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What is GT Cloud Robotics?

A Georgia Tech Vertically Integrated Projects team building open-architecture systems that work with any autonomous robotics platform — land, air, or sea.

Most software systems are trapped in a single domain. Drone GCS software rarely handles ground robots, marine systems can't visualize UAVs, and mixing platforms usually means juggling multiple apps with incompatible data formats. This fragmentation forces developers to waste months on repetitive integration or maintain entirely separate codebases for every new vehicle they introduce.

The OpenC2 protocol takes a different approach: a core protocol with an extension architecture. Other systems only need to wrap their protobuf to plug in — once that's done, they're part of the ecosystem permanently.

At the heart of the framework is a gateway using an envelope protocol — common fields like position, heading, and status, plus extension payloads for vehicle-specific data. Adding a new platform (Skydio, Husky, BlueBoat) means writing one extension, not forking the codebase.

                        VEHICLE ↔ GATEWAY                    GATEWAY ↔ UI
                       (protobuf/UDP multicast)              (JSON/WebSocket)

┌─────────────┐                           ┌─────────────┐                    ┌─────────────┐
│   Vehicle   │                           │   Gateway   │                    │     UI      │
└──────┬──────┘                           └──────┬──────┘                    └──────┬──────┘
       │                                         │                                  │
       │◀───── GatewayHeartbeat (1/sec) ─────────│                                  │
       │                                         │◀────────── hello ────────────────│
       │                                         │─────────── welcome ─────────────▶│
       │                                         │            (fleet, manifests,    │
       │                                         │             availableExtensions) │
       │                                         │                                  │
       │────── VehicleTelemetry ────────────────▶│─────────── telemetry ───────────▶│
       │────── Heartbeat (capabilities) ────────▶│                                  │
       │                                         │                                  │
       │◀───── Command ──────────────────────────│◀────────── command ──────────────│
       │────── CommandAck ──────────────────────▶│─────────── command_ack ─────────▶│

Still in beta, still useful

OpenC2 is in beta but already stable enough to back multi-domain research — stop fighting protocols and focus on autonomy.

Explore

  • Course Home

    Start here for an overview of the course structure, schedule, and expectations.

    Go to course

  • OpenC2 Protocol

    Dive into the envelope protocol and extension architecture powering the gateway.

    Read the spec

  • Technologies

    The cloud-native tooling, messaging patterns, and frameworks we build on.

    See the stack

  • Modular Autonomy Framework

    How MAF composes behaviors, planners, and controllers across heterogeneous platforms.

    Learn more