October 23–25, 2026
Brookstreet Hotel · Ottawa, Canada
Three days of talks, live demonstrations and collaboration around open-source autonomous vehicles.
ArduPilot is an open-source autopilot project for drones and other autonomous vehicles. Its developer team, partner organizations, researchers and users are gathering in Ottawa. UTILI is pleased to help host the conference, with Saturday afternoon flight demonstrations at Area X.O.
Hosted by
Driving to the venue at 525 Legget Drive in Kanata?
Surface parking is free, adjacent lots are available on weekends, and parking passes for the underground parking garage are available at our registration table. With all the construction, please watch carefully so you don’t miss the turn into the venue.
Make the most of your time in Ottawa
Looking for food near Brookstreet, airport and local transit, or places to explore? Check out our interactive visitor guide.
ArduPilot 2026 Developer Conference Food, Landmarks, Transit, and Museums/Galleries →
Before the Conference
Arriving Early? October 19–22
Informal developer days at Brookstreet Hotel: work sessions, demo preparation and hangouts.
BlueTides After Dark
Thursday, October 22 · 17:00–20:00
Big Rig Brewery · 101A Schneider Rd #3, Kanata
Pizza and beer on Blue Robotics! Optional developer bingo, with a Blue Robotics gift card prize.
Register for BlueTides After Dark
Friday, October 23
ArduPilot Updates and BVLOS Flights
Brookstreet Hotel
Baked Goods, Fruit and Refreshments
Introduction and Opening Remarks
Nathaniel Mailhot / Jeremy Laliberté · Faculty of Engineering and Design, Carleton University
Uninhabited Aircraft Systems Training, Innovation and Leadership Initiative
ArduPilot Systems Update
Andrew Tridgell · ArduPilot
BVLOS Operations Development in Canada
Steven Bellingham · NAV CANADA / Craig Bloch-Hansen · Transport Canada
Morning Break
Traffic Systems Standards
Lindsay Mohr · AIRmarket
ArduPilot in SAIT’s Curriculum
Allister Schreiber · Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT)
Lunch
PANEL · Path to Compliant BVLOS Operations, for Canada and Beyond
Dan Moss · Manna
Tim Tuxworth · ArduPilot / SmartFleet.systems
Lindsay Mohr · AIRmarket
Carlos Ruella · Transport Canada
Lightning Talks
14:00 Omar Husain · AVSS
MAVLink-ATAK Interoperability
14:10 Marc-Antoine Leclerc / Université de Sherbrooke
Disturbance-Rejection Control and Side-Thruster Integration
14:20 David (“Buzz”) Bussenschutt / ArduPilot · MissionPlannerRust, Zephyr HAL, and RP2350
14:30 Hideyuki Fujikawa · Drone Japan · Arivia: Water-Surface Drone Shows with ArduPilot
Enabling Long-Range BVLOS Operations at Scale
Alexandre Borowczyk · Shearwater Aerospace
Afternoon Break
ArduSub: Folklore, Features and Future
Eliot Sandberg / Willian Galvani · Blue Robotics
Canadian Space Agency Balloon Program
Vlad Artyshchuk · Canadian Space Agency
Thrust WSH – Jet Powered Water Speed Record Attempt
Peter Hall · ArduPilot / KHUnmanned
Saturday, October 24
Copters, Swarms, and Live Flight Demos
Brookstreet Hotel · Afternoon at Area X.O
Baked Goods, Fruit and Refreshments
Aerial Photography Copter Update
Randy Mackay · ArduPilot
Copter Scripted Acrobatics
Andy Piper · FOSS UAV
High-Speed Landing Design
Isaac Tunney & John Bass · Université de Sherbrooke
Morning Break
ArduSwarm
Kwaku Richter
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2026 contributor.
Collective Return Home in Skybrush
Tamás Nepusz · CollMot Robotics Ltd.
Lightning Talks
11:30 Patrick Hinchey / Fliight Technologies · Meala Flight-Log Database
BVLOS in Canada: Regulations and Technology
Tim Tuxworth · ArduPilot / SmartFleet.systems
Lunch
Bus Loading
15 minutes reserved before departure
24b · Live Flight Demonstrations at Area X.O
Bus transfer provided · Board at Brookstreet 12:45–13:00 · Return approximately 18:00
⚠ Area X.O attendee instructions: buses, gate access, parking and waiver
The final flight sequence and aircraft lineup are subject to change.
Scripted Copter Acrobatics
Presenter: Andy Piper · FOSS UAV
Aircraft: Armattan Marmotte5 variants + iFlight Nazgul5
- Scripted acrobatics with two quadcopters.
- GPS / optical-flow switching with a guarded quadcopter.
- Proposed “throw to VALT in FPV” maneuver after the other flights.
Aerial-Photography Copter
Presenter: Randy Mackay · ArduPilot
Aircraft: Aerial-photography copter + EDU650
- Aerial-photography demonstration.
nonGPS Copter
Presenter: Sanket Sharma · ArduPilot
Operator: Randy Mackay · ArduPilot
with DroneJapan
- Autonomous flight without GPS.
- Uses an onboard video camera and preloaded satellite imagery to calculate visual-inertial odometry (VIO) and absolute-position commands.
ArduPilot Methodic Configurator
Presenter: Amilcar do Carmo Lucas · IAV GmbH / ArduPilot
Platforms: Software-in-the-loop (SITL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) platforms
- Guided vehicle configuration for beginners and professional users, covering the steps required for safe operation.
- Heuristic-based log analysis to identify common configuration issues and suggest solutions, by Omkar Sarkar, a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2026 contributor.
