ArduPilot is proud to announce that we have been accepted in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2020—the 16th year of the program! This year marks our 4th year in a row participating as a mentoring organization and we plan to make it our best year yet!
Google Summer of Code is a global program organized by Google Open Source, and is focused on bringing more student developers into open source software development. Google sponsors students to work with an open source organization on a 3 month programming project during their break from school.
ArduPilot has been part of the program since 2017 and during the past 3 years students have worked with mentors to develop interesting projects and features that our community is interested in. One of our major goals for GSoC students is that the projects they develop can be reproduced by others in the community so that they become useful to them. An very good example of such project is last years contribution by Thien Nguyen on how to integrate a visual navigation system with ArduPilot. As part of the project Thien published very detailed blogs of every step of his project, that can be easily followed by others to reproduce his work, you can read them starting here: GSoC 2019: Integration of ArduPilot and VIO tracking camera for GPS-less localization and navigation
Another important aspect that we look for on our students is that they are passionate about their project and about continuing the project even beyond GSoC so that they in the future become regular contributors in the ArduPilot community.
The mentors on the ArduPilot side are some of the most experienced developers on the ArduPilot team including Andrew Tridgell (@tridge) and Randy Mackay (@rmackay9). It’s a great opportunity to get hands-on robotics programming experience in a fun environment where you know your work will end up being used by a massive number of users.
Students interested in participating:
First we strongly encourage you to thoroughly read the GSOC’s student Guide , to become familiar with all details of the program. Note that the student guide 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.
- You can find information and how-to guides in both the ArduPilot user wiki and the ArduPilot Developers 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.
Engage with the Ardupilot community. There are several ways you can do this:
- Through our chat GSOC gitter channel
- 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.
The program is fairly competitive and we usually get many more applicants than the team can accept (it takes a fair bit of developer time to mentor the students) so below are some of the things we look for when making the difficult decision on which applications to work with:
- Clear and detailed application explaining how you think the project could be done
- Experience contributing to ArduPilot or other open source projects
- Relevant prior experience
- Understanding of Git and/or GitHub
Important dates for to remember
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February 20th - March 16th: This is when potential student participants (you!) discuss application ideas with Ardupilot community members.
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March 16 18:00 UTC: Student application period begins.
This is the time when you will submit your formal application. More information about the application process will be made available soon. -
March 31 18:00 UTC: Student application deadline
All prospective student applications must be in the GSoC system by this date. -
April 27 18:00 UTC: Accepted student projects announced.
Accepted student proposals will be announced on this date.
You can check out the complete GSoC 2020 timeline on this link.
We are looking forward to all the great proposals for this year. Please help us spread the word!
And remember that
A Dream written down with a date becomes a goal.
A Goal broken down into steps becomes a plan.
A Plan backed by actions makes your dreams come true.