A230 Vortex embedded mission computer

The A230 Vortex is a fanless, environmentally sealed embedded mission computer from Aitech, built around the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Industrial system-on-module. It packages an AI-capable processing platform into a small-form-factor rugged enclosure, which makes it a candidate mission computer for unmanned aircraft, ground vehicles and other platforms where space, weight and power are limited.

The computer is aimed at edge autonomy: running inference on board so that sensor streams are processed locally instead of being sent back to a ground station. Aitech lists autonomy and robotics, video analytics and ISR, sensor fusion, mission computing for payloads, and sealed edge nodes for harsh environments as typical uses. On a large drone this means detect-and-avoid, target recognition or payload data reduction can run next to the sensors.

The key figures describe the compute resources available to an integrator. The module delivers up to 248 TOPS of AI performance. Its processor is a 12-core ARM v8.2 64-bit CPU, paired with an Ampere-architecture GPU with 2048 CUDA cores, so neural networks and conventional GPU workloads share one device. Memory is 64 GB of LPDDR5 with ECC, which protects data in memory against single-bit upsets, a useful property on aircraft that fly at altitude. A hardware H.264/H.265 encoder compresses video without loading the CPU, and the GPU stack supports CUDA, OpenGL, OpenGL ES and Vulkan.

For integration, the unit provides video capture of four SDI channels (SD or HD) and eight composite channels (RS-170A NTSC or PAL) simultaneously, with RS-170A and DVI/HDMI output. The data interfaces include Gigabit Ethernet, 10G Ethernet, a GbE TSN end point, USB 3.0 and 2.0, UART serial ports, discrete lines and CAN bus. Storage is on an NVMe SSD, with a micro SD card slot also listed, and the I/O is offered in several I/O variants. Connector coatings of olive drab cadmium-plated aluminum or marine nickel aluminum bronze can be selected. The cooling path is cold plate, so the mounting surface in the airframe has to conduct heat away; a convection version is listed as an engineering or evaluation option.

The enclosure carries an IP66 rating, so the electronics are protected against dust and strong water jets without a fan or open vents. Power conditioning for deployed environments is included inside the unit. Aitech supplies mating connector sets, starter cable kits, STEP and IGES models for mechanical integration, and BIOS, BSP and API programmer guides for Windows and Linux; some of these documents are released under NDA or customer login.

Typical applications are mission computers on long-endurance unmanned aircraft, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance video processing, multi-sensor fusion, and sealed edge nodes on other rugged vehicles.