Open Arsenal

LAVE (Low-Altitude Vehicle Experiment) is an open-source research platform designed to study human-scale hover in the narrow, high-energy space just above the ground. Instead of treating vertical lift as a finished transportation product, LAVE treats it as an open scientific problem: how distributed electric thrust behaves, fails, stabilizes, and interacts with human balance when constrained to sub-meter altitudes. The system is intentionally built for transparency, reproducibility, and measurement rather than optimization for commercial use.

At its core, LAVE uses a distributed propulsion architecture with multiple ducted lift units arranged to provide balanced thrust and redundancy. Each unit is independently monitored and replaceable, allowing researchers to study thrust asymmetry, control response, and failure modes in real time. The structural system is modular and rebuildable, built around a bolt-together frame with integrated safety shielding, impact protection, and mounting points for experimental instrumentation.

The platform’s control system is designed around real-time stabilization and sensor fusion, combining redundant IMUs, downward LiDAR, and optical flow tracking to maintain stable hover in a tightly constrained envelope. On top of this, LAVE introduces an AI and control research layer that allows experimentation with adaptive control strategies, reinforcement learning environments, and simulation-to-hardware validation. These systems are not hidden abstractions—they are observable, testable, and designed to fail safely so their behavior can be studied.

LAVE also places strong emphasis on telemetry and data transparency. Every test run captures full system state data, including thrust output, battery performance, thermal behavior, vibration, and control inputs. This is extended further through a dedicated black box recorder system that preserves high-fidelity flight data for post-test reconstruction and failure analysis. The goal is not only to make hover work, but to understand exactly why it works—or doesn’t—in measurable detail.

Finally, the project integrates manufacturing, fabrication, and open hardware principles directly into its design philosophy. All CAD files, firmware, simulation models, and build documentation are intended to be openly accessible and reproducible, enabling contributors to fabricate, modify, and test their own versions of the platform. LAVE is not a finished vehicle—it is a continuously evolving experimental system aimed at turning vertical lift into something that can be studied openly, iterated on, and understood collectively.