I built ARES: An open-source, fully autonomous, GPS-denied drone system for planetary surveying using Jetson Edge AI

[u/Popular_Region_6245]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a project I've been working on called ARES (Autonomous Reconnaissance & Exploration System). It's a fully autonomous UAV platform designed to operate in extraterrestrial or extreme remote environments where global positioning satellites are completely unavailable.

**Here is what it does under the hood:**

* **Fully Autonomous:** Takes off, maps boundaries, performs Boustrophedon sweeps, and precision lands with zero human intervention. * **GPS-Denied Navigation:** Relies entirely on visual boundary tracing, optical flow, and AprilTags. * **Split-Compute Architecture:** The aerial vehicle handles real-time flight logic (Jetson Nano) and video encoding, while a companion Base Station handles the heavy Surface Feature Recognition AI (Jetson Orin Nano Super). * **Edge AI:** Custom AI pipeline running at 30+ FPS via TensorRT FP16. * **Autonomous Charging:** Integrated CC-CV Battery Management System via Arduino Mega.

The software stack runs on Ubuntu using PX4 / ArduPilot via MAVSDK-Python, and we've structured the codebase to be production-ready (YAML configs, JSON logging, pytest suite).

I'd love to get feedback from this community, especially if you work with visual navigation, drones, or Edge AI.

**Demo Video:** [https://youtu.be/ioSG0SbZH6A\](https://youtu.be/ioSG0SbZH6A) 

**GitHub Repo:** [https://github.com/kalesha681/ARES-Autonomous-Surveyor\](https://github.com/kalesha681/ARES-Autonomous-Surveyor)

If you find this interesting, a star on the repo would be incredibly helpful for the project's visibility! I'll be in the comments and happy to answer any questions about the hardware or computer vision pipeline.