on One PCB For Safe Indoor Flying

By Chad Sweet, CEO ModalAI

Imagine the computing power of a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC and the flexibility and ease-of-use of a dedicated PX4 flight controller on a single PCB. That’s the new VOXL Flight from ModalAI. 

VOXL Flight uses Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) to fly safely indoors. With computer vision stability control, the drone flies more precisely, which makes it easier for the pilot to command. To optimize its VOXL platform for VIO, ModalAI employs camera and IMU frame time synchronization and exposure control algorithms. The 6 degrees of freedom position is computed and then passed directly to PX4 using the voxl-vision-px4 library and MAVLink.

Fundamentally, VIO combines a computer vision camera with measurements from an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). The magic is that it computes real-world coordinates in millimeters, from combining 3D features tracked in pixels and acceleration measured in meters/second². The VIO algorithm publishes a covariance matrix that describes the certainty of its velocity and position estimates. 

VOXL Flight also supports Collision Prevention. In this case, depth maps are computed using stereo cameras, an obstacle map is computed, and the mapping data is passed to PX4 using MAVLink. The processing and communication are all done onboard VOXL Flight, and aside from tracking and stereo sensors, no additional hardware is needed.

The VOXL m500 development drone has VIO and Collision Prevention ready to fly and is preconfigured with camera mountings and wiring to mount on a UAV directly. The pre-configuration helps you get your drone in the air quickly with less programming and installation time.

VOXL Flight integrates the following technologies:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) for movement, such as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), to orient your drone to its ever-changing surroundings and plan mission paths
• GPS Denied Flight capabilities to keep your drones safely in flight and navigating indoors and challenging outdoor environments
• AI perception, using GPU accelerated TensorFlow Lite, facilitates obstacle avoidance with deep learning object recognition and integrated depth sensing 
• Support for up to 4 image sensors for simultaneous 4k video capture, streaming and computer vision processing
• 4G cellular or Microhard pDDL command, control and video via a plug-in add-on.

Click here to learn more.

Dronecode Member, Auterion, today announced the release of Skynode, a first-of-its-kind reference design that mixes companion-computer, the latest Pixhawk reference standard FMUv5X, and LTE connectivity. Skynode comes with Auterion Enterprise PX4, and you can take advantage of all the features and multi-payload capabilities out of the box.

“Built on top of open standards like FMUv5x, PX4, and MAVLink, Skynode with Auterion PX4 enables drone manufacturers to rapidly enter new markets by making their products compatible with an ecosystem of payloads, components, services, and workflow integrations that give companies the tools they need to deploy large fleets of drones,“

Lorenz Meier, co-founder of Auterion. 

Auterion calls this project a stepping stone, enabling anyone to take advantage of their Enterprise PX4 offering by providing fully integrated hardware and software, providing quality and adding value to their customers.

Skynode will launch in four configurations:

• Skynode Enterprise: designed to integrate drones into enterprise workflows
• Skynode OEM: provides the Enterprise functionality at a convenient form factor for manufacturers.
• Skynode Government: Meeting Government imposed requirements on every component, hardened for robust use-cases.
• Synode RTA by GE Aviation: for operations that require higher safety standards and certification by regulators, designed by GE Aviation.

Be sure to also check out their recently revamped website, with tons of information regarding Skynode, Enterprise PX4, and the open-standards they support.

About Auterion

Auterion is the leading software platform that powers drones for enterprises and government. Based on open-source software, Auterion drives standardization efforts in the PX4 ecosystem. With offices in California and Switzerland, Auterion has raised $25M in venture-backed funding from investors such as Lakestar, Mosaic Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Tectonic Ventures. The company’s global customer base includes GE Aviation, Quantum Systems, Impossible Aerospace, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Learn more at www.auterion.com.

Resources

• Twitter: @auterion
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/auterion/
• YouTube Launch Video: https://youtu.be/Xzh4txK0LRg

• Skynode announcement “Bringing a Pilotless Future and Autonomous Delivery One Step Closer to Reality.“
• List of Open-Standards Auterion supports “How we drive forward international UAV standards.”
• Press Release “Auterion Launches Skynode to Accelerate the Development of Enterprise-Ready Products for Drone Manufacturers“

Modern industrial drones have advanced far beyond the popular DIY hobbyist and consumer camera drones. These new era industrial-grade autonomous systems are now used to provide safety-critical tasks, from search and rescue to medical transportation and delivery. We see that systems like these begin to require many additional sensors connected by a highly robust and functionally safe CAN bus network. 

