Description

This repository intends to enable autonomous drone delivery with the Intel Aero RTF drone and PX4 autopilot. The code can be executed both on the real drone or simulated on a PC using Gazebo. Its core is a robot operating system (ROS) node, which communicates with the PX4 autopilot through mavros. It uses SVO 2.0 for visual odometry, WhyCon for visual marker localization and Ewok for trajectoy planning with collision avoidance.

Paper

Our paper was presented at the 2019 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) and can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.08022

Video

A video complementing the research paper available here: https://youtu.be/_pWsEVFLKYg

Installation

Prerequisites

The code in this repository was developed and tested on Ubuntu 16.04. It probably will not work on other operating systems or versions.

Install ROS

Open a terminal and then copy and paste the following commands into it. Make sure you copy and execute each command line one by one to avoid missing an installation step.

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://ha.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-key 421C365BD9FF1F717815A3895523BAEEB01FA116
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-desktop-full

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

echo "source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Download source files from Github

cd
git clone https://github.com/szebedy/autonomous-drone.git catkin_ws

cd ~/catkin_ws
git submodule update --init --recursive
sudo apt install ./ros-kinetic-mavlink_2018.9.17-1_amd64.deb

sudo apt install ros-kinetic-mavros ros-kinetic-mavros-extras
sudo /opt/ros/kinetic/lib/mavros/install_geographiclib_datasets.sh

Install additional dependencies for collision avoidance:

sudo apt-get install libeigen3-dev libsuitesparse-dev protobuf-compiler libnlopt-dev ros-kinetic-octomap ros-kinetic-octomap-rviz-plugins ros-kinetic-octomap-ros ros-kinetic-sophus

Download and run PX4 Gazebo simulator

Prepare tools for building PX4

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-argparse git-core wget zip python-empy qtcreator cmake build-essential genromfs -y
sudo apt-get install ant protobuf-compiler libeigen3-dev libopencv-dev openjdk-8-jdk openjdk-8-jre clang-3.5 lldb-3.5 python-toml python-numpy -y
sudo apt-get install python-pip -y
sudo -H pip install pandas jinja2

If all installations were successful, run

cd ~/catkin_ws/px4
make posix_sitl_default gazebo

A window will pop up showing a quadcoter. Close the window, go back to the terminal and press Ctrl+C

Build this ROS package by

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

Run following command so that rosrun can find our new nodes in your offboard_control package

source ./devel/setup.bash

Download and install SVO 2.0

Download the binaries using the following form: http://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/svo2download.html

Then, extract and install it based on the provided instructions in install.pdf. For consistence with this readme, please name the overlay workspace ~/svo_ws/ instead of ~/svo_install_overlay_ws/

Finally, copy the calibration and launch files into the build directory of SVO

cp -r ~/catkin_ws/vio_calibration/svo_aero ~/svo_ws/src/rpg_svo_example/svo_ros/

Usage

Simulation

You have two options for launching the simulation. You can either launch everything in the same window with a launch file, or you can launch each component separately.

Launch file

You need to open two terminals (Ctrl+Alt+T, Ctrl+Shift+T) and type the following:

Terminal 1:

cd ~/svo_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
roslaunch svo_ros intel_aero.launch

Terminal 2:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
cd ~/catkin_ws/px4
source Tools/setup_gazebo.bash $(pwd) $(pwd)/build/posix_sitl_default
export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:$(pwd)
export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:$(pwd)/Tools/sitl_gazebo
roslaunch offboard_control simulation.launch

Run roscore, px4 with mavros, whycon, image_view and offboard_control

You need to open 7 separate terminals in the root of the repository (Ctrl+Alt+T, 6 x Ctrl+Shift+T)

Terminal 1:

cd ~/catkin_ws/px4
source Tools/setup_gazebo.bash $(pwd) $(pwd)/build/posix_sitl_default
export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:$(pwd)
export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:$(pwd)/Tools/sitl_gazebo
roslaunch px4 mavros_posix_sitl.launch

Terminal 2:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun whycon whycon camera/image_rect_color:=/camera/rgb/image_raw camera/camera_info:=/camera/rgb/camera_info _targets:=1 _inner_diameter:=0.08 _outer_diameter:=0.1952

Terminal 3:

rosrun image_view image_view image:=/whycon/image_out

Terminal 4:

cd ~/svo_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
roslaunch svo_ros intel_aero.launch

Terminal 5:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun offboard_control offboard_control

Terminal 6:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun trajectory_planner trajectory_planner

Terminal 7:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
rviz -d src/trajectory_planner/rviz/simulation.rviz

Intel Aero RTF drone

You have two options for launching the code on the Intel Aero RTF drone. You can either launch everything in the same window with a launch file, or you can launch each component separately.

Launch file

You need to open two terminals (Ctrl+Alt+T, Ctrl+Shift+T) and type the following:

Terminal 1:

cd ~/svo_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
roslaunch svo_ros intel_aero.launch

Terminal 2:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
roslaunch offboard_control intel_aero.launch

Run roscore, mavros, whycon and offboard_control

You need to open 7 separate terminals in the root of the repository (Ctrl+Alt+T, 6 x Ctrl+Shift+T)

Terminal 1:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
roslaunch mavros px4.launch fcu_url:=tcp://127.0.0.1:5760

Terminal 2:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun whycon whycon camera/image_rect_color:=/camera/rgb/image_rect_color camera/camera_info:=/camera/rgb/camera_info _targets:=1

Terminal 3:

roslaunch realsense_camera r200_nodelet_rgbd.launch

Terminal 4:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
roslaunch usb_cam usb_cam.launch

Terminal 5:

cd ~/svo_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
roslaunch svo_ros intel_aero.launch

Terminal 6:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun trajectory_planner trajectory_planner

Terminal 7:

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun offboard_control offboard_control