MOORPARK, Calif., and ZURICH — Dronecode Foundation is pleased to announce the 2022 version of its annual report: The Year of the Drone. Auterion contributed over half of this year's contributions, with open source continuing to remain the core of accelerating the global adoption of autonomous robotics.

The Dronecode Foundation, under the Linux Foundation umbrella, is the vendor-neutral home for contributors to collaborate on the core drone systems and innovate on top of them. It’s the home to PX4, Pixhawk, MAVLink, MAVSDK, and QGroundControl.

As the report states: “Pixhawk and PX4 are now ubiquitous drone technologies. They help create an ecosystem of interoperability, which leads to users having more choice and flexibility. Creating an open drone ecosystem around these technologies was the goal, and it’s finally happening.”

Auterion is one of 33 members of the Dronecode Foundation and is thrilled about the commitment and coordination of the developers in the open source community. This year, there were nearly 300 unique contributors worldwide helping build the fulcrum on which the growing drone industry rests.

In 2022, Auterion contributed 52.7% of all contributions, with Auterion team members all listed as Top Individual Contributors in the report:

  • Silvan Fuhrer, Flight Control Engineer
  • Hamish Willee, Senior Technical Writer
  • Matthias Grob, Flight Control Engineer
  • Mathieu Bresciani, Flight Control Engineer
  • Julian Oes, Lead Software Engineer

“It’s great to see open source drone technologies like Pixhawk and PX4 everywhere,” said Lorenz Meier, Co-founder and CEO at Auterion. “We know the power of open collaboration; we’ve seen it work. Now, we need to do even less individually. That means standardizing hardware before we reach the point where it becomes unmaintainable. Together we can share the workload and allow everyone to excel.” 

To work on these standards, the foundation formed the Dronecode Hardware Working Group to help drive open standards in the drone industry, find new areas of collaboration, and make sure the hardware and software interoperability are aligned.

Pixhawk open standards provide readily available hardware specifications and guidelines for drone systems development. The workgroup works with the Pixhawk project to openly develop new hardware standards to help drive the industry forward. Contribute to the Pixhawk Standards here.

Read the full 2022 Dronecode Annual Report, available here.