UAVCAN 1.0 addresses the challenge of deterministic on-board data exchange between systems and components of next-generation intelligent vehicles: manned and unmanned aircraft, spacecraft, robots, and cars. In addition to its use in drones other small robotic systems, it can be used in industrial applications and control systems. The updated UAVCAN V1.0, which builds upon lessons from the V0 specification, is also intended to be taken through a formal standardization process.

As the largest global semiconductor supplier to the automotive industry, NXP has modernized the vehicle network with CAN and CAN-FD silicon. UAVCAN is similarly poised to transform the networks of modern software-defined small robotic vehicles. Networks for industrial-grade drones are becoming more complex as the number of sensors and distance between sensors and fight controllers increases. Furthermore, low-latency deterministic networks are key to safety-critical systems. However, commonly used short-range buses such as I2C and SPI interfaces are not as robust and cannot handle the distance and the growing complexity of the network. In comparison, CAN-FD offers data rates from 2 to 5 MbpsBPS, and their robustness has been well proven in Automotive applications. Because of the priority-based bus architecture, it means many devices can be connected while managing real-time peripherals such as motor controls. Multiple busses or transports can be connected to enable redundancy. 

In the new V1.0 specification, provisions are made to allow for abstraction of the lower layer protocols from the actual functional use. This makes it easily adapted to different use cases or for other functional domains. By changing the datatype-name definitions, the UAVCAN V1.0 protocol works equally well for a PX4 Drone or a completely custom device such as a micro-spacecraft. A major update in V1.0 is not only the support for modern higher speed CAN-FD hardware interfaces but also the ability to use it over other types of physical layer protocols.

UAVCAN V1 is in development now, and NXP is pleased to support its development by working with the community and providing engineering resources to enabled this improved standard. This is a standard open to everyone. No licensing or approval of any kind is necessary for its implementation, distribution, or use.

In order to better reflect the applicability of the standard not just to drones, but now to many different networks and vehicle types, the name UAVCAN can be interpreted as Uncomplicated Application-level Vehicular Communication And Networking.

For additional reading, a high-level overview of the protocol is provided in the article “UAVCAN: a highly dependable publish-subscribe protocol for real-time intravehicular networking”.

Moscow based Copter Express today joins Dronecode to collaborate with the open-source community. The company behind the Clover Drone Kit joins as a Silver member. By becoming a member of the Dronecode community, they hope to help create a top of the line software stack.

“Doing aerial robotics education for five years, we are focusing on creating an international environment for the growth of young talents. I think the Dronecode community is the best place for young enthusiasts to find like-minded partners to create the future of drones”

– Oleg Ponfilenok, CEO at COEX.

COEX is currently selling its educational platform through Indiegogo. Clover is a programmable educational quadcopter kit that consists of accessible open source components, and the necessary documentation and libraries for controlling it.

The kit includes a Pixracer flight controller with the PX4 flight stack, a Raspberry Pi 4 as a controlling onboard computer, and a camera module for performing flights with the use of computer vision, as well as a set of various sensors and other peripherals.

COEX is no stranger to the community, just this past June, their leadership team gave a great talk on the PX4 Developer Summit titled “PX4 in STEM education: How e taught a thousand students how to program drones”. One of the best-received presentations of the show.

They have also just hosted the biggest PX4 hackathon of the year “COPTERHACK’19” on October 11-13, they were able to bring together more 480 participants from 51 teams.

We thank Copter Express for their trust, and support of open-source technologies.

The US-based company brings the open-source community years of experience integrating thermal imaging sensors and other sensing solutions that expand situational awareness in a variety of form-factors. These include everything from cars to mobile phones and drones.

Dronecode, home to the PX4 Stack, is thrilled to announce that leading thermal imaging and sensing technology producer, FLIR Systems Inc., is joining Dronecode as a Silver member. As part of the membership, FLIR will join the newly created “Payload” working-group.

Payload working-group

FLIR Systems is the payload working group’s newest member, which focuses on cross-vendor payload integrations by developing standard interfaces for MAVLink-ready devices and systems.

“FLIR is thrilled to join the Dronecode Payload Working Group, and we look forward to supporting its efforts to develop standard, open-source interfaces for thermal camera payloads,”

Bob Proebstel, Senior Systems Engineer, FLIR Systems.

