Flight Controllers
PixHawk
off-the shelf piece of hardware/controller that can be bought off any website
ZeroPilot (ZP)
custom made/in-house flight controller built by electrical team
Sensors, etc
Jetson
hardware that runs all autonomy code (code ran on the actual drone)
essentially an advanced raspberry pi, but with additional hardware for ML models
contains computer vision python repository
geolocation - maps pixel coordinates to geographical coordinates
outputs “absolute” lattitude/longitude
given image with bounding box + information about drone state, gives lat/long. of landing pad (not sure about accuracy)
send to dronekit api - easy to communicate with pixhawk controller
MAVLINK, sends back to PixHawk which centers drone with Rgpilot
Descend the drone to 5-12 m above landing pad
Drivers
UART protocol allows 2 hardware devices to communicate
Dronekit → Pixhawk communication might need a driver