Open-source flight simulator, autopilot controller, and monitoring tools for the Makani airborne wind turbine project.
Makani is the open-sourced software suite from the Makani airborne wind turbine project, providing a complete flight simulator, autopilot controller, visualizer, and monitoring tools for kite-based wind energy systems. It enables simulation, testing, and control of commercial-scale airborne wind turbines, capturing the full software stack used in the M600 flight tests.
Researchers, engineers, and developers working on airborne wind energy, autonomous flight systems, kite power, and renewable energy innovation who need advanced simulation and control capabilities.
It offers a rare, production-proven codebase for airborne wind turbine control and simulation, with comprehensive tools for flight testing, data analysis, and system monitoring that can accelerate development in the renewable energy sector.
Makani was a project to develop a commercial-scale airborne wind turbine, culminating in a flight test of the Makani M600 off the coast of Norway. All Makani software has now been open-sourced. This repository contains the working Makani flight simulator, controller (autopilot), visualizer, and command center flight monitoring tools. Additionally, almost all avionics firmware is also included, albeit potentially not in a buildable state, due to the removal of some third-party proprietary code. We hope that this code will be inspirational and useful to the kite-based windpower and wider communities.
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Includes autopilot controllers for hover, transition, and crosswind flight validated in real M600 flight tests, providing reliable algorithms for autonomous wind energy systems.
Offers a full flight simulator with configurable parameters via the Python-based system, enabling extensive testing of airborne wind turbine behavior under various conditions.
Features an OpenGL-based real-time visualizer and webmonitor tools for system state observation during simulation and flight, crucial for debugging and operational oversight.
Covers firmware for winch, ground station, motors, and more, providing a complete hardware-software integration example for renewable energy hardware development.
Some avionics firmware is not buildable due to removed third-party proprietary code, and the project is no longer updated since Google's closure, limiting direct use and support.
Requires Debian Stretch or Docker, with visualizer issues on macOS and reliance on specific scripts, making installation and running cumbersome for modern environments.
Heavy documentation in PDFs and scripts, with no active community, means users must invest significant time to understand the codebase and adapt it for other purposes.