“Collaborating in the creation and maintenance of open standards and open software is at the heart of the Dronecode community, so we are thrilled to have FLIR bring its years of experience within the drone industry into the payload working group,”

Dr. Lorenz Meier, Auterion Co-Founder, PX4 Creator, and Working Group lead.

Join the working-group and start collaborating on standard payload interfaces

Dronecode is inviting the community to join the conversation. The payload working group will be starting meetings soon and is actively looking for companies who would like to collaborate in the creation of a standard payload interface.

Join the workgroup

• Read past workgroup meeting minutes (meeting archive)
• Click here to join the working group

Dronecode is excited to announce that Silver Member Ainstein AI is launching the new generation of their object detection radar with an exclusive promotion to the community.

Ainstein is excited to launch its second-generation sensor in the μSharp Patch product line, the SRD-D1. This low cost and lightweight object detection radar allow drones to understand their surroundings in all weather conditions better. Radar sensing is expected to be a requirement for BVLOS and Drone Delivery systems.

Ainstien is also driving the development of radar-based compact, robust, and highly accurate altitude sensors. Their US-D1 radar altimeter enables the autonomous operation and highly accurate altitude control in conditions where laser sensors fail, such as during crop spraying, in fog, or over water. US-D1 is also easy to integrate with a Pixhawk, and the PX4 flight stack.

Bringing it all together is Ainstein’s flagship product, the OcPoC Zynq Mini Flight Controller, the world’s original FPGA based flight controller. The OcPoC Zynq comes loaded with embedded Linux, PX4, and an abundance of I/O.

Ainstein is proud to offer these three products on their virtual storefront ‘sensing.ai.’ They offer all of our products individually and in bundles. Ainstein also provides integration/consulting support packages.

They are offering special pricing to members of the Dronecode community until the end of November. Just use the discount code ‘DRONECODE’ at checkout for 10% off of your entire purchase.

Ainstein has been developing radar sensors for drone applications for over 5 years. They are highly involved with the FAA and the development of drone regulations. They actively support testing sites across the country. Ainstein’s CEO, Dr. Zongbo Wang, is highly committed to the drone industry and is confident in its continued growth. In 2018 Dr. Wang was a participating member on the Dronecode Board of Directors.

This blog post features products from a Dronecode member and community supporter.

Dronecode opens the doors to any member with something valuable to share with the community. The Dronecode blog is a direct channel into the community.

To read more about Dronecode and how to support the open-source community, please visit our membership page. Becoming a member is the most effective way to fund community collaboration.

On July 16, 17, the NuttX community met in the Netherlands for two days of NuttX sessions and workshops by top contributors to the project. Dronecode celebrates the gathering and supports the future of the project. The event was attended by PX4 community members who share the love for NuttX, and organizations who support open-source such as Auterion, and NXP.

We look forward to deeper collaboration with the NuttX community in the future.

NuttX author and lead maintainer Gregg Nutt shared his personal insights from the event.

“The event was a success, presentations were exciting and top-notch, the hospitality of the host Technolution, B.V. was flawless. The experience of finally meeting people with whom you have worked together for a decade or more was profoundly moving. Even better, spending an evening together drinking those great Dutch beers.

For me, personally, it was the culmination of a very long journey from the earliest days in the mid-1990s when the OS was just a thought experiment starting with a handful of files. There were a few initial OS-related Open Source projects and continued low-pace development through the early 2000s until the initial release of the first, complete NuttX-1.0 RTOS on February 7, 2007. In those early days, people scoffed at yet-another-open-source-rtos. But I persisted because my primary interest has always been in producing the “perfect” RTOS, at least the RTOS that I always wanted to use.

This has been an effort of love. There has never been a corporate sponsor. The project was never motivated by any commercial interest. I have never made money from the RTOS (other than through related contracted). Nor have I ever been in any competition with other open-source RTOS. I make an effort to always speak positively of all other open-source RTOS projects. People and corporations that provide open-source software to the community are all deserving of respect. Take the money out of the equation, and there is no reason to feel competitive.

So from those humble beginnings as an under-appreciated, personal project to its broad acceptance as demonstrated at NuttX2019, it’s been a long evolution. At this point, it is clear that it is no longer my personal project, but, instead, belongs to the world. My gratification and thankfulness to all those who have supported the RTOS are boundless.”

