ArduPilot is the most advanced, full-featured and reliable open source autopilot software available. It is the only autopilot software capable of controlling any vehicle system imaginable, from conventional airplanes, multirotors, and helicopters, to rovers and boats and even submarines. Most recently it has been expanded to support new emerging vehicle types including quad-planes, compound helicopters, tilt-rotors and tilt wings VTOLs.
ArduPilot runs natively on a wide variety of hardware platforms from the very popular Pixhawk flight controller (32bit ARM) to the advanced Intel Aero linux flight controller (see full list here: http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-autopilots.html).
The ArduPilot team is lead by an experienced group of passionate and world class developers from all over the world with expertise in Extended Kalman Filters, control theory, embedded programming, Linux and much more.
A welcoming and friendly group of developers that is happy to share their knowledge with you but also with too many interesting projects to complete on their own. An engaged group of partner companies provides the hardware and financial support for the group. They could use your help!
- Twitter: First we strongly encourage you to thoroughly read the GSOC’s student manual, to become familiar with all details of the program. Note that the student manual also includes general information and tips related to open source “culture”, links to additional resources, and examples of typical proposals.
Next you should start to become familiar with Ardupilot as a developer, if you are not already. Read through the developer section of the wiki, browse through “Learning the code base”, and take a look at the code repository hosted on github.
Read through the suggested list of proposed GSOC projects. Note that these projects are only suggested, and we are all ears should you have your own ideas for a project.
Then engage with the Ardupilot community. There are several ways you can do this:
- Through our chat GSOC gitter channel
- Through our Google Group mailing list. (You will need to first request membership there; Shortly thereafter you will be able to send mail or post.)
- Through our discussion forum: As with the mailing list you can start a topic introducing yourself, your background and ideas to participate for further discussion. Also feel free to join our mumble server to discuss projects, once you have a good idea of what you would like to work on.