🔶 Meet the Volunteers (Thread)

[rroche]

Helping the community grow

The open-source projects have seen significant progress in the past 12-months, with a growing list of commercial adopters we are seeing a massive increase in users. The maintainer teams can’t keep up. After all, they are also volunteers.

The current team structure is simple, just a thin layer of coordination on top of the projects; we like to minimize process and maximize action.

Current Team Structure

Core Maintainers

They are responsible for their projects, and every road leads to them eventually. Core maintainers are typically the project authors, and some also include strong community supporters.

Sub Component Owners

As the name suggests, they are responsible for parts of the codebase, and they have vast domain experience. Not all projects have sub-component owners; some projects are smaller and just getting started (e.g., MAVSDK ).

Community Management

Organizing the community and rallying the developers, making sure there are clear priorities per project, clear next steps, and releases are happening. Strong advocates for the open-source community, looking into the “meta” discussions. Making sure the community health is always right.

What’s next

For years this structure has been enough, we have made significant progress, and a lot of commercial adopters have deployed our open-source projects in production environments, trusting us for mission-critical services and products. We plan to keep growing and to increase vendor adoption by leveraging our active community.

Today I’m happy to introduce a new team in the community

Community Volunteers

A group of community members who want to support the open-source projects, formed by willing individuals who want to contribute their time. There are no technical requirements for this position, and anyone is welcome.

Community Managers are leading this team. They are supported by the sub-component owners and the core maintainers.

The main areas where we are initially focusing on are:

1. Inbound Messages

Inbound messages to our projects are growing exponentially.

• Primary Channels: Forums, Slack and GitHub
• Mission: Read, Label, Identify potential risks, distribute

2. Flight Testing

The amount of flight hours we need to cover in our projects is very high, and we have a very high bar for safety and performance. Whenever weather conditions limit the Dronecode sponsored flight test team based in TJ, Mexico, this team will help support the community.

• Globally distributed volunteer team.
• Initially, volunteers are offering their vehicles.
• Mission: Have a backup flight test team with Multicopter, Fixed Wing, and VTOL support.

3. Component Owner Support

The component owners are also volunteers, they also have their responsibilities outside the open-source community, and sometimes they can’t get to Issues/PRs, or attend the weekly dev call.

• Initially, cover Issues/Questions and raise anything critical to component leads.
• Mission: have at least 2-3 team members per component who can assist the leads.

Meet the Volunteers

I think it’s best we allow the Volunteers to introduce themselves below (as a comment), they will be granted a “Volunteer” badge on our forums, they will be easily identifiable in Discuss, Slack, and, Github

Thanks you

Thanks to this awesome community that has helped shape the future of the UAV industry. Let’s make the next years as impressive as the last eleven.

This is a follow-up to this post.

we are looking for contributors for PX4, QGC, MAVSDK, MAVLink

@rroche Thanks for the heads up. I am glad to be part of the PX4 community. I have provided my small support in different parts in the past. Although my commitment has become very limited compared to before, I am willing to provide as much help as I can to this awesome community. I will need your direction on how to go next. Thanks.

[dakejahl]

I’M MR. MEESE-- …ahem. I’m Jacob Dahl and I have been working with PX4/UAVs for the last 2 years. I like to work closer to the hardware: ASICs, MEMs, RTOS, and other low level stuff. I want to help in order to learn, improve, and help others avoid the same frustrating mistakes I made when I was just starting out. I think it’s super cool that flight controller firmware is available for free, and I’d like to be part of that and keep it that way.

[ryrocha]

Hi everyone! I’m Ryan Rocha and I’m very excited to be a part of such a wonderful community!

I am currently a graduate student attempting to develop a system that will facilitate autonomous in-flight docking capabilities between two MAVs. My graduate work has given me experience integrating PX4, MAVLink/MAVROS, and OpenCV in both a simulated and real-world environment for vision based autonomous control of a MAV.

I am fascinated with autonomy and especially its application in multirotor technology. I think PX4 is doing amazing things for the field of autonomous MAVs. The community has been a huge help in my graduate work and I would appreciate the chance to give back. I also believe this will be a great learning opportunity!

Username (Github/Slack): ryrocha

Thanks everyone!

[crisdeodates]

Hi PX4 family,

I am Cris, residing in Italy as part of my research work. I started involving with aerial robotics during my master degree program and for numerous hobby projects afterwards. Currently, I am doing research in Underwear robotics. Still, my passion in aerial vehicles, keeps me working in this domain and related projects during my free time.

