Copter, Plane, Rover, AntennaTracker, or Sub software runs on a wide variety of embedded hardware (including full blown Linux computers), typically consisting of one or more microcontroller or microprocessor connected to peripheral sensors used for navigation.

Ground Station software, used for programming or monitoring vehicle operation, is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android.

The ArduPilot project earliest roots date back to late 2007[11] when Jordi Munoz, who later co-founded 3DRobotics with Chris Anderson, wrote an Arduino program (which he called "ArduCopter") to stabilize an RC Helicopter.

That same year Munoz, who had built a traditional RC helicopter UAV able to fly autonomously, won the first Sparkfun AVC competition.

The years 2011 and 2012 witnessed an explosive growth in the autopilot functionality and codebase size, thanks in large part to new participation from Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell and HAL author Pat Hickey.

While early versions of ArduPilot used the APM flight controller, an AVR CPU running the Arduino open-source programming language (which explains the "Ardu" part of the project name), later years witnessed a significant re-write of the code base in C++ with many supporting utilities written in Python.

[19] Fall of 2015 again saw a key event in the history of the autopilot, with a swarm of 50 planes running ArduPilot simultaneously flown at the Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL) team at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Within this time period, ArduPilot's code base was significantly refactored, to the point where it ceased to bear any similarity to its early Arduino years.

ArduPilot is jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using the Internet (discourse based forum, gitter channel) to communicate, plan, develop and support it.

[20] The flexibility allows for support of a wide variety of frame types and sizes, different sensors, camera gimbals and RC transmitters depending on the operator's preferences.

The Mission Planner (Windows) ground control station allows the user to easily configure, program, use, or simulate an ArduPilot board for purposes such as mapping, search and rescue, and surveying areas.