This project aim to create an autonomous flying quadcopter using a stereo camera like Kinect/Guidance/ZED. For now you have to move it manually to discover the environment. After that it could find is way by itself.

Video demonstration : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlBQLbmc03g You can find additional info on this work in AlessioT thesis, however it's in italian: https://mega.co.nz/#!bdYEWKDZ!WmsdbkD-DifIXAGAL4cHTBwb_hYw36mMpB_XMmLX5VA

Original project from AlessioT (https://bitbucket.org/AlessioT/autonomous-flight-ros.git) Modified for ROS Indigo support by WLemkens (https://bitbucket.org/wlemkens/) My (Trancept https://bitbucket.org/Trancept/) contribution is quite limited to :

• Testing on Ubuntu 14.04 under ROS Indigo and updating this readme.
• Enlarge the sensor range to 20 meter in hector_quadrotor/hector_quadrotor_urdf/urdf/quadrotore.urdf
• Removing the drift to obtain a more stable quad in hector_quadrotor/hector_quadrotor_urdf/urdf/quadrotore.urdf
• Writing a script to pilot the quadcopter in all axis with keyboard

In order to run the simulation you will need: ROS, Hector_quadrotor + hector_quadrotor_world (http://wiki.ros.org/hector_quadrotor), gazebo (http://wiki.ros.org/gazebo), Moveit! (http://moveit.ros.org/)

If you are using ubuntu you could follow these instruction :

• Install ROS Indigo ros-indigo-desktop-full like explained in http://wiki.ros.org/indigo/Installation/Ubuntu

• Install complementary package : $ sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-hector-quadrotor-demo ros-indigo-pr2-gazebo-plugins ros-indigo-moveit-full

• Make a workspace folder $ mkdir my_workspace

• Get the sourcecode $ cd my_workspace $ git clone https://bitbucket.org/Trancept/autonomous-quadcopter-flight-ros.git $ mv autonomous-quadcopter-flight-ros src

• Init workspace $ cd src $ catkin_init_workspace

• Compile the source $ cd .. $ catkin_make

• Initiate the environment variable (to do everytime) $ source devel/setup.bash

• Run the programm $ roslaunch quadrotore2_moveit start.launch

• Wait for RVIZ to come up

• To do manually pilot, open another terminal and run $ python ./src/script/tx_keyboard_ctrl.py

• Then in RVIZ you could assign a Goal to the quadcopter :

  • In "Motion Planning" panel, choose "RRTConnectkConfigDefault" as OMPL solver
  • In "Motion Planning" Panel, panel "Planning" grow up the workspace to 20, 20, 10
  • Move the goal to where you whant
  • Click on Plan
  • Click on Execute

• To move the quadcopter in Python using MoveIt! you could use this script $ python ./src/script/plan_path_example.py

• If you whant to launch only part of simulation, you can run sh script (re-run source devel/setup.bash in every terminal) : $ sh src/script/1-simulator.sh $ sh src/script/2-controller.sh $ sh src/script/3-planner.sh

Contents of the folders:

->action_controller: action controller to translate geometrical trajectory in cmd_vel to control the quadrotor, it automatically translate the geometrical trajectory produced by moveit in comand to make the quadrotor move.

->moveit_simple_controller_manager: modified version of moveit_simple_controller_manager to handle multiDofFollowJointTrajectoryAction and to send the trajectory to the custom action_controller above defined

->hector_quadrotor: modified urdf of the quadrotor to publish the odometry of the joints

->pr2_teleop: simple node to teleop the simulated quadrotor using the keyboard => Prefer tx_keyboard_ctrl.py as it allow vertical move.

->quadrotore2_moveit: configuration file for moveit!

->script: file to launch the different part of the simulation