Gregory Nutt, NuttX Author

Resources

• Recap of the 2019 NuttX International workshop
• All the slides from the 2019 NuttX International Workshop
• Photos from the 2019 NuttX International Workshop
• NuttX Source Code on Bitbucket
• NuttX Project website.
• NuttX Discussion Group
• NuttX YouTube channel

Dronecode is bringing the PX4 ecosystem to InterDrone September 3-6. For the third year in a row, Dronecode will be participating at InterDrone, one of the largest annual commercial drone events in North America. With more than 120 sessions, panels and keynotes, 135+ commercial vendors over the course of three action-packed days at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, we have a full enterprise track dedicated to PX4 this year. 

Dronecode is bringing together key members of the PX4 community to discuss the benefits of adopting an open-source flight stack. Join PX4 developers who will share their first-hand experience with the project, and learn from adopters how to use the different parts of the stack in your own projects.

PX4 Track: Conference Sessions

Thursday, September 5th. attendees will get a 360 view of the community, best practices on adopting the state-of-art tech stack, and tips and guidance on how to leverage the power of the open-source community.

• Panel: Building market-ready solutions, with the PX4 open source community
• Talk: How to use MAVSDK to control MAVLink based drones 
• Talk: QGC the easy to use Open Source ground control station for the PX4 Flight Stack 
• Talk: Developing quality solutions on top of the PX4 open-source flight stack

Note: Dronecode is looking for adopting organizations of any of the open-source projects we are discussing during the PX4 Track: PX4, QGC, and MAVSDK. Reach out to us if you are interested in sharing your experience working with the open-source projects and their community, your organization will be featured in the PX4 Track event website.

PX4 Track: Join us on the show floor

Join us on booth 418, we will have the latest PX4 supported hardware, and you will be able to meet PX4 developers, and fellow open source community members.

PX4 Track: Community Appreciation Night

On the night of Thursday, September 5th, we will be hosting our signature Community Appreciation Night, celebrate with the community the recent achievements and network in a relaxed environment with industry leaders. (See our 2018 Community Appreciation Party at InterDrone).
Note: This event is invite-only, pay attention to the official community channels for the opportunity to RSVP.

MAVSDK is the new name for the Dronecode SDK (formerly “DroneCore”), the project is now under the MAVLink project umbrella.

The MAVSDK project is a standards-compliant MAVLink Library with APIs for commonly used programming languages like C++, Swift, and Python. It’s the easiest way to integrate with drones over MAVLink, trusted by leading organizations in the industry.

MAVSDK consolidates the project identity

The project has seen tremendous growth since inception and has now reached the point where it needs its own identity, separate from Dronecode. The maintainer team and the PX4 community stands behind the move and will continue supporting the project. The rename and new home are meant to bring MAVLink adopting communities closer.

Community Backed

The project is made possible thanks to adopting organizations who trust it to deploy products/services and contribute to the codebase.

Learn how you can contribute

While the project is ready to be used in production today, the maintainer team has a vision for the project and its sustainable growth. MAVSDK is actively being used to develop drone solutions by organizations like yours. Learn how you can engage with the maintainer team and get started with MAVSDK below:

• Download the latest release.
• Get the source from GitHub.
• Post questions on the official MAVSDK Forum.
• Reach out to the dev team on the PX4 Slack #mavsdk channel.
• Learn how to use it and check out the possibilities on the developer guide.
• Watch Jonas Vautherin discuss the roadmap during the 2019 PX4 Developer Summit in Zürich.
• Read more on the RFC process behind the rename/transfer.

Gold Members, Representative

• Glen Stark, Yuneec

Silver Members, Representatives

• Andreas Lamprecht, AirMap
• Yan Li, Taisync
• Kevin Sartori, Auterion

Thanks to our awesome member community for their continuous support.

The 2019 board of directors

• Chris Anderson (3DR) — Chairman
• Lorenz Meier (Community Director, PX4 Autopilot)
• Glen Stark (Yuneec, Gold members representative)
• Andreas Lamprecht (AirMap, Silver members representative)
• Yan Li (Taisync, Silver members representative)
• Kevin Sartori (Auterion, Silver members representative)

As always Dronecode adheres to its bylaws and guarantees the transparency of the elections, read the bylaws on our website.

The PX4 Developer Summit announced on May 21st, in only four-weeks gathered 198 community members for two-days on the lecture halls of historic ETH Zürich. The format of the event was single-track, with nineteen sessions by twenty-two speakers who gave a quick history of the projects, a run down through the current features and discussed future work (Roadmap), inviting attendees to contribute, each session made interactive by a very participate audience. 

