Our goal with this project is to autonomously mimic the soaring habits of birds, in particular their aptitude for finding what we know of as "thermals" in the atmosphere. These thermals are locations where warm air is rising, and with a sufficiently large thermal, orbiting inside it can allow a bird or glider to gain altitude without flapping its wings or using its motor.

To complete this task we separated into two teams: one mechanical oriented team to create a glider light and yet robust enough to find and take advantage of these thermals, and a second more computer oriented team to add thermal soaring capability to current autopilots.

This is the code for the computer side of the project. The complete solution for working with the Pixhawk is provided here and the Python side of the Piccolo solution as well (the C++ portion is currently not online since the Piccolo is not open-source).

Note: see docs/ for more documentation.

To connect to the USB telemetry radio for live flight:

./run_live.sh

or, to run APM Plane in a crrcsim simulation:

./run_simulation.sh

To connect to the C++ code that connects to the Piccolo for both simulation and for live flight:

python3 soaring.py -p -d