Altitude R&D Chiappinelli
Boosting your drone development:
Custom flight controllers
About us
Since 2016, we modify the PX4 flight stack for custom needs. We used it on several vehicles including quadrotors, hexarotors, tailsitters, tilt-rotors, tilt-wings, turbojet powered personal vehicle and more!
All these vehicles were tested on a custom version of the Simulator-In-Hardware.
PX4 is free to use and modify under the terms of the permissive BSD license; even for proprietary and commercial applications. It is the choice of many companies, why not you?
PX4 is not owned by us. It is the result of many collaborators across the globe and is open source.
Want to learn how to customize the PX4 code ?
Checkout the PX4 Workshop 1 and Workshop 2, written by Altitude R&D.
Consulting Services
🛩 Flight Controller Customization
We create custom flight controllers for your application. Whether you need a custom driver, a custom command, a custom mode, or a complete redesign of the flight controller, we can do that for you.
🕹 Simulation and Hardware-In-The-Loop
Every modification is tested in a HITL simulation before delivering to the client to ensure the desired behaviour.
We can also implement a model for your custom vehicle in the HITL environment.
Approach
Example project: custom controller for a non-conventional vehicle
1. System analysis and modelling
Your custom vehicle needs a mathematical model. We will develop it for you with a component based approach. We may require specifications and a set of bench test data from your actuators.
At this stage the controller is designed based on the needs of your vehicle and your application.
2. Implementation in a Hardware-In-The-Loop simulator
This model is then implemented in the HITL simulator. The more accurate the bench test data, the closer to the reality the simulator will behave.
3. Controller development
The controller is developed according to your needs. It is then tested in the HITL environment to ensure the desired behavior.
PX4 is a very versatile flight stack design for reusability. It is therefore possible to control a non-conventional vehicle with minimal modifications.
4. Flight tests
Once the code is delivered, we will assist you step by step for the flight tests, ensuring a safe operation and a correct set of control gains.
If you have a team to integrate the system and pilot it, we can assist you remotely along the entire path.
About ethics
🌳 Are you making this world a better place?
Let us know if your project is in the humanitarian sector. We would love to assist you on it!
👥 Are you open to share your project?
We believe in the power of open source ecosystems. If you choose to share your project with the open source community, Altitude R&D will help you with that.
🕊No weapon policy
For ethical reasons we choose not to work with weaponized systems. We thank you for your understanding.
Meet the team
Romain Chiappinelli
MEng McGill
Flight Control Expert
Founder of Altitude R&D
Testimonials
Jacob Apkarian
Founder and CEO of Coriolis g
"Romain's work ethic coupled with his excellent technical understanding of advanced control systems, mathematical modelling, simulation, and PX4 constituted the elements required for a successful project."
Meyer Nahon
Co-director of Aerospace Mechatronics Lab
"Romain doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Rather with his wealth of knowledge, he applies and adapts what's needed for the problem at hand."
Christopher Black
Lead Engineer at Mayman Aerospace
"Working with Romain is a pleasure. He does an excellent job taking complex problems and turning them into real world solutions. He developed a revolutionary control system remotely during a pandemic."
Rama Commuri
CTO of Redon Systems
"Romain's understanding of PX4 & Flight controls and his systematic approach in understanding customer's requirements helped us develop a critical module for our Drones in a very short time."
Contacts
We offer consulting services for clients worldwide.
We provide in-person assistance in Europe.
We can do a lot remotely! The JPA speeder controller was developed remotely and tested successfully with our supervision!
romain@altitude-rd.com
Altitude R&D Chiappinelli is a registered company in Zürich, Switzerland
