The Janus ground control console mid-mission: a wide satellite map with a telemetry coverage overlay, mission docks on both sides, and the drone analyzing a landing site

Search and rescue, from one console.

Project Janus plans the search, flies the mission, and proves what it found, even with no bars.

Every mission, accounted for.

One screen holds the whole operation: terrain, radios, aircraft, verdicts, and the log that backs them up. No scrolling, no second laptop, no guesswork.

Offline-firstTerrain-awareEnergy-honestLink-guardedLanding CNN
Dual-droneGo/No-Go pre-flightEvidence recordingSim to field

Plan a search in seconds.

Drop a circle or trace a polygon, and Janus does the rest. Watch one simulated sortie run from the first click to the battery swap: terrain pulled, a hundred sites scored, the mission flown, the site confirmed, and the aircraft brought home.

The imagery gets read before anything flies.

A landing-safety CNN classifies satellite imagery for every candidate site at plan time: forest, water, structures, open ground. The aircraft only ever launches toward a vetted list.

GCS site analysis running: the landing CNN classifying a satellite image patch of forest, with roughness, obstacle, water and slope bars beside it

Fly the mission hands-off.

Autonomous transit at terrain-aware altitudes, with an energy model honest enough to bet a return leg on. Hold, Divert, and Return stay one click away the whole time.

The drone en route to site S1 at 95% battery, mid-leg between home and target, with Hold, Divert and Cancel-return-home controls active

See every landing verdict.

On arrival the aircraft grades the site itself, checking LiDAR slope and roughness plus camera obstacle detection and surface classification. You get the evidence, not just the answer.

Onboard landing analysis of site S1: LiDAR surface slope and roughness checks and camera obstacle and surface classification checks, all passing

Watch the coverage light up.

Deployed as a radio repeater, the aircraft renders its real VHF footprint over the map, so ground teams see exactly where their handhelds will reach.

A rendered repeater coverage heat map over the search area while the drone relays signals from a confirmed site

Keep-outs that mean it.

Fire and restricted zones drawn on the map become exclusion geofences uploaded to the flight controller itself, so the aircraft’s own failsafes respect them, not just the software.

FIRE operations mode with a red fire keep-out zone and a grey restricted zone beside the operating area, and zone controls in the mission dock

It tells you when to worry.

Battery at the return threshold, a link going soft, an un-commanded mode change: the banner goes up, the tone sounds, and the aircraft is already doing the safe thing.

An orange alert banner warning that the battery has reached the return threshold while the drone flies its return leg home at 17% battery

Maps that work with no bars.

Pull terrain and imagery for any area ahead of time and manage it like the asset it is. In the field, Janus never assumes a connection.

The offline terrain manager dialog, ready to download a new area for offline use

A defensible record.

Timestamped mission log, confirmed sites with scores, telemetry logs and video: everything an incident commander needs to stand behind the search afterwards.

A full mission log after a long repeater deployment: link margins, coverage renders and battery events, with confirmed site S1 in the dock

And the rest of the kit.

Two team tabs in the mission dock, each with its own aircraft and telemetry

Two aircraft, one console

Independent link stacks, telemetry and missions per team. Switch with one click.

The settings dialog with SIM, SITL and FIELD connection profiles

Sim → SITL → Field

The same console flies a simulation, a software-in-the-loop autopilot, or the real aircraft.

The idle console showing radios, link budget, coverage and field weather cards

RF planning built in

Radios, link budget and propagation coverage live on the dash, tuned to your actual hardware.

Go/No-Go pre-flight

Failsafe parameters, EKF health, vibration and wind graded into one verdict before launch.

Observer console

Forward live telemetry read-only to incident command. They watch in their own tools.

Evidence recording

Inbound telemetry logs and HEVC video record automatically with every real flight.

Field weather on the dash

Wind, gusts and humidity beside the launch button, where the decision gets made.

One-click export

The whole mission, from sites and log to link quality and chips, lands in a folder you can hand over.

Built for the way your team operates.

A search-and-rescue mission in flight

SAR

Full search planning, autonomous site work and repeater coverage for ground teams.

Fire operations with keep-out zones

FIRE

Operating areas with hard keep-outs: fire and restricted zones pushed to the aircraft as geofences.

The minimal manual-mode console: just the map and top bar

MANUAL

A clean observer map when the mission is being flown by hand, with nothing between you and the terrain.

The fine print.

What does it fly?

Anything that speaks MAVLink. Janus flies ArduPilot aircraft in GUIDED mode, including takeoff sequencing, terrain-aware legs, failsafe handling and RC-override etiquette.

Does it need the internet?

No. Map tiles, satellite imagery and elevation data cache to local storage, and the offline terrain manager pre-pulls whole areas. The radios are yours; the console assumes nothing.

How does it know the aircraft can get home?

Two ways at once: a conservative linear battery model, and a measured one built from live power draw, cruise cost per kilometre, and wind-adjusted return pricing. The stricter of the two wins, and tailwinds are never credited.

What about terrain?

Every leg flies level at the maximum terrain under its path plus a safety clearance, computed from elevation data with conservative sampling. Legs that can’t clear terrain or the ceiling are refused at plan time.

What keeps the radio link safe?

A propagation model renders telemetry coverage from home over the whole mission area. Sites without solid margin are excluded from planning, and legs below threshold are refused, with an explicit operator override if you know better.

Can I train on it?

Yes. The full mission loop runs in simulation, on synthetic terrain, with the same UI and the same decisions. Everything on this page was captured from a simulated flight.

What does it run on?

The console runs happily on a Raspberry Pi 5. The aircraft carries an ArduPilot flight controller and a Jetson companion for onboard perception; a Microhard IP mesh carries telemetry, video and the side channel.