PX4 / ArduPilot

The two leading open-source autopilot software stacks, used on drones, fixed-wing aircraft, and uncrewed ground or water vehicles.

PX4 and ArduPilot are the two major open-source autopilot software stacks. PX4 originated at ETH Zurich and is now hosted by the Dronecode Foundation under the Linux Foundation, under a BSD license; ArduPilot grew out of the Arduino hobbyist community and uses a GPLv3 license. Both run on a flight-controller board and handle attitude estimation, attitude and position control, waypoint missions, and failsafe behavior; both support multirotors, fixed-wing aircraft, VTOL, ground vehicles, and boats, communicate with a ground station or onboard computer over the MAVLink protocol, and offer software-in-the-loop simulation. For aerial-robotics or drone-navigation research, they're typically used as the low-level controller, with higher-level algorithms running in ROS 2 on an onboard computer.

ExampleWhen researching vision-language navigation for drones, the policy on the onboard computer outputs velocity commands, which are sent to PX4 over ROS 2, and PX4 handles the low-level attitude and motor control.

Also called

PX4, ArduPilot, open-source flight stacks

Related

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) · Aerial Vision-and-Language Navigation · Robot Operating System 2 · Hardware-in-the-Loop / Software-in-the-Loop Simulation · Gazebo

Sources

PX4 Autopilot 官网 (Chinese)
ArduPilot 官网 (Chinese)