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FleetCore Components

The FleetCore ecosystem consists of three primary active components that work together to manage drone fleets.

1. Backend Server (Java/Quarkus)​

Central coordination server. Manages persistent state and configuration for the entire fleet.

Key Responsibilities:​

  • Drone Onboarding: Registers new drones and provisions AWS IoT Certificates and Kinesis Video Signaling Channels.
  • Mission Orchestration: Uses FleetCoreLib to generate mission bundles and dispatches them via AWS IoT Jobs.
  • Data Persistence: Stores telemetry, detection events, and mission history in a PostGIS-enabled PostgreSQL database.
  • Auth Proxy: Validates operator JWTs from Cognito and provides a secure REST API for the Desktop client.

Tech Stack:​

Database Schema Design​

The backend manages a PostGIS-enabled PostgreSQL database. The schema is designed to handle geospatial drone data, mission logs, fleet maintenance, and other required records.

Database Schema Diagram

2. Desktop Client (Tauri/React)​

The Ground Control Station (GCS) used by operators to plan missions and control drones in real-time.

Key Responsibilities:​

  • Mission Planning: Geospatial interface for defining survey boundaries and drone home positions.
  • Real-time Monitoring: Low-latency WebRTC video feed streamed directly from the active drone.
  • Manual Control: Integrated support for gamepads to allow manual override of drone flight.
  • Secure Bridge: Uses a Rust-based proxy to safely forward requests to the Server with Cognito identity headers.

Desktop Home Page​

Desktop Home Page Figure 1: Landing page of the client

Desktop GCS Overview​

Desktop GCS Planning UI Figure 2: Mission planning screen

Low-Latency Manual Control​

WebRTC & Manual Control UI Placeholder
Figure 3: [Screenshot W.I.P] Manual drone control interface

Tech Stack:​

3. Onboard Agent (Python)​

The coordinator software of the drone, running on it's companion computer (Raspberry Pi 5).

Key Responsibilities:​

  • Flight Controller Bridge: Communicates with the PX4 flight stack via MAVSDK.
  • Job Consumer: Listens for AWS IoT Jobs, downloads mission bundles from S3, and executes them autonomously.
  • State Management: Uses a dedicated State Machine to track the drone's lifecycle.
  • Telemetry Provider: Publishes real-time GPS, battery, and health data to AWS IoT Core.
  • Video Streamer: Manages GStreamer pipelines to encode camera data and stream it via WebRTC.

Onboard Agent In Simulator​

Onboard Agent Simulator Figure 4: The drone agent controlling a simulated drone in Gazebo Classic

Tech Stack:​

  • Language: Python 3.13+
  • Drone Link: MAVSDK, MAVLink
  • Streaming: GStreamer + aiortc
  • Cloud: AWS IoT SDK v2