# Micro Air Vehicle Link (MAVLink) in a Nutshell: A Survey

## TL;DR

This paper provides the first comprehensive survey and tutorial on the MAVLink protocol, detailing its features, versions, security aspects, and potential for Internet connectivity in unmanned systems.

## Contribution

It offers a systematic overview of MAVLink, compares its versions, and discusses its security and Internet integration capabilities, filling a gap in existing literature.

## Key findings

- MAVLink is widely used in autopilot systems like ArduPilot and PX4.
- The protocol supports monitoring, control, and Internet integration for unmanned systems.
- Security considerations are crucial for MAVLink deployment.

## Abstract

The Micro Air Vehicle Link (MAVLink in short) is a communication protocol for unmanned systems (e.g., drones, robots). It specifies a comprehensive set of messages exchanged between unmanned systems and ground stations. This protocol is used in major autopilot systems, mainly ArduPilot and PX4, and provides powerful features not only for monitoring and controlling unmanned systems missions but also for their integration into the Internet. However, there is no technical survey and/or tutorial in the literature that presents these features or explains how to make use of them. Most of the references are online tutorials and basic technical reports, and none of them presents comprehensive and systematic coverage of the protocol. In this paper, we address this gap, and we propose an overview of the MAVLink protocol, the difference between its versions, and its potential in enabling Internet connectivity to unmanned systems. We also discuss the security aspects of MAVLink. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first technical survey and tutorial on the MAVLink protocol, which represents an important reference for unmanned systems users and developers.