SDR-017//TECHNOLOGY

One stack, from photon to decision.

Four capability cores — CUSTOS, PRAETOR, IGNIS, ASTRUM — built as one system: sensing feeds estimation, estimation feeds autonomy, autonomy answers to one operator.

THE FOUR CORES
CUSTOSIN DEVELOPMENT

Autonomy core for uncrewed platforms. Edge perception, on-board reasoning, and resilient flight across degraded and denied links — the guardian process every airframe runs.

CLASSAutonomy / flight
DOMAINAir · Coastal
LINKDegraded-tolerant
PRAETORIN DEVELOPMENT

Command and control layer. Fleet tasking, telemetry aggregation, and human-on-the-loop authority from a single ground station — one operator, many aircraft.

CLASSC2 / ground
SPANMulti-vehicle
AUTHORITYHuman-on-the-loop
IGNISCONCEPT

Clean-propulsion architecture for aerospace and maritime. Hybrid-electric and zero-emission drive engineered for endurance over noise.

CLASSPropulsion
CYCLEHybrid · ZE
TARGETEndurance
ASTRUMRESEARCH

Sensing layer. Multi-spectral Earth observation built around SPAD arrays with in-house calibration pipelines, tuned for low-light edge inference — photon-starved scenes read on board, at dusk, in smoke.

CLASSSensing / EO-IR
ARRAYSPAD · multi-spectral
INFERENCELow-light · on-edge
THE AUTONOMY LOOP
01 SENSE

ASTRUM multi-spectral sensing — SPAD arrays with in-house calibration, tuned for photon-starved scenes: dusk, smoke, moonless sectors. Inference happens on the aircraft, not in the cloud.

02 ESTIMATE

A navigation filter that earns its trust: optical flow, barometer and magnetometer carry the estimate through GNSS blackouts, and innovation gating rejects spoof-style jumps outright.

03 DECIDE

CUSTOS mission autonomy — patrol, detect, divert, orbit, resume. Contacts are confirmed and geolocated without a human in the loop; authority stays with the operator.

04 ACT

A cascade flight controller that flies on the estimate, not on hope — the same control law runs in the engineering simulator and on the aircraft.

VALIDATED IN SIMULATION, ENFORCED IN CI

Every claim on this site traces to the engineering simulation suite in the programme repository — a 6-DOF physics model of the NIGHTJAR flying the same autonomy stack. The suite runs on every commit, across seeded randomised conditions, and the build fails if the aircraft stops meeting its numbers.

IGNITION → ALERT
< 40 s, validated across seeds
GNSS BLACKOUT
0.78 m peak error over 20 s coasting
GEOLOCATION
< 0.31 m CEP from autonomous orbit
GATE
Sim suite runs in CI on every commit