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microsoft / AirSim

Open source simulator for autonomous vehicles built on Unreal Engine / Unity, from Microsoft AI & Research
https://microsoft.github.io/AirSim/
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Fixed Wing Aircraft #2955

Open AOS55 opened 4 years ago

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Fixed Wing Vehicle Integration

I am working on adding a FixedWing aircraft class into Airsim, so far I have been documenting my work under issue #2508 but as suggested by @rajat2004 it would be usefult to move this work to a new issue so as to improve visibility for others to work on.

Work so far

Please see this post for a detailed breakdown of what has been added in my forked Airsim repository under the fixedwing branch. I will aim to keep updates on this issue of new files, classes, methods & functions with a view to write comprehensive documentation as the code begins to get to a state where it can be merged back into the master branch on the main repo.

Since the last update post on #2508 I have been updating the FixedWingLibClient files to enable communication with Ardupilot. A linked issue has been opened within the ArduPilot Repo.

FixedWing Branch State

Known issues

Planned Future Work

Initially I am aiming to work to resolve all the known issues and turn all the 🔴 in the state to 🟢. Following from this I will aim to add the following functionality: [ ] Construct a similar Python API as in multirotor <-- hopefully a short term objective [ ] Implement Undercarriage for fixedWingLandings [ ] Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) based FW landings <-- main PhD objective, expect to write & publish a paper based on this [ ] Validate model and control on real UAV and FW aircraft, ties in with above.

Motivation

Principally this is for my PhD at the University of Bristol where I am aiming to use a combination of computer vision and Deep Reinforcement Learning to train an autonomous fixedwing agent/aircraft to navigate to and safely land in an unknown location. This is both with and without power and on a range of fixedwing aircraft including fixedWing UAVs, gliders & multiengine light piston aircraft (<5700Kg). Not only this but when discussing AirSim with my colleagues we believe that having a fixedWing simulator capable of highfidelity graphics and SITL that is efficient will be of great benefit.

Ongoing Development

Several users have already been realy helpful (@rajat2004 😀), if anyone has any ideas about how to solve some of the issues I have described above all help is greatly appreciated. In particular if anyone is able to have any success compiling the fixedwing source please let me know as I'm a little stumped 😕 as to why it won't compile.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

I had a try at compiling your branch, the error message was really quite useless. Opened https://github.com/AOS55/AirSim-1/pull/1 which fixes that and brings us back to normal compilation errors with understandable messages (for now)

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Progress Update

Aircraft Physics Control Construction

I have been continuing to work on the FixedWingPhysics simulation aiming to resolve compilation errors. I have vectorised the control surfaces so ideally they behave as a u tyoe vector. With this I introduced a new file Aeroplane.hpp that instants each control from the ControlSurface.hpp file as a PhysicsBodyVertex class. I have not introduced the thrust vector yet but this shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

Aircraft links to the structs in AircraftParams.hpp and applies the aero-forces via setWrench. Most fixedwing dynamic models/databases, define the forces and moments around the CG, as dynamicDerivatives. setWrench applies these and then is updated in the loop by FixedWingPhysicsBody.hpp, I'm a little lost as to how the PhysicsBody class updates the aircrafts pose via fastPhysicsEngine. The way I've set up the classes may also be an antipattern and I might need to refactor some of the structs, please let me know your thoughts on how you might setup the structures.

Compilation error

When I run the repo from visual studio I get the following error :

Error C4717 'msr::airlib::ArduPlaneApi::resetImplementation': recursive on all control paths, function will cause runtime stack overflow Blocks C:\Users\quessy\Documents\Unreal Projects\AirSim\Unreal\Environments\Blocks\Plugins\AirSim\Source\AirLib\include\vehicles\fixedwing\firmwares\ardupilot\ArduPlaneApi.hpp 57

Im not sure what this error is being caused by, I'm guessing there is no termination condition in the recursive call. If anyone has experienced this before I'd love to get your thoughts.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

That's happening cause the function is calling itself here - https://github.com/AOS55/AirSim-1/blob/FixedWing/AirLib/include/vehicles/fixedwing/firmwares/ardupilot/ArduPlaneApi.hpp#L54 It should instead be calling FixedWingApiBase::resetImplementation(), from it's parent class

Note that I haven't tested this myself yet

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Thanks yep that was it was quite obvious now I think about it in more detail. It several unresolved external symbol errors now but I think there a case of sorting out further problems with the API.

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Does anyone have any thoughts on this error coming from FixedWingApiBase.hpp, I thought it was to do with the link between the base class and Mavlink/Px4 implementation override. I can't see anything untawards though: LNK2001 unresolved external symbol "protected: virtual float __cdecl msr::airlib::FixedWingApiBase::getAutoLookahead(float,float,float,float)const " (?getAutoLookahead@FixedWingApiBase@airlib@msr@@MEBAMMMMM@Z) Blocks C:\Users\quessy\Documents\Unreal Projects\AirSim\Unreal\Environments\Blocks\Intermediate\ProjectFiles\Module.AirSim.cpp.obj 1

image

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Functions seem to be missing, are all the files uncommented in the AirLib.vcxproj?

