aerial-kit

A control stack for aerial robots covering multirotors and fixed-wing aircraft: airframe capabilities, actuator allocation/trim, 6-DOF and point-mass dynamics models, controllers (PID/LQR/MPC, and an L1 + TECS fixed-wing autopilot), and lateral/longitudinal guidance laws -- all pure numpy/scipy, no ROS and no matplotlib dependency.

It's the aerial_kit package inside the aerial-kit repo, a quadcopter-to-general-aerial-robotics control stack -- there, it's the shared layer imported by both a standalone Python simulator and ROS 2 flight nodes so they don't duplicate control code.

What's in it

• aerial_kit.types -- SimState, ControlTarget, Capabilities, Wrench, CommandKind, Waypoint
• aerial_kit.interfaces -- Controller, DynamicsBackend, Planner ABCs
• aerial_kit.registry -- a pluggable component registry (register_airframe/register_controller/etc., create_* factories)
• aerial_kit.airframes -- Airframe ABC, MultirotorAirframe (mixer-driven quad/hex/ octo), TwinWingAirframe (elevon + differential-thrust allocation, trim)
• aerial_kit.dynamics -- 6-DOF multirotor dynamics, point-mass dynamics, and a hand-rolled 6-DOF fixed-wing model with a flat-plate-blended lift curve, drag polar, and moment derivatives
• aerial_kit.controllers -- PID/LQR/MPC position controllers, and FixedWingL1TECSController (L1 lateral guidance + TECS-lite longitudinal control + coordinated-turn attitude PID)
• aerial_kit.guidance -- l1_bank_command, tecs_command as standalone functions

Quick start

from aerial_kit.registry import register_builtin_components, create_airframe, create_controller

register_builtin_components()
airframe = create_airframe("quad")
controller = create_controller("pid")
print(airframe.capabilities)

register_builtin_components() here registers only what lives inside aerial_kit itself (airframes, controllers) -- it has no ROS or matplotlib dependency and does not know about any host application's own dynamics backends or planners. A host application (like sim_py in the parent repo) registers its own backends/planners into the same registry alongside this.

Status

Early and actively developed. Be clear-eyed about what's actually verified:

• Multirotor (quad/hex/octo airframes, PID/LQR/MPC): verified, working. This is the path flying on real hardware in the parent project.
• Twin-motor wing (TwinWingAirframe, FixedWingL1TECSController, L1/TECS guidance): under development, simulation-only. Not flown on any hardware. Its 6-DOF aero model uses plausible placeholder coefficients, not a fitted model of any specific real airframe, and its guidance gains are validated only in the specific simulated scenarios its own test suite covers -- treat it as a research/simulation component, not something to fly as-is.

License

MIT