PX4 Swarm Controller

The aim of this repository is to provide a scalable multi-drone simulation for easy testing of control laws on fleets of UAVs. The default controller is based on a leader-follower approach taken from the paper Distributed leader-follower formation control for multiple quadrotors with weighted topology (Zhicheng Hou, Isabelle Fantoni).

This project was carried out as part of the Research and Development professional option at Ecole Centrale de Nantes with my partner Martin Piernas.

Install

ROS2

This package was written using ROS2 Humble under Ubuntu 22.04. If it’s not installed, check the ROS2 documentation or run the commands below.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales
sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y
sudo curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -o /usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo $UBUNTU_CODENAME) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install ros-humble-desktop
sudo apt install ros-dev-tools

Don’t forget to source your installation in the terminal or in your

``` (See example below).


```bash
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

You will also need to have

``` [installed](https://classic.gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=install_ubuntu).

### PX4 Autopilot

We used the PX4 Autopilot which uses the Micro XRCE-DDS Agent & Client as middleware.

Here are the installation commands to run in your terminal, you can also check
the [PX4 documentation](https://docs.px4.io/main/en/ros/ros2_comm.html):


```bash
cd
git clone https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot.git --recursive
bash ./PX4-Autopilot/Tools/setup/ubuntu.sh
cd PX4-Autopilot/
make px4_sitl

pip install --user -U empy==3.3.4 pyros-genmsg setuptools

git clone https://github.com/eProsima/Micro-XRCE-DDS-Agent.git
cd Micro-XRCE-DDS-Agent
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig /usr/local/lib/

Install and build the package

• Create a ROS2 workspace (Skip if already done)

    cd
    mkdir -p ros2_ws/src
    

• Then clone this repository (ROS2 package) in

  ``` and rename the directory as 
  ```px4_swarm_controller
  

  cd ros2_ws/src
  git clone https://github.com/artastier/PX4_Swarm_Controller.git
  mv PX4_Swarm_Controller px4_swarm_controller
  

• We need to overwrite the original sitl_multiple_run.sh of PX4 by the new one

  mv -i px4_swarm_controller/sitl_multiple_run.sh ~/PX4-Autopilot/Tools/simulation/gazebo-classic/sitl_multiple_run.sh
  

• Move the package containing the messages in the /src directory:

  mv px4_swarm_controller/custom_msgs/ ~/ros2_ws/src/
  

• Build the package and the custom messages using

  colcon build --packages-select custom_msgs
  colcon build --packages-select px4_swarm_controller
  

• Don’t forget to source your ROS2 workspace in your terminal or in your bashrc (See example below).

  source ~/ros2_ws/install/local_setup.bash
  

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