I have joined this community to explore without borders, learn without limits and eventually to contribute without hesitation. I have a positive belief that all those who join will be gaining a plethora of knowledge, skills and experience.

In github, slack and respective forums, I go by the username @crisdeodates

Thanking you all,
Cris

[mcsauder]

Hi everyone and thanks @rroche for kicking off this thread!

I am Mark Sauder, I’ve been working in px4 for the past few years and unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles for more than 15. My career focus has been in unmanned systems engineering and I’ve been consulting for clients that leverage PX4 for a number of years. Because of the development work and collective expertise that has been available to me in projects leveraging PX4 I try to give back by helping out as much as I can.

My github and slack usernames are easy to remember, first and middle initials and last name: mcsauder Feel free to reach out to me if you need a hand getting some work accomplished.

Thanks for all of the help everyone here has given over the years and congratulations to everyone as well in keeping it such a strong and vibrant open source project!

• Mark C. Sauder

[krunal2103]

Hello Everyone!
I am Krunal Chaudhari and I am very happy to be a part of this wonderful community.

I am a Robotics Engineer by profession and I work for a startup developing aerial robots for Industrial Inspections. I have always been interested in developing autonomous aerial systems for different applications. I have been following PX4 since some time now but i have been actively working with it since about a year and a half.

Thanks @rroche for starting this thread and this new phase of volunteers. Looking forward to actively being a part of it!

[Ayshine]

Hello Everyone!
I am Ayşin Taşdelen, I’ve been a software engineer for a little over 10 years now. I’m working as a Senior Software Engineer at Altinay Robot Technologies R&D department. My main responsibility is to apply AI and ML to industrial robots. Mostly computer vision projects like 3D vision and visual navigation but Sensor Fusion with ML is on the way.

I have a little full Stack of drone software experience on PX4 based classroom project. As I discover and learn more I would like to support other drone coders. I am always open to help others on their projects and learning experience, I supported AI/ML online learning communities before, I would love my help to live longer by supporting PX4 community in any way I can.

Username (Github/Slack/Discourse): Ayshine

Thanks!
Ayshine

[antonerasm]

Hi everyone!
My name is Anton Erasmus and I am really excited to start contributing.

I am finishing my masters in electronic engineering this year. During my masters I worked with the PX4 stack as I had to modify the controllers to suit the needs of my project. I gained experience understanding and modifying PX4, as well as developing with Gazebo and ROS.

I would like to contribute to be part of the open-source community, extending and improving the codebase together as I see a lot of potential and the only way to fully utilise this potential is with more hands on deck. : )

My username on slack, the forums and Github is: antonerasm

I look forward to work with the community.

[Vibhu_Tripathi]

Hi Everyone!

My name is Vibhu Tripathi. I’m the part of an early age startup Vizzbee, based out of India
I’ve been following this awesome community since last year. It is because of PX4, that we can develop drone-based solutions quite easily.
I feel like it’s my responsibility to help this community with whatever I can.

Slack - @vibhu
Github - @not_vibhu
(also I like making memes).

[junwoo0914]

Hi! My name is Junwoo HWANG.
I’m in first year of my ‘bachelor’. Majoring in electrical engineering.

I have been working with a hobby drone softwares such as iNav and betaflight for the last 2 and a half years.

I’ve learned about Pixhawk through ETH Zurich ASL’s Atlantik Solar paper’s wiring diagram 3 years ago.

I think px4 and pixhawk is an amazing software with such a strong community, and fantastic codebase. I am thrilled with the fact that I will somehow contribute something to this community.

I want to learn from everyone else, and share the same enthusiasm with all of you! See you guys in Pull Requests / Dev calls!

Github handle: junwoo091400
About me: beginnerjunwoo.wordpress.com/about-me/

[SalimTerryLi]

Hello everyone. I’m Hangfan Li (SalimTerryLi), a college student major in CS.
I have tried to build vehicles with PX4 and RasPi since 2017. My original motivation is to build a vehicle with continuous version iteration on Linux based devices. PX4 provides such a convenient platform.
It is our responsibility to help PX4 grows better. I am a beginner in this field, benefiting from PX4 a lot. I would like to contribute anything I can do.
GitHub & Slack @SalimTerryLi

[Pedro_Fillastre]

Hi there,
I’m Pedro Fillastre, I start working with PX4 early this year, I’ll just to work in financial systems, now I’m manly work in the automobile industry, IOT control loops and connected vehicles, px4 it was really useful in tests and I would like to give back some of the time that px4 and the team always willing to help save me.
Slack : pedro.fillastre
Github : pedrogasg
Here : pedro_fillastre

[farhang]

Hello all here is Farhang Naderi, I am a robotics enthusiast who is interested in UAVs as well. I have been working in Drone development and am in Charge of a Drone project at our university. I have worked in the Medical Sterilizers field before so I am familiar with sensors and the way to calibrate them. It’s been since the last year which I started to work with Pixhawk and started everything from scratch to have a drone flying.

