About AmoebaCopters

For now the only person involved directly is me. However, since this initiative is very new, more people are eventually likely to join. My idea was inspired while working in an MSc group project at The University of Sheffield, where we had to build a rotorcraft using not more than three motors. I tried developing an LQR-based controller for a weird-looking tricopter (uploaded as TricXControlArch, and is open-source), which my team was supposed to use. This was my first exposure to MIMO, which was quite a leap since I wasn't good at control theory during my undergraduate at all, and everything I have done here is self-taught through books and various open lectures. I identified the problems of this LQR eventually after a test with JSBsim, like yaw control, and tried developing a full 12-state LQR, and also an LQR-PID combination with the LQR being the attitude controller and the PID controlling altitude, both being failures. However, after I developed an INDI system for customized tricopters, it seemed to work with a yaw-damper, atleast on simulation. These, however, were not a direct part of the group project, and was completely developed by me in an independent manner, and has not been physically tested with a real copter, so I would strongly recommend against using any of this in a real-life system unless I thoroughly test everything successfully in the real world (which would for now include building 3D printed drones and integrating my autopilot system, flying first tethered and then freely). I'm integrating the INDI to PX4 for the drone that my team and me are building, in order to test it for the first time in a tethered condition. It is similar to DOGEcopter-v4, but has been designed solely by me. Credits for manufacturing goes to my teammates at Sheffield, who if I am permitted by them would be listed in this website soon. My eventual goal is to create an aerospace ecosystem for dynamic scaling, using copters as testbeds to simulate the dynamics of larger aircraft, rotorcraft, and spacecraft. This is a paper of which I am currently preparing the manuscript and simultaneously working. While ugly copters won't fly well, they can be suitable testbeds for control systems. I am currently also designing a physical laboratory for AmoebaCopters.

The entire mathematics is done by me, while software integration like C++ coding and testing is done by Claude. I also use Claude to analyse test results, of course with my own understanding. This is well documented in the commit history, to keep note of which I use an auto-updating LaTeX file. I take full responsibility, while I would also thank Claude by Anthropic for coding and management of files and folders, and making computers easy for everyone.