Flight Controller

The flight controller is responsible for low-level vehicle stabilization and autopilot behavior.

In the current DroneOS stack, this is the PX4-side autopilot layer.

Responsibilities

The flight controller handles:

• low-level control loops
• vehicle state estimation
• flight modes
• arming / disarming
• failsafe behavior defined at the autopilot layer

Relationship to DroneOS

DroneOS does not replace the flight controller.

DroneOS sits above it and interacts through the existing software interfaces in the stack.

Practical rule

Keep the architecture separation clear:

• flight controller = real-time autopilot layer
• companion computer = higher-level compute and integration layer
• DroneOS = software framework connecting autonomy tooling to the stack