Projet_P5_Trousseau_Camba

Introduction

The goal of this 4-week project is to make a state of the art of the simulator available on the drone market and try out some solutions.

For this project, the Software In the Loop method must be priviledged as it "characterizes a numerical simulation of the operation of the software of an embedded system during which the entire environment, including the hardware part of the embedded system, is simulated." from wikidictionnary. The focus will be on ROS friendly simulators. Mostly using Melodic, as well as Kinetic if needed.

The previous project found solutions using ROS, Gazebo and :

RotorS, in ROS Kinetic with various drones,
BebopS, a fork of RotorS which works with Parrot 2 only and on Melodic,
TUM simulator, only with A.R. Drone 2, on ROS Melodic,
SJTU drone, fork of TUM Simulator on Melodic, Parrot ARDrone,
ArduPilot and SITL simulator, no need of ROS nor Gazebo but compatible, very handy and widespread.

We have looked for the more widespread simulators that could be used along with ROS.

Comparison :

Comparison of exiting simulator :

Simulators	Gazebo	DJI Assistant	DJI flight simulator	jMAVsim	New Paparazzi Simulator
Type	Simulator 3D	Software with embedded simulator	Simulator 3D with flight controller and FDM	Simulator 3D of drones (not worlds)	Simulator 3D
ROS version	All	Kinetic (and Melodic with plugins)	Not compatible	Melodic	Under developpement
Works on Linux	Yes	DJI's simulation supports only Windows/Mac, need to add the dji_m100 package below on the OSDK to make it run on Linux	No only Windows 10	Yes	Yes
Drones available	Multirotors (1 to 8)	All DJI	Many DJI	Quadrotors	Rotorcrafts
Sensors	Many (create and modify)	Many	Many	No incorporation of sensors	Depending on the vizualisation mode
Obstacles	Yes	None	Yes and avoidance	No	No
Physical impact on the drone	Yes (wind ...)	No	Yes (wind, crash, floor effect...)	Some (crash...)
Worlds	Many and customisable	One	Many	Not made for this
SITL	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Compatibility	Many	Gazebo	Can use various UAV controller	Use MAVLink protocol, Java3D library, works with PX4, SITL simulator, interfaced to ROS	With all the Paparazzi suite and others tools
Multi-vehicle simulation	Yes but can only simulate a single type of vehicle at a time	No	No	Recommended if you need to support a lot of quadcopters, and the simulation only needs to be approximate	Possible but need some troubleshooting
Links	Official website	Link to download the assistant, only empty world available by itself	Official web site, free for some drone but need a dji account	With SITL, and more	Wiki
More	Most complete and used	Only for DJI, poor versatility	Mostly for training, need at least a DJI controller	Multi drone

Added to the simulator, ROS packages are here to complete the simulation according to our needs.

Packages useful :

Package	dji_m100 suite	Hector quadrotor	SJTU	ROS Quadrotor Simulator	BebopS
Type	Package	Metapackage	Package	Package	Package, forked from RotorS
ROS version	Kinetic and Melodic	Kinetic and Melodic	Melodic	Indigo (maybe Kinetic)	Kinetic and Melodic
Simulator	Gazebo 7 or 8	Gazebo 7 or more	Gazebo 7	Gazebo 7	Gazebo 7 or more
Cmake version	2.8.3 or newer	2.8.3 or newer	3.2.2	2.8.3	2.3.8
Drones	DJI M100 only	Generic quadrotor	Parrot AR Drone	AsTec and others multirotors	Parot Bebop 2
Sensors	Camera, GPS, mission	Forward camera, laser, sonar, many more...	Forward/backward camera, laser, sonar, IMU	Camera, sonar	IMU, camera, laser 1D
Topics	uav1/... same as before	Odom, attitude, cmd_vel	Topics related to sensors or use RQT GUI
Navigation	Joysticks	Joysticks, can add keyboard	Joystick, keyboard or waypoints	Xbox joysticks, waypoints, autonomous	Waypoints in a text file
Worlds	Some (collision etc)	Complex, indoor and Outdoor	Some	Many, indoor and outdoor	Some, outside
Physical impact on the drone	None	Wind	Wind	Wind	Wind
GUI	Rviz or rqt_gui	Rviz	rqt_gui or GZcliebnt from Gazebo	Rviz	Rviz
Compatibility	Gazebo pluging and a modifiable URDF file, used with the OSDK	Generic modifiable quadrortor URDF file, interface with Gazebo, cannot support MAVLinks and hardware platforms like Pixhawk. Can be interfaced with MoveIt!	Many Gazebo plugins	Use mav comm package from PX4, MoveIt! and RotorS	Modifiable URDF files,
More	Need the drone. Collision free	Kinect, multiple plugins, demos, flight dynamics	Simulate a race. May need Gazebo 9 and Ubuntu 18.04. Fork of tum_simulator	Path planning, obstacle avoidance, ~2 and 3D mapping	Choose your own FDM backends
Links	See branch ROS_Kinetic_Gazebo	Package, tutorial, more explanations and possibilities	See previous work or here	See here	Tutorial

If we want to use more advanced flight fonctionalities, flight controllers can also be used. They require a more complicated structure, with often several softwares that have to be interfaced together.