This big community is growing more and I had the chance to be noticed by @rroche 's invitation to join the volunteer teams. So I am trying to be a part of it and I hope I can be helpful.

Slack: @Farhang
Here: @farhang
Github: farhangnaderi

You can find me on LinkedIn,
I do really thank the community

[TThing]

Hello. I am Mark West. I am a computer engineer, so hardware and software. Previously I developed several systems for the US DOD at an R&D lab, most notably an underwater autonomous vehicle. I am currently a SW dev at Microsoft and do volunteer drone work for local emergency services. I have a complete hardware lab at home, working mostly with orientation and communication devices. I have built a few UAV applications/platforms which are targeted at emergency services but have scope beyond just that. Among them:

1. A Mavlink<>DJI translator which runs as a ROS node on-board. For this I ported PX4 from source to run as a ROS node on Linux (Ubuntu). This allows more or less full control from GCS to a DJI600, including missions and telemetry. The obvious reason to bother with this is that I everything else I write can be platform (PX4 or DJI) agnostic.
2. An SDK and apps (iOS and Android and Win) that function as both a ROS node and a GCS, which routes Mavlink encoded as ROS messages over TCP or UDP or AX25. This allows a single control plane and a single radio for both ROS and Mavlink, making payload/platform integration really clean. It also integrates with Hololens for AR visualization of payload data.
3. Various ROS stacks around visual detection/tracking, Lidar, 3D imaging, etc.

You can see some videos here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=telemething

I’m really impressed with PX4 and all of Dronecode and I hope that I may make a meaningful contribution.

[rolyexpress]

Hey fellas,

I’m a recent graduate with a background in Computer Engineering. I have experience building a few Pixhawk and race quadcopters. My main interest is to help with development in a way where I could become more proficient in understanding the whole dev world. I’m also currently studying for my first HAM Radio license. Reach out for anything!

[szobov]

Hi there,

I’m Sergei Zobov, an engineer, a former fullstack web developer and now working on a robotic project.
I’ve been working with PX4 and ROS stack for the last 1.5 years, and I really want to be a volunteer in order to help this wonderful community, spend my time on good and useful things and improve hard and soft skills.

My nickname is szobov on discuss, slack and github/gitlab.

Thank you community.

[jlecoeur]

Hi!

I am Julien Lecoeur, 31 years old, based in France. I started designing, building and piloting RC airplanes when I was 10. Programming and flying drones was the next logical step.
I have recently received a PhD in flying robotics at EPFL, Switzerland. During my stay in the lab, I have co-developed an autopilot that was used by several research projects, however, as it was supported by a tiny team and missed an open-source community, it quickly became difficult to keep up with the fast development pace of this field. The decision was made to transition to PX4 about two years ago, and I have been contributing since then!
One of my latest use of PX4 is a project with Yves Rossy (aka Jetman), that you get a glimpse of in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_eIiyav6n0 It is a lot of fun!

Cheers,
Julien

[langrind]

Hi!

I’m Nik Langrind. I’m a software engineer with decades of experience in networking and embedded systems. I’ve been doing development on a large hex “eCopter” project for about a year now, and I think PX4 is a ton of fun and super cool! I’m happy to contribute in any way I can.

I have a BSEE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but that was 33 years ago and I don’t remember a thing they taught me.

Later,
Nik

[raul]

Hi,

I’m Raul Alvarez, I have a BEng in electronics and I’ve been working with embedded systems and IoT for the last 9+ years. I also have experience building and flying multirotors with Ardupilot and PX4 for the past 5 years. I have a small company that offers services in embedded systems and educational robotics (including drones); we work mostly with university students teaching them short courses in the aforementioned areas.

I am from an underdeveloped country that needs to leverage technologies like robotics and AI to tackle some of our fundamental economical and sociological issues; that’s why we are committed to teach young students about these technologies and help them to be prepared to work for the industrialization of our country.

We are using extensively the tools of the PX4 ecosystem, happy to be of any help!