Skynode X embedded mission computer

Skynode X is an embedded mission computer made by Auterion for drones and other uncrewed robots. It puts a flight management unit, a companion mission computer and a built-in connectivity stack into one compact, lightweight housing, so an integrator can run flight control, onboard processing and cloud connectivity from a single unit. The hardware is made in the U.S. and is listed as NDAA compliant.

The unit is meant for vehicles that need onboard processing next to the autopilot: computer vision, payload control, video streaming and data transfer to the cloud. Auterion presents it as the hardware base for its software platform, which includes Auterion Mission Control for planning and executing missions with live video and camera controls, and Auterion Suite for sending data from the vehicle to the cloud. Its compact form suits space-constrained airframes, and its housing is described as 30 percent thinner and 15 percent lighter than the earlier Skynode generation.

The mission computer is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 running at 1.8 GHz with 4 GB of RAM and 16 GB of eMMC storage, plus a 32 GB data partition. It encodes video in hardware as H.264 at 1080p60, which lets a camera stream leave the vehicle without loading the main processor. The flight controller is a separate unit based on the FMUv6x design, built around a Cortex-M7 core with 480 MHz operation and 2 MB of flash. It uses triple-redundant sensors with 8 kHz sensor readout, and the separation keeps flight-critical code on its own hardware, away from the applications on the mission computer.

On the software side, the unit runs the Auterion Enterprise software distribution with Auterion Enterprise PX4 for flight control. ROS 2 applications run in Docker containers, and the Auterion SDK supports custom computer vision applications or third-party apps for functions such as GPS-denied navigation, vision-guided landing and obstacle detection. Auterion Vision Kit S is offered as an add-on for vision development.

The flight-control side exposes two GPS ports with an I2C connection for a magnetometer, two CAN ports, two UARTs (one with flow control), SPI with data-ready, reset and sync lines, SBUS input and output, 16 PWM channels, and a safety switch with LED and buzzer connections. The mission-computer side provides USB 2.0 OTG on a Type-C connector, a MIPI camera interface, WiFi and Bluetooth, 4G/LTE with external antennas, 100Base-T Ethernet and two high-speed USB 2.0 ports. A Pixhawk Payload Bus following the Pixhawk reference standard carries Ethernet, USB, UART, CAN, trigger and GPS PPS signals to payloads. Power is 5 V DC with a typical draw of 3.5 A and a maximum of 5 A, and the power supply is redundant.

Typical uses are multirotor and fixed-wing platforms for inspection, mapping and public-safety work, as well as defense systems that need an NDAA-compliant mission computer with open software interfaces for payloads, radios and third-party applications.