IronTrack

High-performance open-source Flight Management System for aerial survey. IronTrack replaces fragmented legacy toolchains with a single unified Rust engine from planning desk to aircraft cockpit.

What It Does

IronTrack generates terrain-aware, geodetically precise flight plans for photogrammetric cameras, LiDAR sensors, and corridor surveys. It ingests global elevation data, computes survey geometry, optimises flight line ordering, and exports directly to autopilot-native formats.

Who it's for: Survey operators, photogrammetry engineers, and UAS service providers who need sub-centimetre geodetic accuracy in their flight planning without stitching together spreadsheets, GIS plugins, and manufacturer apps.

Proof-of-concept adopter: Eagle Mapping.

Key Capabilities

• Terrain-aware planning — Copernicus GLO-30 DSM with automatic tile fetching. Per-waypoint AGL adjustment maintains GSD and overlap over ridges and valleys.
• Precision geodesy — Karney geodesic solver (15 nm accuracy), Karney-Krueger 6th-order UTM, dual-geoid lookup (EGM96/EGM2008). PhantomData compile-time datum safety.
• Terrain-following trajectories — Elastic Band energy minimisation + cubic B-spline C2 smoothing with mathematically guaranteed clearance (convex hull property).
• Multiple mission types — Area grids, corridor offsets (1/3/5 parallel lines), LiDAR point density planning.
• Procedure turns — Six Dubins path types with clothoid (Euler spiral) transitions for smooth, flyable curves.
• Route optimisation — Nearest-neighbour + 2-opt TSP heuristic with Karney geodesic cost matrix.
• Multi-format export — 3D GeoPackage (LINESTRINGZ + R-tree), RFC 7946 GeoJSON, QGroundControl .plan, DJI .kmz.
• Networked daemon (v0.4) — Axum REST API + WebSocket telemetry server with NMEA parsing, USB serial manager, and mock telemetry mode.

Quick Start

Requirements

• Rust 1.75+ (stable)
• No external C libraries required (rusqlite uses bundled SQLite)

Build

git clone https://github.com/Saaquin/IronTrack.git
cd IronTrack
cargo build --release

Usage Examples

Query terrain elevation:

irontrack terrain --lat 49.2827 --lon -123.1207

Plan a photogrammetric survey:

irontrack plan \
  --min-lat 49.0 --min-lon -123.1 \
  --max-lat 49.1 --max-lon -123.0 \
  --gsd-cm 3.0 --sensor phantom4pro \
  --terrain --optimize-route \
  --output survey.gpkg --geojson survey.geojson

Plan a corridor survey:

irontrack plan \
  --kml centerline.kml \
  --corridor --corridor-lines 3 \
  --gsd-cm 5.0 --sensor mavic3 \
  --output corridor.gpkg

Start the FMS daemon:

irontrack daemon --port 8080 --mock-telemetry

Output

Open .gpkg files in QGIS, import .plan files into QGroundControl, or drag .geojson files into geojson.io for quick preview. DJI .kmz files load directly into DJI Pilot.

Architecture

IronTrack is a 4-layer system. The Core Engine (this repo) is complete through v0.3; the daemon layer is in active v0.4 development.

Layer	Technology	Status
Core Engine	Rust (synchronous, rayon)	v0.3.1
Network Daemon	Axum/Tokio, REST + WebSocket	v0.4 in progress
Trigger Controller	Embedded Rust no_std (STM32/RP2040)	Planned v0.8
Glass Cockpit	Tauri 2.0 (Rust + WebView)	Planned v0.6
Planning Web UI	React + MapLibre GL JS	Planned v0.7

Module Map

src/
+-- main.rs              # CLI (clap) -- terrain, plan, daemon, ask
+-- geodesy/             # Karney geodesic, UTM, EGM96/EGM2008 geoid
+-- dem/                 # Copernicus GLO-30 tile cache + TerrainEngine
+-- photogrammetry/      # Flight lines, corridor, LiDAR, sensor geometry
+-- trajectory/          # Elastic band, B-spline, pure pursuit
+-- math/                # Dubins paths, TSP routing, Kahan summation
+-- network/             # Axum REST/WS server, NMEA, serial manager
+-- gpkg/                # GeoPackage (SQLite + R-tree spatial index)
+-- io/                  # GeoJSON, KML, QGroundControl, DJI export
+-- datum.rs             # Altitude datum conversion (EGM2008/EGM96/WGS84/AGL)
+-- types.rs             # Coordinate types, WGS84 constants, SoA layout

Documentation

The docs/ folder contains 52 numbered research documents covering the mathematical and engineering foundations. See docs/README.md for a themed index.

The GitHub Wiki provides accessible overviews for each subsystem: geodesy, terrain, flight planning, and the daemon API.

Running Tests

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy -- -D warnings
cargo test

License

IronTrack Core Engine is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. Trigger controller firmware (separate repository) is MIT licensed.

Copernicus GLO-30 DEM data is provided by the European Space Agency under the Copernicus programme. Attribution is automatically included in all exported files.