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Thats a good point I've uncommented them now, from AirLib.vcxproj, but Im still getting the same link errors from the compiler. When running build.cmd I also get some errors in the command prompt that are slightly different, perhaps these are what needs to be looked at. These are quite clearly what I should have been looking at, I didn't appreciate the importance of the API src client, server and base files.

image

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Resolved all build errors now except for one rather unusual one: "C:\Users\quessy\Documents\Unreal Projects\AirSim\AirSim.sln" (default target) (1) -> "C:\Users\quessy\Documents\Unreal Projects\AirSim\AirLib\AirLib.vcxproj" (default target) (12) -> (ClCompile target) -> C:\Users\quessy\Documents\Unreal Projects\AirSim\AirLib\deps\rpclib\include\rpc\msgpack\v1\object.hpp(202,11): error C2039: 'msgpack_pack': is not a member of 'Eigen::Matrix<float,3,1,0,3,1>' [C:\Users\quessy\Documents\Unreal Projects\AirSim\AirLib\AirLib.vcxproj]

Not sure where this one links to as when I look at the location of the error in object.hpp which I'm not sure where it lives in the repo as dependencies folder not included in push/pull requests.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

The RPC error was due to the fact that it doesn't know how to pack the Vector3r object, need to convert it into the struct defined in RpcLibAdaptorsBase and then pass it. Opened https://github.com/AOS55/AirSim-1/pull/4 which fixes that, and adds the files to CMake. After this AirLib compiles, but there are still lots of errors when building the entire Blocks env, undefined references in FixedWingApiBase.cpp, due to function declarations in .hpp, and usage of commented out methods

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Great thanks very much Ill take a look at those errors today, I merged the issue back into fixedwing and have no build.cmd errors on my end too.

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Any thoughts on why I'm getting the following include/visibility related build error from in visual studio? I can see the source file UdpSocket.hpp is still on the repo, could it be related to cmake changes?

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

That's very strange, Windows shouldn't be affected AFAIK since it uses the .sln files. And if this were a problem, then it would have appeared way earlier since support for Rover has been present for many months Does this appear when running build.cmd?

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

No thats the unusual thing build.cmd doesnt present any errors when run

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Hmm, maybe try running clean_rebuid.cmd from the root directory, that should rebuild everything. Do commit any changes made in the files present in the Blocks directory like in the AirLib folder before running though

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Great thanks that seems to have resolved it back to linking problems probably due to decleration again.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Nice! Still have no idea why VS decided to remove the header file Side note, this does somewhat bring into mind that GitHub issues might not be the best way to communicate, especially on smaller problems. Maybe something for future

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Yeah not sure its unusual. Yes certainly, I'm surprised there isn't a microsoft/AirSim slack setup or equivalent for more direct communication. As you said something for the future.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

There is a Facebook group, but I myself haven't used it since a long time. AP uses Discord (earlier Gitter) and has a forum as well, similar with PX4. Maybe after there is more activity and members. Having something like this would definitely reduce the number of issues also, since more confirmed issues will be created rather than duplicate and support ones

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Yes I agree thats a good idea, the documentation for AirSim would need to reflect this too as there is not an obvious point of contact when onboarding new users/developers with the application.

Also after commenting out the linking errors in the application I have managed to compile through to the blocks environment 😀.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Awesome, now comes the probably more difficult part of modelling, physics and making sure everything works! Having a more direct method of communication will also increase community interaction a lot. Which platform to select, etc will have to be decided by the maintainers though, might require collecting some opinions from the users

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Yes I agree, would you like to open up a communication issue, I'm not sure if you can do a poll on github?

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Don't think I'm the best person to open such a issue, a maintainer should do this probably. They'll also have to setup the platform and maybe maintain it (no other word is coming to my mind right now) Github doesn't have polls AFAIK

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Yes that makes sense, a moderator or project manager sort of thing. Perhaps if you know anyone you could @ them into this issue so they can set it up. Ok sure you could always make the proposed solution as a comment and get people to vote 👍 or 👎 on the comment.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

@madratman @saihv @ironclownfish @jonyMarino Do you think having another (more chat & voice type) communication platform will be worthwhile? This will definitely increase community interaction, and will probably reduce support issues. Just wanted to know your opinions, and definitely don't want to increase your (already heavy) workload too much. Looking forward to hearing from you!

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

@AOS55 AirLib is actually not compiling for me, getting some undeclared identifier errors for the function declarations which have been commented out. Here's a Travis build - https://travis-ci.com/github/rajat2004/AirSim/builds/181419292, even the Windows build fails. Did some files not get committed when commenting out the API methods?

Would also recommend activating Travis on your Github repositories (atleast Airsim), that has saved me a few times when making some changes which don't compile on Windows, or breaking something else. (Side note, I did break the Windows build in my first contribution to Airsim (and others later on also), that was a big motivation to get Travis setup properly on Airsim)

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

@rajat2004 hmm ok, this is interesting could you please send me the identifier errors you are getting I will cross-check them on my local machine, I just ran update_to_git.bat and had no further changes and I also ran update_from_git.bat in Blocks and it still compiles ok on my end. A couple of thoughts:

Nice Idea, I have setup Travis with my branch, and it also appears to fail. Looking at the job log it has the following on line 1457. I wonder if this is unity related or just what the .travis.yml script should print to the command line.

