Fully autonomous fixed-wing aerobatics

After months of work, we have finally achieved fully autonomous fixed-wing aerobatics using SF-GVFs on SO(3). We’re still working on the paper, but the flight results are already too exciting not to share.

In the video below, the aircraft follows a path defined directly on the attitude manifold, generating aggressive aerobatic maneuvers without prescribing a spatial trajectory. The resulting controller is singularity-free, robust to disturbances and airspeed variations, and lightweight enough to run on a microcontroller.

These first flights demonstrate the potential of manifold-based guidance for autonomous aerobatics, enabling highly dynamic maneuvers while maintaining a compact and efficient onboard implementation.