BVLOS, DAA and Geofence Avoidance
Presenter: Tim Tuxworth · SmartFleet.systems
Aircraft: HEEWING T2 Cruza / MakeFlyEasy Mini Striver / Hexsoon EDU650
- BVLOS / DAA, including crossing traffic and geofence avoidance.
- Network ID traffic feed from AIRmarket FlySafe Live Remote Traffic Management.
Multiuser Web Control over LTE
Presenter: Cameron Fedde, with Charlie Neal · Aero Systems West
Aircraft: Quadcopter
- Multiuser control through a web interface using MAVLink over LTE.
Phoenix Endurance and Thermal-Gimbal Demo (Proposed)
Presenter: Patrick Hinchey · Fliight Technologies
Aircraft: Phoenix + GriffinPro
- Proposed Phoenix endurance and Nighthawk thermal-gimbal demonstrations.
Dual Flight-Controller Operation
Presenter: Siddharth Purohit · CubePilot
Aircraft: CubePilot-powered multirotor
- Dual flight-controller operation using the MCU’s second core.
Remote 1 · 4G Fixed-Wing Demo
Presenter: Alexander Sandström · Remote Aero
Aircraft: Remote 1 · fixed-wing aircraft under 250 g
- Hand-launch.
- Control over 4G through Remote Mission Control.
- Live link-sharing.
- Possible co-piloting from Sweden.
~249(+5)g Fixed-Wing Demo
Presenter: Peter Hall · ArduPilot
- Peter is “mucking about with a ~249(+5)g fixed wing” (his words…).
Sunday, October 25
Software, Hardware & Control
Brookstreet Hotel
Baked Goods, Fruit and Refreshments
Cooperative Multidrone Lift
Leonard Hall · Freespace Operations / ArduPilot
Open-Source Simulation, Sim-to-Real and Companion Computing
Jacopo Panerati · National Research Council Canada
Revived Simulator
George Zogopoulos · Controlled Ascent
Morning Break
AP_Periph / DroneCAN Tooling
James O’Shannessy · SYPAQ Systems · Includes live peripheral demo
Autonomous VTOL Ship Landing
Phuc Nguyen / Youngjong Park · Marine Drone Tech (MDT)
Lunch
Development of a Companion Software: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Patrick Pereira (patrickelectric) + João Antônio Cardoso · Blue Robotics
GNC and Adaptive Control
Ryan Beall · Tilt Autonomy
Lightning Talks
14:00 Gábor Vásárhelyi / CollMot Robotics Ltd. · Skybrush Log Analyzer for ArduPilot
14:10 Sharyat · ArduPilot and Standard 922.07
Using the Other Core: Putting the Cortex-M4 Core to Work
Siddharth Purohit (Sid) · CubePilot
Afternoon Break
Rpanion Companion-Computer Software
Stephen Dade · ArduPilot
Cockpit: Sense and Control (Almost) Anything
Rafael Araujo Lehmkuhl · Blue Robotics
Closing | Thanks for attending and for your contributions to the project!
"Nate/NDev" – Professor Nathaniel Quinn Talis Mailhot – Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Design, the beautiful Carleton University.
To the maintainers, developers, and greater community behind the ArduPilot project, your work has been critical to my success. I could not have achieved this without you.
N. Mailhot – PhD Thesis – Adaptive Weight-Shift Flight Control of Flexible Wing Aircraft
Thesis and chapter publications
The thesis is followed by the five papers corresponding to Chapters 3–7.
- N. Mailhot, Adaptive Weight-Shift Flight Control of Flexible Wing Aircraft. PhD thesis, Mechanical Engineering, University of Ottawa, 2024. doi:10.20381/ruor-30804.
- M. Abouheaf, N. Mailhot, and W. Gueaieb, “An Online Reinforcement Learning Wing-Tracking Mechanism for Flexible Wing Aircraft”. 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Robotic and Sensors Environments (ROSE), Ottawa, ON, Canada, pp. 1–7, 2019. doi:10.1109/ROSE.2019.8790425.
- M. Abouheaf, N. Q. Mailhot, W. Gueaieb, and D. Spinello, “Guidance Mechanism for Flexible-Wing Aircraft Using Measurement-Interfaced Machine-Learning Platform”. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 69, no. 7, pp. 4637–4648, July 2020. doi:10.1109/TIM.2020.2985553.
- N. Mailhot, T. de Jesus Krings, G. T. Navajas, B. Zhou, and D. Spinello, “uWSC Aircraft Simulator: A Gazebo-based model for uncrewed weight-shift control aircraft flight simulation”. 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Robotic and Sensors Environments (ROSE), Tokyo, Japan, pp. 1–8, 2023. doi:10.1109/ROSE60297.2023.10410672.
- N. Mailhot, M. Abouheaf, and D. Spinello, “Model-Free Force Control of Cable-Driven Parallel Manipulators for Weight-Shift Aircraft Actuation”. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 73, article 2505108, pp. 1–8, 2024. doi:10.1109/TIM.2023.3346524.
- N. Mailhot, T. de Jesus Krings, and D. Spinello, “Automatic Weight-Shift Aircraft Control with Experimental Fly-By-Wire Flights”. In E. Lanteigne and S. Nokleby (eds.), Proceedings of the 2025 CCToMM Symposium on Mechanisms, Machines, and Mechatronics, Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol. 184, Springer, Cham, pp. 200–211, 2025. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-95489-4_16.
Thank You to Our Conference Sponsors
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Schedule subject to change. All times are local to Ottawa.