// the find
makeecat/Peng
A minimal quadrotor autonomy framework in Rust (Mac, Linux, Windows)
Peng is a quadrotor flight simulator in Rust — dynamics, PID control, and trajectory planning in one package, visualized via rerun.io. It's aimed at robotics researchers and UAV hobbyists who want a lightweight simulation environment without dragging in ROS or Gazebo. Works on Mac, Linux, and Windows, which is genuinely rare in this space.
1. Multiple trajectory planners out of the box (minimum jerk, minimum snap, Lissajous, obstacle avoidance) — that's a non-trivial amount of planning primitives for a 'minimal' framework. 2. Optional RK4 integration for dynamics instead of just Euler stepping is the right call and shows the author knows the numerics matter. 3. rerun.io for visualization is a smart choice — it's a proper 3D time-series viewer, not just matplotlib hacks. 4. Published to crates.io with docs.rs coverage, CI, and a YAML config system — this is actually usable, not just a demo.
1. No motor dynamics — thrust is applied directly, which means the simulation won't catch anything related to motor lag, ESC behavior, or rotor aerodynamics. That's a big gap if you're trying to validate a real controller. 2. Hard dependency on rerun-cli being installed and version-matched is friction; version mismatch silently breaks visualization with no graceful fallback. 3. Single quadrotor only — multi-agent simulation is on the roadmap but absent, which limits usefulness for swarm research. 4. No hardware-in-the-loop or MAVLink support, so there's no path from simulation to real hardware without building that bridge yourself.