Francisco Ferreira
Rockstart Developer at Percepto - Autonomous Drones
Loures, Lisbon, Portugal
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolFrancisco Ferreira is a seasoned embedded systems and backend developer with 13 years of experience focused on UAV firmware and ground control software, currently working as a Rockstart Developer in Lisbon. He has a long track record of hands-on contributions to the high-profile ArduPilot project—fixing bugs, refactoring C++ libraries, adding hardware drivers, and improving documentation across core repos and the Mission Planner GCS. As a frequent freelancer for autonomous drone companies, he bridges firmware, hardware integration and tooling, shipping drivers and platform support for real-world drones like Bebop2 and Disco. His work as ArduPilot’s Bug Master and technical writer shows a rare mix of code-level fixes and attention to user-facing documentation. Francisco studied Information Systems and Computer Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico and is notable for combining strict low-level C++ discipline with practical IoT/hardware communication experience.
13 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Information Systems and Computer Engineering, Information Systems and Computer Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico
English, Portuguese
Github Skills (20)
c-language10
restructuredtext10
autopilot10
sphinx10
hardware-interface10
rs10
integrations10
sys10
system-integration10
embedded10
csharp10
cprogramming-language10
documentation10
dotnet9
content-management-system9
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
ArduPilot/ardupilot_wiki
May 2017 - Dec 2020
Repository for ArduPilot wiki issues and wiki-specific website infrastructure.
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:43 commits, 27 PRs, 36 pushes in 3 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Francisco primarily contributed to the ArduPilot wiki by correcting and updating documentation. Their commits fixed broken links, corrected image paths, added information about new partners, and removed outdated content. They also added new sections and links to existing pages to improve the user experience and maintain the accuracy of the documentation.
ardupilotinfrastructuretiddlywiki5autopilotwiki
ArduPilot/ardupilot
Oct 2015 - Jun 2019
ArduPlane, ArduCopter, ArduRover, ArduSub source
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Embedded Systems Engineer
Back-end Developer & Embedded Systems EngineerContributions:2 reviews, 264 commits, 537 PRs in 3 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Francisco primarily contributed to the ArduPilot project by updating and correcting documentation related to battery monitoring parameters. Their work involved modifying C++ code files, specifically in the AP_BattMonitor and AP_Rangefinder libraries, to reflect changes in hardware and functionality. They also made code adjustments to correct and improve methods within the AP_Math library. Additionally, they fixed build warnings related to strict-aliasing rules in the AP_GPS_SBP2 driver and improved the overall code maintainability by refactoring and simplifying existing functions.
arducopterauvdronerovuas
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