This repo hosts gazebo worlds for various drone scenarios and various drone configurations. This Repo is specifically designed to work with the Ardupilot control system, and utilizes the ardupilot gazebo plugin to allow the ardupilot control software to interface and control the model drone in gazebo.
Come be a part of the growing community of drone application developers! Join the conversation in our discord.
This Repo is part of the Intelligent Quads Software Development tutorial series. Please take a look at the following resources to learn more about how to use this repository.
Intelligent Quads Text Tutorials
Intelligent Quads Video Tutorials
Take a look at these tutorials to setup ardupilot, gazebo and the ardupilot gazebo plugin
Installing Ardupilot and MAVProxy
Installing Gazebo and ArduPilot Plugin
Installing x-term is recommended as it allows the ardupilot sitl interface to run in a terminal that will cleanly close when closing you sitl instance
sudo apt install xterm
This repo contains a couple different gazebo worlds containing various ardupilot drone configurations. The worlds are listed below
droneOnly.world- simple gazebo world containing only a single dronerunway.world- simple gazebo world containing only a single drone on a runwaylidar.world- a simple gazebo world containing a single drone with a 2d lidar sensormulti_drone.world- a simple world containing 12 drones
Each world contains a corresponding launch file. For example to launch runway.world run
roslaunch iq_sim runway.launch
Launch the ardupilot instance by running
cd ~/ardupilot/ArduCopter/ && sim_vehicle.py -v ArduCopter -f gazebo-iris --console
For more information, take a look at the corresponding tutorials here
Quad Planes are a vtol aircraft that uses quadcopter controls in hover and airplane controls in forward flight.
In order to use the gazebo quad plane sim a few files needed to be modified in ardupilot the first is to add the following to the file ardupilot/Tools/autotest/pysim/vehicleinfo.py on line 274. this should be within the Arduplane structure.
"gazebo-quadplane": {
"waf_target": "bin/arduplane",
"default_params_filename": "default_params/gazebo_quadplane.parm",
},
copy the file iq_sim/scripts/vtol-params/gazebo_quadplane.parm to ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/gazebo_quadplane.parm
First terminal
roslaunch iq_sim vtol.launch
Second terminal
sim_vehicle.py -v ArduPlane -f gazebo-quadplane -m --mav10 --console -I0
Recently I have been experimenting with Ardurover for controlling an autonomous boat. Below shows the steps for installing for boat simulation. If you have already installed for quadcopter simulation, then most of the boat installation should already be completed.
First terminal
roslaunch iq_sim boat.launch
Second terminal
sim_vehicle.py -v APMrover2 -f gazebo-rover -m --mav10 --console -L Viridian
This repo hosts a few helpful gazebo models you can use to build upon. Included in this repo are 12 drones which contain the ardupilot plugin. Each ardupilot plugin is staggered such that you can simulate multiple unique aircraft using ardupilot's SITL. For more information please see the iq_tutorial on ardupilot drone swarming
Example drone that has a 2d lidar attached. The lidar plugin publishes a sensor_msgs/LaserScan ROS msg containing return data.
topics
/spur/laser/scan
Example drone with 4 sonars attached in each direction. Each sonar publishes a sensor_msgs/Range ROS msg containing range data.
topics
/drone1/sensor/sonar/back
/drone1/sensor/sonar/front
/drone1/sensor/sonar/left
/drone1/sensor/sonar/right
Example drone with a forward facing camera. The camera published a sensor_msgs/Image ROS msg which can be used to view or do image processing on.