After the Summit, Dronecode sent a survey, with 19% of attendees responding, here’s what they have to say:

“I have attended a number of developer conferences before and this event was really head and shoulders above them. Main reason is that it really made you feel part of the community”

Community Member, Overall Rating 5 out of 5.

Crucial statistics behind the event

• 79 Participating companies and Education Institutions
• 193 Attendees
• 18 Countries
• 19 Sessions
• 22 Speakers

19.8% of Attendees responded

• 4.7 Overall event satisfaction (1-5 scale)
  • 4.9 Staff
  • 4.6 Demos
  • 4.5 Networking
  • 4.5 Venue
  • 4.4 Speakers
  • 3.8 Refreshments
• Extremely likely to recommend the event to a friend or colleague.
• 85% audience between 25-49

More than half want to repeat the event in Zürich

Probably not a surprise, but attendees loved visiting Switzerland, and would like to repeat the location for the next Summit, while 29% would like to have an event in the USA, and 13% in Asia.

1. 52% would like to repeat in Zürich.
2. 16% in the Bay Area, California
3. 13% in the USA (Combined results, San Diego, Las Vegas, Seattle)
4. 13% in Asia (Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo)

Good news is we are planning events close to most of the locations above, stay tuned for more news from Dronecode.

You can also experience the Summit

If you attended and want to relive the experience, or if you missed it and want to experience it for yourself, Dronecode made the recordings from the sessions available on the PX4 Autopilot YouTube channel, make sure to subscribe, like the videos, and leave your comments.

We thank the community for participating in the survey and joining us in Zürich.

The first-ever developer summit was a success, with 200 community members attending the event from 18 different countries, the lecture room was full with energy and hunger for knowledge, Dronecode was honored to host the event and provide the space for the community to gather.

As mentioned before all sessions during the summit are recorded, you can now see them live on the official PX4 Autopilot YouTube channel .

Our media partner InterDrone interviewed community members during the Summit and recently published their newest podcast episode titled:

A 360° View of the Open Source Drone Developer Community

In this emotionally charged episode, we try to give a clear picture of the community, and what drives developers and their projects. We hope you enjoy it.

Microsoft Joins as a Gold member

Microsoft, a Platinum Linux Foundation member and a strong supporter of open source, joins Dronecode to help advance the open source drone ecosystem, bringing AirSim their advanced simulator to the ecosystem, marking a significant milestone in drone development, unlocking the future of vision-enabled autonomous vehicles.

“The PX4 Autopilot has the largest ecosystem in drone development, with a growing number of commercial adopters, and extensive use in research. Microsoft is thrilled to join the PX4 family and to support PX4 through Dronecode.” Said Guada Casuso, Principal Program Manager.

ModalAI Joins as a Silver member

The San Diego based ModalAI team believes the open source PX4 Autopilot is the path to success in the enterprise drone ecosystem. VOXL, the companion computer, and autopilot platforms ModalAI is developing will be fully integrated into PX4 software stack. These platforms will enable machine vision-based and cellular-connected navigation for state-of-the-art autonomous operation beyond visual line of sight.

“PX4 is the de facto standard for drones. ModalAI looks forward to contributing hardware and software development to advance the growing, open-source PX4 ecosystem.”, said Chad Sweet, CEO of ModalAI.

Teal Joins as a Silver member.

Teal is an original design manufacturer of hardware and software drone platforms based in the US. Having launched products in the consumer market with the Teal Sport and the Teal One, the company has now expanded its reach into enterprise and defense, leveraging the Teal platform. Teal is a venture-backed company with its entire team based in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is proud to be manufacturing in the US.

“Teal is excited to be supporting the PX4 community and helping to build a strong ecosystem around open source. Teal believes in a future where drones are ubiquitous and positive things in our lives. The work being done in open source and PX4 will be an enabling factor of this future.”, said George Matus, CEO of Teal.

About Dronecode

Dronecode is home to the PX4 autopilot, the MAVLink protocol, QGroundControl, and MAVSDK. Dronecode is a US-based non-profit hosted by The Linux Foundation and is community funded through yearly memberships by companies who support open source.

The organization provides neutral and transparent governance to open source projects and their adjacent communities, offers a framework for inclusive collaboration on open standards, funds services used to develop and distribute releases, and evangelizes to increase adoption and contributors to open source.