Problem with simStartRace() and enableApiControl('drone_2') in the new binary

[yannbouteiller]

Hello,

I am encountering a huge problem with the new airsimneurips binary. It seems that it has been modified so only drone_1 can be controlled while drone_2 does its stuff.

This is fine for evaluating against the reference algorithm I guess, but this is a disqualifying issue for me because I need to be able to control both drones to apply my Reinforcement Learning strategies during training, and I need the simulator and race to reset and run as fast as possible (it seems that the taking off of drone_2 adds a huge time overhead before I can control drone_1).

How can I disable the baseline controller of drone_2 and use my own controllers for both drones again, please?

At the moment, not only calling enableApiControl('drone_2') makes subsequent call to simStartRace() block the program, but drone_2 will want to do its stuff anyway.

Regards, Yann.

[madratman]

Hey. Here's what you can do to disable drone_2 from flying around the scene and take control over it:

• Figure out the path to the directory holding the airsimneurips python package on your machine: $ python3.6 -c "import airsimneurips, os; print(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(airsimneurips.__file__)))"

This returns the following in my machine, for example: /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/airsimneurips

• Now, open up /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/airsimneurips/client.py with root permissions, if needed. (Or I guess, if you're using a virtualenv / docker container, it's better), and find the following lines, defining the simStartRace function

       # Race APIs
      def simStartRace(self, tier=1):
          """ Starts an instance of a race in your given level, if valid."""
          self.race_tier = tier
          competitor = BaselineRacer(self, viz_traj=False, viz_traj_color_rgba=[1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0])
          competitor.level_name = self.level_name
          competitor.initialize_drone()
          competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth = [self.__internalRandomGoalZone(gate) for gate in sorted(self.simListSceneObjects(".*[Gg]ate.*"))]
          if self.level_name == 'Soccer_Field_Medium':
              curr_pose = deepcopy(competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth[19])
              curr_pose.position.x_val = (competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth[19].position.x_val + competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth[20].position.x_val) / 2
              competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth.insert(20, curr_pose)
  
          if self.level_name == 'Building99_Hard':
              competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth.insert(3, Pose(Vector3r((-21.49-41.89)/2.0, (-5.44-1.84)/2, (1.51+1.82)/2)))
  
          if self.level_name == 'ZhangJiaJie_Medium':
              num_gates = len(competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth)
              last_gate_position = deepcopy(competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth[-1].position)
              second_last_gate_position = deepcopy(competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth[-2].position)
              competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth.insert(num_gates-1, Pose(Vector3r((last_gate_position.x_val+second_last_gate_position.x_val)/2.0, 
                                                                              (last_gate_position.y_val+second_last_gate_position.y_val)/2.0,
                                                                              (last_gate_position.z_val+second_last_gate_position.z_val)/2.0 )))
  
          takeoff_height = 1.0
          start_position = self.simGetVehiclePose("drone_2").position
          takeoff_waypoint = Vector3r(start_position.x_val, start_position.y_val, start_position.z_val-takeoff_height)
          self.client.call('simStartRace', tier)
          # competitor.gate_poses_ground_truth.insert(0, Pose(takeoff_waypoint))    
          competitor.takeoff_with_moveOnSpline(takeoff_height)
          competitor.fly_through_all_gates_at_once_with_moveOnSpline()

  Now, you can modify the above to the following, thereby disable drone_2:

       # Race APIs
      def simStartRace(self, tier=1):
          """ Starts an instance of a race in your given level, if valid."""
          self.race_tier = tier
          self.client.call('simStartRace', tier)

• "At the moment, not only calling enableApiControl('drone_2') makes subsequent call to simStartRace() block the program, but drone_2 will want to do its stuff anyway." enableApiControl('drone_2') is (was if you do the mod above) being called in the pythonclient itself in competitor.initialize_drone(). To do RL with the modded airsim client, note that you need to enable api, and arm for drone_2 yourself.

I guess I'll add a note to the readme for people who want to disable it. Technically, we can add a bool param to simstartrace to disable drone_2 in the pythonclient itself, but I am refraining from doing so, as in the qualification binaries, we want people to call simstartrace and that should trigger competitor / drone_2 / MSR racer to do its thing

[madratman]

Hmm, you're correct in that drone_2 is blocking everything while it's taking off. We'll look into it: This is happening coz of the line competitor.fly_through_all_gates_at_once_with_moveOnSpline(), which is called with a .join() in baseline.py. Maybe we should use another thread for controlling drone_2

[yannbouteiller]

The manual fix for controlling drone_2 seems to be working, thanks @madratman :)

[madratman]

Awesome! Closing then

[madratman]

Fixed the blocking call to takeoff for drone_2 in pythonclient. Please pip install --upgrade airsimeneurips to 1.0.0