In a recent blog post, we demonstrated how to use the Roboto SDK to aggregate metrics from 1,000 PX4 drone logs. The positive feedback we received from the PX4 community and our friends at Dronecode inspired us to scale up our analysis, this time including all 123,227 publicly available PX4 Flight Review logs from 2024.
Yes, you read that correctly – we ingested 123,227 PX4 ULog files into Roboto. Beyond the fascinating insights, this also served as a good stress test for our platform. Each log file was uploaded as a separate dataset, and Roboto handled the queuing and processing smoothly. For every log, we extracted metadata and generated statistics for each signal. With sufficient parallel compute capacity, the entire process was completed in just a couple of days.
While these logs only represent public flights uploaded to PX4 Flight Review, we believe the trends and insights provide a compelling snapshot of global PX4 activity. We've also only scratched the surface of what these logs can reveal, but have already uncovered plenty of insights worth sharing.
The number of public uploads surged from 7,080 in 2023 to 123,227 in 2024 - a 17x increase. The exact cause of this huge increase is unclear to us, but the growing global interest in drone technology, driven by evolving geopolitical and industry trends, may be a factor. Notably, we also observed increased uploads from multiple countries (see next section).
To determine flight locations, we extracted GPS signals and performed a reverse geolocation lookup. Only flights with valid GPS data were included in this analysis. Note that we excluded logs with the PX4_SITL hardware version, as they are captured in simulation, which by default take place in Zurich, Switzerland.
China uploaded three times more public logs than the United States, an interesting trend given the global race for AI development. However, this could also be explained by differing attitudes toward public data sharing and security, or perhaps by the use of automated scripts to upload logs. The majority of Chinese logs were from Beijing, Shenzhen, Xi'an, Hangzhou and Guangzhou with a very long tail across the rest of the country.
We can also represent this as a heatmap for a global perspective:
As shown in the plot below, California leads by a significant margin, likely due to the high concentration of drone companies in the Bay Area. We’re also proud to see Washington state ranking among the top three, as we work with some fantastic drone companies in Seattle. The top 3 cities in the US were Sunnyvale, Woodinville, and Austin.
We can also represent the count of logs as a heatmap of the USA to get a better perspective nationally:
Here's a comparison with countries in Europe on the same scale:
The top 10 countries in this region are Russia, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal. The top 3 cities are Zürich, Odense and Innopolis. It will be interesting to see how these numbers evolve in the years to come, especially as Europe plans to bolster its security and technological investments.
Switzerland’s position is no surprise, considering Zürich is the birthplace of PX4, and has several top drone companies and research labs.
It’s also great to see Odense in Denmark among the top cities, home to the UAS Denmark Test Center at Hans Christian Andersen Airport. We had the privilege of touring the facility as part of a delegation during ROSCon last year.
Simulation is a key tool in the development process, yet it's exciting to see that most uploaded logs are real-world flights. These are more likely to be uploaded to Flight Review for analysis.
It's no surprise that the Holybro Pixhawk 6C is the most widely-used hardware version. It is the latest evolution of the highly successful Pixhawk® flight controller family.
As in our prior blog post, it's interesting to see PX4_SITL, which represents Simulation-in-the-Loop (SITL) flights, emerging as the 4th most frequent hardware version. We also spotted the MODALAI_VOXL2 from ModalAI and the great ARK_FMU_V6X from our friends at ARK Electronics.
The v.1.14.0 stable version was released in October 2023, giving it just enough time to bake and become the most standard version of choice throughout 2024. Outside of this top 10, many of the uploaded logs didn't correspond to an official release, likely originating from forks.
You can click the x-axis labels to be taken to the corresponding release commit in GitHub.
Geofence violations occurred in 0.3% of logs (397 out of 123,227). While a small fraction, these violations highlight the importance of maintaining flight boundaries and ensuring systems are in place to prevent unintentional departures from designated zones, which can be crucial for safety and regulatory compliance.
RC signal loss occurred in 12% of logs (14,833 out of 123,227), underscoring the ongoing challenge of maintaining reliable communication in remote or complex environments. This highlights the need for improved signal resilience and fail-safe mechanisms to ensure mission success and safety.
The most frequent console log warnings related to flight termination being active and the kill switch being engaged. Yaw estimation also seems to be a common culprit, potentially pointing to sensor malfunctions, calibration issues or magnetic interference.
Here are the top 10 warning messages seen across the 123,227 logs. We only counted each warning message once per log, ensuring that repeated log lines did not affect the results. Numbers were replaced with the string NUM to ensure the count remained unaffected by specific values.
The most frequent console log error related to action request messages being lost. These are vital for commanding actions during flight, and their loss can delay or disrupt operations, impacting mission success and safety. Investigating the cause of these losses is crucial to ensure reliable control during flights.
Here are the top 10 error messages seen across the 123,227 logs. We only counted each error message once per log, ensuring that repeated log lines did not affect the results. Numbers were replaced with the string NUM to ensure the count remained unaffected by specific values.
In this post, we shared 10 insights derived from ingesting over 120,000 publicly available PX4 flights from 2024 into Roboto.
Check out our previous posts to learn how you can generate similar statistics and insights from your own logs:
PX4 is an open source flight control software for drones and other unmanned vehicles. The project provides a flexible set of tools for drone developers to share technologies to create tailored solutions for drone applications. PX4 is hosted by Dronecode, a Linux Foundation non-profit. Learn more at: www.px4.io.
Roboto is a data platform built for managing logs from robots, drones, and other autonomous systems. It provides an extensible solution to search, transform, and analyze multimodal log data. Discover more and start using it with your own logs at: www.roboto.ai.
