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2026-10-08

The website is back up and running after we moved our GitHub repo to a new organization. Richard Jinkens, Major Montgomery and Dr. Baek are the organization's owners, and every capstone member has permission to edit the sturdy-canary repo. We are still working only on the 2027 branch.

Project update: moving to AgentCore

Our original plan was to talk to each drone directly over the Cube flight controller's serial connections. Since then we've been introduced to AgentCore, a software framework built for coordinating the Cube controllers, and we're now pursuing that as our communication path instead.

AgentCore solves several problems we were running into with the serial-only approach:

  • Simulation before flight. We needed a way to test our logic without putting the drones in the air. AgentCore gives us that.
  • Talking to every component. Getting information to and from the Cube, the Pi 4 and the KrakenSDR was turning into a lot of custom glue code. AgentCore handles much of that for us.
  • Drone-to-drone links. Instead of relaying everything through the telemetry radios, the drones will talk over Microhard IP radios.

As part of this, each drone's Pi 5 now runs AgentCore and connects to its KrakenSDR Pi 4 over a wired Ethernet link. The Microhard radio will plug into the Pi 5 to link the two drones. The cost of the switch is small: two Microhard radios and one more Pi 5.

What we need

  • Cables, and lots of them. We're working with our mentors to finalize the list. It should be low-cost: mostly cable management, plus USB cables we know carry both power and data, not just power.
  • One more Microhard radio. Last year's group left us two that we can use, but the AgentCore setup needs a third.

Current tasks

  • Lachlan, Trason and Duke are fabricating mounts to hold our components securely on the drone. They're getting the right permissions to use the ECE 3D Printing Lab and the Mech Lab for this work.
  • Lachlan is also managing the website and our deliverables, and has started on the final submission for the semester.
  • Richard and Sean are integrating the Pi 4s with the Pi 5s, AgentCore and the KrakenSDR. AgentCore is now installed on the follower drone's Pi 5, and the Ethernet link between the Pi 5 and the Kraken Pi 4 is up. Next is getting that link solid on both drones.
  • Jack is focusing on the ethics paper due before Thanksgiving. He's also working on the algorithm that repositions the drones while they're in the air, and on test plans we want to run before the semester ends.