Tello ROS driver

ROS driver used in the course MTRX5700 - Experimental robotics @ The University of Sydney. This driver was forked from https://github.com/TIERS/tello-driver-ros. We have updated the driver to be compatable with ROS Noetic which uses Python3 only. Other changes may also be implemented to meet course requirements.

Installation

If you don't have it, create your workspace and clone this repo

cd catkin_ws/src
git clone --recursive https://github.com/ACFR-RPG/tello-driver-ros
git clone https://github.com/ACFR-RPG/camera_info_manager_py

Install dependencies

sudo apt install ros-noetic-codec-image-transport python-catkin-tools python3-dev python3-pip
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install https://github.com/damiafuentes/DJITelloPy/archive/master.zip

Build the workspace

cd ..
catkin init
catkin build
source devel/setup.bash

Launch for Tello with its own Wi-Fi AP

• Turn on Tello drone
• Connect to drone's WiFi access point (TELLO_XXXXXX)

Then launch the driver

roslaunch tello_driver tello_node.launch tello_ip:="192.168.10.1"

If you run into decoding errors, please try tello_node_decode.launch instead

ROS Node - Tello Node

Subscribed topics

• /tello/cmd_vel geometry_msgs/Twist
• /tello/emergency std_msgs/Empty
• /tello/fast_mode std_msgs/Empty
• /tello/flattrim std_msgs/Empty
• /tello/flip std_msgs/Uint8
• /tello/land std_msgs/Empty
• /tello/palm_land std_msgs/Empty
• /tello/takeoff std_msgs/Empty
• /tello/manual_takeoff std_msgs/Empty
• /tello/throw_takeoff std_msgs/Empty

Published topics

• /tello/camera/camera_info sensor_msgs/CameraInfo
• /tello/image_raw sensor_msgs/Image
• /tello/imag/raw/h264 h264_image_transport/H264Packet
• /tello/odom nav_msgs/Odometry
• /tello/imu sensor_msgs/Imu
• /tello/status tello_driver/TelloStatus

Parameters

• ~/tello_driver_node/connect_timeout_sec
• ~/tello_driver_node/fixed_video_rate
• ~/tello_driver_node/local_cmd_client_port
• ~/tello_driver_node/local_vid_server_port
• ~/tello_driver_node/stream_h264_video
• ~/tello_driver_node/tello_cmd_server_port
• ~/tello_driver_node/tello_ip
• ~/tello_driver_node/vel_cmd_scale
• ~/tello_driver_node/video_req_sps_hz
• ~/tello_driver_node/altitude_limit
• ~/tello_driver_node/attitude_limit
• ~/tello_driver_node/low_bat_threshold

Manual Control

The drone subscribes to geometry_msgs/Twist messages that can be used for manual control. Install the teleop_twist_keyboard node:

sudo apt install ros-noetic-teleop-twist-keyboard

And run it with:

rosrun teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard.py cmd_vel:=/tello/cmd_vel

Video Glitch Filtering

Glitch will appear if the connection between the tello and your device is not good. A filtering mechanism is added. To apply this, go to /nodes and read the instruction

IMU

The update rate of the IMU on tello is 15Hz. It is too low for any Visual-Inertial estimator like (VINS-Mono or Orb-SLAM3)