PX4 is a powerful open-source autopilot flight stack trusted by thousands of developers, researchers, and commercial drone manufacturers worldwide. Built on a modular architecture with a real-time publish-subscribe middleware (uORB), PX4 runs on a wide range of hardware and supports every major vehicle class — from racing quads to fixed-wing survey aircraft.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Basic Concepts
Understand drones, flight controllers, and how PX4 fits into the ecosystem
Choose a Flight Controller
Find the right autopilot hardware for your vehicle from 40+ supported boards
Flight Modes
Explore manual, assisted, and fully autonomous flight modes
Simulation Quickstart
Fly PX4 in simulation before touching hardware — no build tools required
Why PX4
PX4 is “the autopilot stack the industry builds on.” It is vendor-neutral, governed by the Dronecode Foundation under the Linux Foundation, and licensed under BSD-3-Clause. No single company controls the roadmap.Modular Architecture
Every component is a replaceable, parallelized module communicating over uORB message bus
Wide Hardware Support
Runs on 40+ autopilot boards including the full Pixhawk family
ROS 2 Native
Deep DDS/ROS 2 integration via uXRCE-DDS for robotics applications
Get started in minutes
Run PX4 in simulation with Docker — no toolchain setup required:Choose your path
New to PX4? Start with Basic Concepts. Building a custom system? Go to Development Overview.
Set up your vehicle
Select your vehicle type, wire up the hardware, and configure it with QGroundControl.
Configure and tune
Set your parameters, calibrate sensors, and assign flight modes.
Supported vehicles
Multicopter
Quadrotors, hexarotors, octorotors — the most popular PX4 platform
Fixed-Wing
Traditional airplanes for long-range survey and payload missions
VTOL
Hybrid vehicles combining multicopter hover with fixed-wing efficiency
Rover
Ground vehicles using differential, Ackermann, or mecanum drive
Community
- Discord: Join the Dronecode server
- Forum: discuss.px4.io
- Weekly Dev Call: Open to all — see the Dronecode calendar