Flight controller :

Flight controller	PX4	Ardupilot	Paparazzi
ROS version	Melodic	Melodic	Under developpement
Simulator	Gazebo, jMAVsim	SITL, Gazebo	Gazebo or its own simulator New Paparazzi Simulator using JSBSim (FDM)
Compatibility	Plugin Gazebo 9	Plugin Gazebo, use SITLsimulator and MavProxy, however ROS with SITL in Gazebo is under creation	Gazebo, JBSim, FlightGear
Drones	Multirotors	Wide range, can use package ArduCopter, multirotors ready to use here	Multirotors (choice limited by hardware)
Multi-vehicle simulation	Possible with Gazebo, FlightGear and JMAVSim	Tools in development	Possible
Navigation	GPS (waypoints and position hold), stereo vision	GPS, mission planner, follow me and click on the simulation (with SITL)	GPS (waypoints and position hold), stereo vision
Communication	MAV Link	MAV Link or MAVRos (see note 2)	MAV Link
More	Flight stack and autopilot	DO not need ROS and Gazebo to work properly but compatible (see note 1), use Linux Ubuntu 18.04	Automated take off and landing
Links	Official github	Wiki	Wiki

Notes :

"We will be using a standard version of ArduPilot but with a custom plugin for Gazebo, until the gazebo plugin gets merged into Gazebo-master. This plugin can be used with or without ROS integration."
"MAVROS is a ROS “node” that can convert between ROS topics and MAVLink messages allowing ArduPilot vehicles to communicate with ROS."
About SITL : SITL allows you to run ArduPilot on your PC directly, without any special hardware. It takes advantage of the fact that ArduPilot is a portable autopilot that can run on a very wide variety of platforms. When running in SITL the sensor data come from a flight dynamics model in a flight simulator. Is only in 2D but has many sensors : GPS, wind, barometer, avoidance, fence, vibrations...

More projects :

Name	OSDK for DJI	Paparazzi Project
Type	Development toolkit for developing applications, which could run on the onboard computer. Needs to be used with the DJI assistant.	UAV multiple software
ROS version	Kinetic, Cmake 2.8.3 or newer	Paparazzi Project
Simulator	Got is own with the DJI assistant, compatible with Gazebo 7 or more through dji_m100 package	NPS or Gazebo
Drones	All DJI	Rotorcrafts
Sensors	Camera, GPS, mission, IMU	Depending on the vizualisation mode
Navigation	With the assistant, use joysticks
Physical impact on the drone	None
GUI	From the assistant
More	Need the drone, runs on Linux and ROS
Links	Package

To summarize :

Our project group found out that Gazebo was the best simulator to be used regarding its ROS compatibility, sensors emulated and modifiability/compatibility as it uses plugins to accept custom inputs, output custom data, and perform custom control in simulation. The former group project tried out :

BebopsS, worked well but needed to change the waypoints directly onto the waypoints.txt
SJTU_drone, no issues noted
ArduPilot and SITL, the most advanced tutorial with the most capacities, but did not try with Gazebo.

Hence, we choose to test out 2 different solutions : continue with the Ardupilot with Gazebo and/or ROS, look at the possibilites given by the Hector Quadrotor metapackage. We will also be looking for informations about DJI assistant because the ALPAGA team already has a M600.

Conclusion :

We tried out 3 solutions, working very differently from one to another :

Hector quadrotor, which is a meta package,
DJI assistant and flight simulator, a full suite of software to use with a DJI drone, unfortunatly we couldn't try it by ourselves,
Ardupilot flight controller paired with Gazebo or ROS.

Hector had the advantage of being very user friendly : everthing comes with the package, no need to install many softwares and it is low level so pretty easy to modify.
DJI was very complete and accurate but would only work using the DJI hardware.
Ardupilot was the most complete but it was a bit hard to understand its architecture with ROS or Gazebo.

Yet, from what we tried, we would recommend PX4 with ROS and Gazebo for your project regarding our work and the previous one. In fact, it is the same architecture as Ardupilot but with ROS dependencies "built in" (PX4 and ROS are working together to give us this solution). Even though the documentation, examples and community is bigger for Ardupilot, we think that PX4 open source documentation would me enough.
The hector package is not to put away because of its versatility and utility with other solutions (such as ArduPilot); and DJI Assistant should be tried as you have the chance to already got the Hardware.

How to use this repo :

There are two branch that have been created depending on which ROS version is used (Kinetic or Melodic).

In the kinetic branch there are the explanation about the DJI assistant test along with the installation file.
In the melodic branch there are one markdown file for each method we tried : hector_quadrotor package and ArduPilot

We also created a folder with all the pictures that illustrate our markdown files and some extra graph.

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