autonomy-payload : a ROS-based stack for cooperative aerial robot autonomy

License

Written by the Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, USA.

Pursuant to 17 USC 105, this work is not subject to copyright in the United States and is in the public domain.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. Currently supports MAVLink-speaking autopilots, particularly those running ArduPlane and the ardupilotmega message set.

Description

A collection of ROS nodes for perception, path planning, safety monitoring, etc, and interfaces to the autopilot and other networked aircraft and ground control stations. Originally designed to be run from a companion computer (e.g., RPi or ODroid) onboard a UAV using an ArduPlane-based autopilot (e.g., APM or PX4).

Requirements

Note: Typically this software is installed using a script (see deploy/odroid-installer.sh or the acs-installer repository). The following instructions won't generally be used and are only provided for reference.

This is currently being developed against ROS Hydro on an Ubuntu-esque system. For best compatibility, use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or newer (Xubuntu, etc should be fine as well).

You will need the following ROS packages for your distribution:

sudo apt-get install ros-hydro-ros-base ros-hydro-sensor-msgs ros-hydro-robot-pose-ekf

See your distribution's ROS documentation for install instructions. The short version, which generally works:

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update
echo "source /opt/ros/hydro/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source /opt/ros/hydro/setup.bash

In addition, to interface with MAVLink-based autopilots, you will need:

sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

To install MAVLink for just your user (recommended):

cd
git clone https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink.git
cd mavlink/pymavlink/
python setup.py build install --user

You must also install the autopilot_bridge (mavbridge) separately from the autonomy-payload. See below for details.

Optionally, you can set permissions for normal users to update the date and time, and disable NTP, so the companion computer time is set from autopilot GPS when the autopilot bridge node starts. This is a good thing if you plan to use the EKF state estimator:

sudo chmod u+s /bin/date
sudo update-rc.d ntp disable
sudo service ntp stop

Installation

Note: Typically this software is installed using a script (see deploy/odroid-installer.sh or the acs-installer repository). The following instructions won't generally be used and are only provided for reference.

To install and build the software:

mkdir -p ~/acs_ros_ws/src/
cd ~/acs_ros_ws/src/
catkin_init_workspace
cd ~/acs_ros_ws/
catkin_make
echo "source ~/acs_ros_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/acs_ros_ws/devel/setup.bash
cd ~/acs_ros_ws/src/
git clone # Path to autonomy-payload repository
git clone # Path to autopilot_bridge repository
cd ~/acs_ros_ws/
catkin_make

Note that this also builds the common libraries in the ap_lib folder. These may be used by non-ROS programs; see utils/*.py for examples.

To run, edit autonomy-payload/ap_master/launch/master.launch as needed, then run:

roslaunch ap_master master.launch id:=AIRCRAFT_ID name:=AIRCRAFT_NAME

replacing AIRCRAFT_ID with an aircraft-unique numeric ID (right now, constrained to 8-bit unsigned ints, so roughly 1..254). Likewise, replace AIRCRAFT_NAME with a (preferably unique) friendly string name, up to 16 characters.