ARK Electronics has built the ARKV6X-RT around the Pixhawk Autopilot Bus open standard, producing a modular flight controller that separates compute from carrier board and ships with PX4 Autopilot out of the box. The system-on-module measures just 36 x 29 x 5 mm (1.4 x 1.1 x 0.2 inches) and weighs 5 g (0.18 oz), slotting into any PAB-compatible carrier to pick up its physical ports and power inputs. At the heart of the board is an NXP i.MX RT1176 running a 1 GHz Arm Cortex-M7 core alongside a 400 MHz Cortex-M4 core with 2 MB of RAM, though PX4 currently leaves the secondary core unused.

The sensor layout is where the ARKV6X-RT gets interesting. Three IMUs sit on independent SPI buses, each with its own power rail and data-ready line: an InvenSense ICM-45686 as the primary, an InvenSense IIM-20670 for navigation and fallback, and an ST LSM6DSV80X contributing its ±16g accelerometer channel, with its ±80g high-g element unused. A Bosch BMP390 barometer and ST IIS2MDC magnetometer round out the suite. A 1 W closed-loop heater tied to the ICM-45686's die temperature keeps sensor readings stable in cold conditions. The controller foregoes internal flash entirely, instead executing from a 64 MB external octal NOR device over FlexSPI1, with PX4 occupying the first 4 MB. An NXP EdgeLock SE051 secure element and FM25V02A FRAM handle cryptographic operations and parameter storage respectively.

PX4 itself is a BSD 3-Clause licensed autopilot stack hosted by the Dronecode Foundation, a Linux Foundation collaborative project, making the entire firmware side vendor-neutral and community-governed. The PX4 source runs on NuttX RTOS and supports MAVLink and DDS/ROS 2 integration, giving builders a direct path from flight controller hardware into the broader open source robotics ecosystem. PX4's own documentation for the board lists both NuttX and Zephyr RTOS as supported operating systems for the i.MX RT1176 platform. That optionality extends across the wider FMUv6X-RT standard the ARKV6X-RT is built to: NXP's own MR-VMU-RT1176 reference design implementing the same standard has also drawn support from the ROS-oriented Cognipilot stack, and a pull request against Apache NuttX proposes bringing the platform's clock tree, LPUART1 pinmux, and octal flash configuration upstream, reusing board bring-up data PX4 already maintains.

The PAB standard itself means the ARKV6X-RT is not locked to ARK's own carrier. ARK does offer a companion carrier board with dual power inputs, 100 Mbps Ethernet, dual CAN, GPS and telemetry ports, eight PWM outputs, and USB-C, but any PAB-compliant board will work.

Connectivity on the module side includes 12 FMU PWM outputs (with eight more available through PX4IO on supported carriers), eight serial ports, four I2C buses, four SPI buses, two CAN buses enabled by default, 100BASE-T Ethernet, USB, and RC input. The carrier board measures 74 x 43.5 x 12 mm (2.9 x 1.7 x 0.5 inches) and weighs 22 g (0.78 oz). The ARKV6X-RT product page is live, though ARK Electronics has not yet published pricing or an availability date.