SKYWARDEN
An autonomous 7" drone that patrols the garden and deters birds on its own.
SKYWARDEN is a 7“ freestyle-frame drone repurposed as an autonomous garden sentry. ArduPilot handles flight control and mission planning; a Jetson Orin Nano riding onboard runs a YOLO model trained to pick out birds against the garden’s foliage in real time, entirely offboard of any ground station.
On detection, SKYWARDEN breaks its patrol pattern, closes distance to the target at a safe standoff, and triggers a non-harmful deterrent before resuming its route — no human in the loop for the common case.
Current state
Patrol routing, onboard inference, and deterrent triggering all work in isolation. The remaining work is fusing them into one mission state machine and hardening detection against false positives from wind-blown foliage.
Field Notes
SKYWARDEN — First Autonomous Patrol