TL;DR

Built a modular autonomous drone system with SITL simulation → real-time telemetry → WebSocket bridge → Pixhawk integration. Implemented failsafes, emergency routines, and waypoint missions, while ensuring full end-to-end testing from simulation to real hardware.

Overview

This project documents my journey of building a complete autonomous drone system — from understanding flight architecture to implementing real-time telemetry, failsafes, waypoint missions, and full simulator testing.

Understanding the Architecture

Before writing any code, I focused on how drones actually think and communicate.

🔍 Core components studied:

• Flight Controller (Pixhawk) — Brain of the drone that calculates flight commands.
• GPS Module — Provides precise position and altitude data.
• Sensors — IMU for orientation, magnetometer for heading, barometer for altitude, LiDAR for obstacle detection.
• Telemetry Radio — Handles MAVLink communication between drone and ground system.

This gave me a strong mental model of control signals, telemetry, and mission data flow.

System Design Overview — Data and Command Flow between Drone, Backend, and UI.

System Architecture & Communication Flow

Designed a modular software system connecting the drone with a web-based control interface: