Fusion Engineering on using Rust for drone flight controllers

corrode.dev

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I interviewed Fusion Engineering about using Rust for drone controllers. Some things surprised me:

- Their approach is closer to game development than I expected; same focus on predictable performance.

- They run their main loop at 1kHz on Linux. Hardware is a Compute Module 4 from Raspberry Pi.

- Non-software engineers on their team picked up Rust quickly. That's not what you usually hear about Rust.

- They can handle a rotor failing mid-flight. The drone keeps flying.

They open-sourced some interesting crates too. Worth checking out if you're into embedded Rust. Links in the show notes.

> their main loop at 1kHz on Linux

So, the camera is not a part of the main loop?

Good question. I asked Jakub, and he said they don't currently use camera feed in their flight controller. The video feed is routed outside the flight controller through a telemetry module.

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