Cloud APIs offer more capable models, but latency and connectivity requirements make them a non-starter for autonomous operations in the field. We walk through the decision criteria and what we gave up to run entirely on local hardware.
Modern autopilots handle flight autonomy well. What they don't provide is mission reasoning — understanding what "inspect turbine 7" means and translating it into a flight plan. This is the gap AeroCognition is built to close.
An honest account of selecting the frame, motors, ESCs, flight controller, and compute stack. What we got wrong the first time, what we changed, and the state of the build after the first power-on.