Prospective GSOC student

Hi guys! My name is Sahil Tapiawala, I am a student of BITS Pilani, India currently doing my bachelor’s thesis at Singapore University of Technology and Design in the bio-inspired robotics and design Lab (brd.sutd.edu.sg). We build soft robotic biomimetic stingrays. These stingrays use Teensy 3.2 atm and I have some experience with these. I was wondering if we could have an Ardupilot version for an Underwater bot, because there are similar motions (conceeptually at least, oc course the use of soft materials along with DC/Servo motors replaces propellors). I would love to work on such a topic, also, I found the following projects quite enticing-

Improved Object Avoidance for Multicopters and Rovers including adding occupancy grid
work on 3D aerobatic support for fixed wing aircraft
and Improve flight control for Single Copter or Coax Copter to bring it to the same level of performance of other multicopters

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Hi Sahil, welcome!

The stingray project sounds very interesting! I see that you posted on GSCO gitter, which is great. As Tridge said there, Ardupilot supports submarines, so talking to the Ardusub lead maintainers about a possible GSOC project would be a great way to start.

Also be aware that you can submit several Ardupilot GSOC proposals, if you have ideas on more than one project : Google’s official position is that up to five proposals can be submitted. That said submitting more than 2, possibly 3, is a bit risky, as Google tends to frown on too many and would rather have fewer high quality and detailed proposals, vs say 5 that might be too general and not as good. In other words depth is preferred over breadth, so is quality over quantity.

Hi Olivier,

I have started talking to Jacob, and he’s given me some directives to work on. Regarding other topics is it better to communicate via the forum, the Gitter channel or the google group.

I would definitely like to know more about the three topics mentioned, they are equally enticing. Though I have had prior experience in doing 3D aerobatics but I don’t think that’d be consequential when writing code to do so.

I read through the ardupilot GSOC ideas list and the details for the three projects, but I am still a bit confused as to where to start from. Could you please help me w.r.t. that?

Thanks
Best,
Sahil

This is way too late of a reply, sorry. I am just realizing now that I never hit reply on the following and the response just sat there. Anyways here it is:

Sahil, the Gitter channel is probably the best for quick responses., here or google group is ok for longer conversations.

As to where to start, your best bet is to gather as much information as you can on the ideas that interest you, and start thinking in terms of the proposal(s) you’d submit to contribute.