ARXVELLABS
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Design · Simulate · Operate

Autonomous aerial systems, end to end.

Arxvellabs designs, simulates and operates drone platforms end to end: software-in-the-loop testing, a hardware bench, ground stations and a fleet portal, engineered together.

Follow a flight Contact

Plan view blueprint of the Arxvellabs X500 quadcopter: 500 mm wheelbase, 144 mm body plate, 254 mm (10 inch) propeller discs, Pixhawk 6C flight controller and GPS mast. WHEELBASE 500144Ø254 · 1045 PROP2216 KV920 ×4PIXHAWK 6CAAFWD

Simulate, then fly

Every flight is simulated first.

Missions run in PX4 SITL with Gazebo before they run on a vehicle: the same plan, the same parameters, at the same site. A site is a geographic origin plus a world: a test field, an obstacle course, a solar farm, or an uploaded SDF.

Then the bench. A Pixhawk 6C with the fleet's PX4 build, props off, wired to the runner PC on TELEM2 at 921600 baud, so real flight-controller telemetry crosses the whole toolchain without leaving the table. The bench is being commissioned now.

SITL
PX4 v1.16 · Gazebo Harmonic · ROS 2 Humble
Executor
Rust offboard controller, JSON mission plans
GPS-denied
H-Flow optical flow and ToF range, flown with GPS off in SITL
HIL
Pixhawk 6C bench · TELEM2 · uXRCE-DDS
Line drawing of a survey mission: the drone takes off beside a ground station and flies waypoints WP1 to WP7 over a solar farm at 8 m, with one low pass at 4 m, against contour-line hills and ridgelines. SOLAR FARM · 7 ROWSGROUND STATIONHWP1 · 8 mWP2 · 8 mWP3 · 8 mWP4 · 4 mWP5 · 4 mWP6 · 8 mWP7 · 8 m

Capture

Inspection, rehearsed before the field.

Our solar farm world carries the three faults an IEC 62446-3 thermal inspection has to find: a hot cell, a hot substring and a warm module. A radiometric thermal camera on the simulated X500 reports a temperature for every pixel.

From 8 m, the 16 cm hot cell was missed. From 4 m, it showed at +20.6 K. That is the standard's five-by-five pixels per cell rule, found in simulation instead of on site.

Plan view of a 6 by 12 module solar array with a thermal scan footprint sweeping the rows. One hot cell in row 3 is flagged; a hot substring and a warm module are hatched. An inset shows the drone at 8 m with its sensor cone. PV ARRAY · PLAN · 6 × 12 MODULESR1R2R3R4R5R6HOT CELL · R3 M8 · +20.6 KELEVATION B–B · SCAN GEOMETRY8 mFAULT SIGNATURES · IEC 62446-3 · SITLHOT CELL +20.6 K (seen at 4 m)HOT SUBSTRING +10.3 K (8 m)WARM MODULE +5.1 K (8 m)GSD 2.9 cm/px @ 8 m · 1.4 cm/px @ 4 m

Stream

One runner per station. One cloud.

The ground-station runner bridges the vehicle's Zenoh router to the cloud router. Telemetry and ROS 2 discovery are federated as they are. Inbound commands are buffered and replayed at 10 Hz, so a jittery link cannot starve PX4's offboard keep-alive.

mTLS
Each station presents its own certificate; the cloud router's ACL is rendered per station.
MCAP
Sessions are recorded, rotated and uploaded to S3-compatible storage for replay.
Verbatim
Payloads are forwarded unchanged, so ROS 2 tools behind Zenoh keep working.
Data path diagram: the vehicle streams telemetry along an arc to the ground-station runner, which federates it over mTLS to the cloud router, drawn as the eight-node Arxvellabs mark. The runner also records sessions to MCAP. Inbound commands return along a dashed arc. RECORDING · MCAPrecordings/bench-01/<session>.mcap, to S301 · VEHICLEPX4 · drone-side zenohd02 · RUNNERstation bench-0103 · CLOUD ROUTERfleet portal · live view0/fmu/out/**FEDERATION · mTLSCN = station id/fmu/in · buffered · replay 10 Hz

Operate

Runs, live view and replay in one portal.

The fleet portal holds vehicles and sensors, mission plans checked live against the executor's own rules, sites, and runs. A running flight opens in a live 3D view. Afterwards the same card replays its MCAP recording on a timeline you can scrub.

Access is per organisation, with roles from viewer to admin. Sign-in goes through Keycloak.

Hardware

Two airframes, one avionics stack.

Both prototypes are built on Holybro development kits and flown by a Pixhawk 6C running PX4. The X500 carries the H-Flow for GPS-denied work. The X650 is the heavier platform for thermal payloads.

  1. GNSS, compass, safety switchAXL-GPS-0001
  2. Flight controller, Pixhawk 6CAXL-FC-0001
  3. Top plate
  4. Companion computerAXL-CMP-0002
  5. Telemetry radioAXL-RAD-0001
  6. Motors 2216 KV920, props 1045×4
  7. Body plate 144 × 144 × 2, arms
  8. Power moduleAXL-PWR-0001
  9. Battery 4S on 2 × Ø10 rails
  10. Landing gear, 215 mm
Exploded side elevation of the X500, parts numbered 1 to 10 from the GPS mast at the top to the 215 mm landing gear at the bottom. SECTION A–A · EXPLODED · SCALE 1:512345678921510
X500 and X650, vendor specifications
ItemX500X650
Base kitHolybro X500 V2Holybro X650
Flight controllerPixhawk 6CPixhawk 6C
Wheelbase500 mm650 mm
Body plate144 × 144 × 2 mm160 × 160 × 2 mm
Weight610 g, frame kit2000 g, kit without battery
Max payload1500 g, without battery4300 g, without battery
Max takeoff weightnot stated6300 g
Hover timeabout 18 min, 4S 5000 mAh30 min, 6S 10000 mAh
Battery4S LiPo 3000–5000 mAh6S LiPo 5000–12000 mAh
MotorsHolybro 2216 KV920 ×4T-Motor MN4014 KV330 ×4
ESCsBLHeli S 20A ×4Tekko32 F4 45A ×4
Propellers1045, 10 × 4.5 inGemfan 1555, 15 × 5.5 in, carbon
Landing gear height215 mmnot stated
Rail mount2 × Ø10 mm × 250 mm2 × Ø10 mm × 320 mm

Vendor figures from Holybro product pages, retrieved 2026-10-12. Payload and takeoff weight at 70 % throttle, hover times with no payload, as stated by the vendor. Both airframes are prototypes; takeoff mass will be measured on the built vehicles.

Platform

The stack, in the order a flight meets it.

  1. 01

    Simulation

    PX4 SITL, Gazebo and ROS 2 in containers, a Rust offboard executor, one isolated container group per run.

  2. 02

    HIL bench

    A Pixhawk 6C on the table, props off: real sensors, real failsafes, real serial link to the runner.

  3. 03

    Ground station

    The runner: Zenoh federation to the cloud, mTLS per station, MCAP recording and upload.

  4. 04

    Fleet portal

    Runs with live 3D and replay, vehicles and sensors, mission plans, sites.

  • Access

    Organisations, members and roles from viewer to admin, signed in through Keycloak.

  • Product definitions

    Airframe specifications, part numbers, assembly and maintenance documents, 3D models.

Contact

Talk to the engineers.

Inspection programmes, fleet operations, or a mission you want to simulate before it flies. Write to us.