Autonomous Flight for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

This package includes the autonomous flight functions for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) implemented in C++/ROS. It integrates our perception, planning, and control modules to achive UAV autonomy in different tasks.

• The branch px4 is for the real-world or PX4-based simulation experiments.
• The branch simulation is for simulation in our customized and easy-to-use simulator.

Author: Zhefan Xu, Computational Engineering & Robotics Lab (CERLAB) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

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This repo can be used as a standalone package and also comes as a module of our autonomy framework.

I. Autonomous Flight Options

• Takeoff/Hovering: Takeoff and hovering at the specified height.
• Takeoff/Tracking Circle: Takeoff and tracking a circular trajectory with the given radius and velocity.
• Navigation: Autonomous navigation in static environments.
• Dynamic Navigation: Autonomous navigation in dynamic environments.
• Inspection (Octomap): Autonomous surface inspection using the Octomap.
• Inspection (Dynamic Map): Autonomous surface inspection using the Dynamic Map.
• Dynamic Exploration: Autonomous exploration in unknown and dynamic environments.

II. Installation Guide

This package has been tested on Ubuntu 18.04/20.04 LTS with ROS Melodic/Noetic on a regular PC/laptop, NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX, Orin NX and Intel NUC. Make sure you have installed the compatible ROS version.

This package depends on onboard_detector, global_planner, trajectory_planner, map_manager, tracking_controller and time_optimizer. Please install those packages first!

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/Zhefan-Xu/autonomous_flight.git

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

III. Quick Start

Start the uav simulator first and you should be able to see a quadcopter in a predefined gazebo environment. Please check the repo uav_simulator for further details.

To visualize the flight data, we provide the rviz launch files in this repo for convenience.

# if you want to test in PX4-based simulator
roslaunch uav_simulator px4_start.launch

# if you want to test in our customized uav simulator
roslaunch uav_simulator start.launch

a. Simple takeoff and hovering Takeoff/Hovering:

roslaunch autonomous_flight takeoff_and_hover.launch  # takeoff at 1.0 meter height (by default parameter)

b. Takeoff and tracking a circle Takeoff/Tracking Circle:

roslaunch autonomous_flight takeoff_and_track_circle.launch  # takeoff and tracking a circular trajectory

c. Static environment navigation Navigation:

roslaunch autonomous_flight navigation.launch   # navigation in the static enviornments

d. Dynamic environment navigation Dynamic Navigation:

roslaunch autonomous_flight dynamic_navigation.launch     # navigation in the dynamic environments

e. Static environmnet inspection using octomap Inspection (Octomap):

roslaunch octomap_server octomap_mapping.launch # please remember to modify the parameters for ros topics/transforms
roslaunch autonomous_flight inspection.launch

f. Dynamic environment inspection using dynamic map Inspection (Dynamic Map):

roslaunch autonomous_flight dynamic_inspection.launch    # autonomous surface inspection

g. Unknown and dynamic environment exploration Dynamic Exploration:

roslaunch autonomous_flight dynamic_exploration.launch    # autonomous exploration in unknown and dynamic environments

IV. Parameter Adjustment

All the parameters are in autonomous_flight/cfg folder. For example, the parameters for Dynamic Navigation can be found in autonomous_flight/cfg/dynamic_navgation/***.yaml