This is a bit of a crazy idea I have had in my head for the past few weeks. I was thinking it would be interesting to use arudpilot as a control system for a rocket vehicle such as a rocket lander. Obviously, making an actual rocket lander would be a very challenging en-devour to say the least. (something large governments struggle with, it seems). But, I think it might be a fun project to simulate say, the apollo lunar lander in gazebo, and have the lander be guided to the simulated moon surface with ardupilot. I personally haven’t really done any development within ardupilot’s control system, only guidance development from a MAVROS level. It seems like making my simulated lander controllable, would be as simple as defining a new frame within arducopter and using the quadcopter rate, attitude and position controllers. The only other step after that would be to write a thruster plugin in gazebo similar to the motor plugin in gazebo. I was wondering if something similar to this has been attempted before, and any advice on the best ways to maybe start implementing this? Also, I don’t think this would be a problem legally in (US), but this project seems like its getting closer to what a missle control system is and I’m really not too sure where the line is drawn on what is ok to develop.
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Please let me know if you found anything similar.