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ARGUS User Manual

Glossary

A dictionary of terms used across ARGUS. Grouped by domain — ARGUS UI, TACLINK / LiveKit internals, DJI Cloud API, aviation and miscellaneous.

ARGUS UI

  • Tile — a resizable panel in the operation console. Stream tiles, HUD tiles, map tiles and diagnostic tiles all share the same grid. See Tiles overview.
  • TACLINK — ARGUS’s real-time fabric. Carries video, audio, DRC, PTT and data channels between participants. Also the name of the TACLINK tab in the streams panel, which lists every live peer and every track on the session.
  • Master caution — the top-bar alert aggregator that surfaces geofence breaches, HMS alerts, copilot findings and operational warnings. See Master caution.
  • Copilot — the per-op AI assistant. Watches telemetry and video, raises alerts into master caution, answers operator questions and writes the mission report.
  • VMS — Vehicle Management System. Internal name for ARGUS’s drone-fleet layer.
  • Panoptic — the ARGUS multi-tile layout mode optimised for high-angle / wide-area observation missions.
  • Auto-stream — automatic start of a live-video push from a DJI dock when preconditions are met. See Auto-stream.

TACLINK / LiveKit internals

ARGUS’s TACLINK fabric is built on LiveKit. You will occasionally see these terms in logs, debug tiles and support escalations.

  • Room — a single TACLINK session, scoped to one operation.
  • Participant — an identity inside a room (human operator, drone peer, ingress, egress agent).
  • Track — a single audio or video stream published by a participant. Drones typically publish multiple — wide, zoom, thermal.
  • Ingress — a server-side inbound publisher. DJI docks publish via WHIP-ingress; older docks via RTMP-ingress.
  • WHIP — WebRTC-HTTP Ingress Protocol. Standard-based push protocol used by DJI docks for low-latency video.
  • Egress — a server-side subscriber that exports tracks as HLS, RTMP or recorded MP4.
  • Agent — a server-side participant that speaks LiveKit’s participant protocol. ARGUS’s copilot and recording bots are agents.

DJI Cloud API

  • Dock — a DJI ground station that houses and charges an aircraft and relays telemetry and video over MQTTS.
  • SN — serial number. Every dock and aircraft has a unique SN.
  • DRC — Dynamic Remote Control. The low-latency flight-control channel that lets ARGUS pilot a DJI aircraft remotely.
  • HMS — Health Management System. DJI’s aircraft-health telemetry, surfaced as codes with severity levels.
  • WPML — Waypoint Markup Language. DJI’s XML format for waypoint missions.
  • FlySafe — DJI’s geofence enforcement. Runs inside the aircraft flight controller.
  • Thing Model — the JSON schema describing a DJI device’s capabilities (sensors, services, events).
  • update_topo — the DJI Cloud API topology update that reports which aircraft is currently mounted on a dock.
  • Custom Flight Area — an operator-defined polygon pushed to the aircraft via FlySafe, either as a DNFZ (dynamic no-fly zone) or GFZ (geofence zone — stay-inside).
  • SEI — Supplemental Enhancement Information. Per-frame metadata embedded in the H.264 bitstream; ARGUS uses it to transport AI detections alongside video.

Aviation

  • AGL — Above Ground Level. Altitude relative to the terrain directly below the aircraft.
  • MSL — Mean Sea Level. Altitude relative to the geoid.
  • RTH — Return To Home. Autonomous flight back to the takeoff point or home point.
  • POI — Point Of Interest. A geo-tagged point the aircraft can orbit or frame.
  • LZ — Landing Zone.
  • GSD — Ground Sampling Distance. The real-world distance represented by one pixel of a photogrammetry capture.

Other

  • E2E — End-to-end encryption. See E2E encryption.
  • ODM — OpenDroneMap. The open-source photogrammetry pipeline ARGUS uses for mapping missions.
  • PTT — Push To Talk. Broadcast-style radio-comms channel in the op console.
  • CAS — Collision Avoidance System. Obstacle-sensing aircraft feature.
  • YOLO11 — one of the AI detection models ARGUS runs on video frames. Fast, good general-purpose object detector.
  • SAM — Segment Anything Model. Segmentation model used for per-pixel masking.
  • DETR — Detection Transformer. Alternative detection model used for harder small-object cases.
  • SVS — Synthetic Vision System. HUD overlay that renders terrain and obstacles from a 3D map.
  • AR — Augmented Reality. Live-video overlays (labels, vectors, waypoints) composited on top of the stream.