NextPilot Flight Control System

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NextPilot Flight Control System is a powerfull, scalable and advanced autopilot, which is designed to be easily used in education, research, and industry.

1. Excellent performance. RTOS based on RT-Thread V5.0.2 with active community and rich components, such as FINSH, DFS, ULOG etc.

2. More powerfull. main function ported from PX4 V1.14.2, which developed by world-class developers from industry and academia, powered all kinds of vehicles from racing and cargo drones through to ground vehicles and submersibles.

3. High scalability. has high-quality scalable software architecture(uORB, PARAM, AIRFRAME), loose coupling(Automatic initialization mechanism), modularity(a FOLDER, a MODULE FOR a FUNCTION), is easy to tailor and expand.

4. High efficency. support MATLAB/Simulink Model-Based Design, which enable fast and cost-effective development of dynamic systems, including control systems, signal processing systems, and communications systems.

5. Support variety of simulation, such as Model-in-Loop, Software-in-Loop, Hardware-in-Loop, Simulation-in-Hardware.

6. Support most widely used open-source hardware Pixhawk FMUv5 and hardware designed by NextPilot.

7. Supports all mainstream compiling tools such as GCC+VScode(Windows/Ubuntu), Keil and IAR.

System Architecture

Supported Vehicle

• Multirotor: quad, six, oct, hex
• Fixed Wing: plane
• Hybrid VTOL: standard, tailsitter, tiltrotor

NextPilot use airframe set Vehicle parameters and start modules.

Supported Function

Controller

• Flight Mode: manul, arco, att, alt, pos; takeoff, land, mission, loiter, rtl, follow; offboard
• Safety: geofence, low power, gnss loss, rc loss, datalink loss, engine failure, etc

Estimator

• Gyro fft:
• Sensor Vote:
• Wind estimator:

Telemetry

• mavlink
• uavcan

Simulation

• SITL: qemu + SIH
• HITL: stm32 + SIH

Supported Hardware

open-source hardware:

• CUAV Pixhawk V5+ (FMUv5), bsp code
• CUAV Pixhawk V6X (FMUv6x), to be done
• Holybro Pixhawk 5X (FMUv5X), to be done
• Holybro Pixhawk 6X (FMUv6X), to be done

designed by NextPilot:

• fcs-v1, flight control system
• ins-v1, integrated navigation system
• ads-v1, air data system

key design point:

• mcu: STM32F765 and STM32F753
• sensors: gnss/gps/rtk, IMU(gyro, accel), baro, mag, airspeed
• actuator: pwm, can
• battery: smart, analog
• radio control: s.bus
• notification: led, tunes, safety_button

Document

User Manual

Getting Started | Flight Mode | Simulation

Develeop Guide

Getting Started | System Startup | Build Tools

The main IDE/compilers supported by NextPilot are:

• KEIL MDK
• ARM GCC + VSCode, Windows | Ubuntu

License

NextPilot follows the BSD 3-Clause License. It's completely open-source, can be used in commercial applications for free, does not require the disclosure of code, and has no potential commercial risk.

Contribution

If you are interested in NextPilot and want to join in the development and become a code contributor, please refer to the Code Contribution Guide.

Thanks for the following contributors!