The command "if [[ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "linux" ]]; then ./setup.sh; ./build.sh || travis_terminate 1; echo "Starting Unity Build!"; (cd Unity && ./build.sh || travis_terminate 1); elif [[ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "windows" ]]; then export PATH=$MSBUILD_PATH:$PATH_FIX:$PATH; cmd.exe //C 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat' amd64 '&&' build.cmd '&&' cd Unity '&&' build.cmd; elif [[ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "osx" ]]; then ./setup.sh; ./build.sh || travis_terminate 1; echo "Starting Unity Build!"; (cd Unity && ./build.sh || travis_terminate 1); fi" exited with 1.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Very strange that it works on your machine, these are the errors I'm getting - 

/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/fixedwing/api/FixedWingApiBase.cpp:514:9: error: use of undeclared identifier 'safetyCheckVelocity'
    if (safetyCheckVelocity(Vector3r(vx, vy, vz)))
        ^
/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/fixedwing/api/FixedWingApiBase.cpp:526:9: error: use of undeclared identifier 'safetyCheckDestination'
    if (safetyCheckDestination(dest))
        ^
/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/fixedwing/api/FixedWingApiBase.cpp:538:9: error: use of undeclared identifier 'safetyCheckVelocity'
    if (safetyCheckVelocity(getVelocity()))
        ^
/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/fixedwing/api/FixedWingApiBase.cpp:562:9: error: use of undeclared identifier 'safetyCheckVelocity'
    if (safetyCheckVelocity(getVelocity()))
        ^
[ 80%] Building CXX object AirLib/CMakeFiles/AirLib.dir/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/multirotor/api/MultirotorApiBase.cpp.o
[ 81%] Building CXX object AirLib/CMakeFiles/AirLib.dir/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/multirotor/api/MultirotorRpcLibClient.cpp.o
4 errors generated.
AirLib/CMakeFiles/AirLib.dir/build.make:230: recipe for target 'AirLib/CMakeFiles/AirLib.dir/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/fixedwing/api/FixedWingApiBase.cpp.o' failed
make[2]: *** [AirLib/CMakeFiles/AirLib.dir/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/fixedwing/api/FixedWingApiBase.cpp.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
[ 83%] Linking CXX executable ../../output/bin/MavLinkTest
[ 83%] Built target MavLinkTest
/home/rajat/Github/AirSim-FixedWing/AirLib/src/vehicles/fixedwing/api/FixedWingRpcLibServer.cpp:116:45: error: no member named 'moveByManual' in 'msr::airlib::FixedWingApiBase'
        return getVehicleApi(vehicle_name)->moveByManual(vx_max, vy_max, z_min, duration);
               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  ^
1 error generated.

AirLib compilation doesn't depend on UE, Travis also doesn't have UE, it just tests whether AirLib, ROS wrapper compiles, and there's the recently added Azure Pipelines CI which compiles the entire Blocks project on Ubuntu and Windows and packages it.

Yup, I'm rebuilding from the root directory, ./clean.sh & ./build.sh.

That's just Travis printing the entire command which failed to run, the errors can be seen above it, starting from here

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Ok yeah, I was just looking at the code on my machine and I have those if statements at the lines the compiler called out still there, given I commented them out in the header file I would have expected an undeclared header error. I have commented them out now in the CPP file. Still waiting for Travis.

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Got some further travis build errors in FixedWingRpcLibServer.cpp commented out the moveByManual Function. This now succeeds for macOS and windows but fails for ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

@AOS55 this was a problem with the CMake config in ROS wrapper, I've opened #2978 which fixes this. The reason's described there, and as to why it was missed, looks like not many people have named the folder something other than AirSim :)

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Thanks, yep, I should have left it as was, good inadvertent check though. Made equivalent commit to FixedWing branch.

I met with my PhD supervisor earlier and we had a couple of thoughts on what we need to continue developing Fixed Wing Airsim, let me know what you think should be our priorities over the next week and what we have missed:

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Nice! I'll try out the latest commits and have a look at the asset, but I don't have much experience with building models, etc so probably won't be of much help here. Will test the settings issue too.

I'm not sure how the multirotor model was tested and validated, the maintainers would have a better idea since they wrote this :) There are many very experienced people in the ArduPilot community who would know about building and validating the physics, might be useful to have a talk with them. I remember there was recently quite a bit of work done on XPlane and RealFlight which are used extensively for Plane simulations

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Ok, so for the settings, I think there should be a new SimMode added for Plane, so the options would become like Multirotor, Car, ComputerVision & the new FixedWing (or something). This will require changes in a few places, maybe keep following places where "Multirotor" or others are used to compare the SimMode name, this commit can also be helpful - https://github.com/microsoft/AirSim/pull/2861/commits/faee309415fde2d946ad3cefdaafa9e7fb251f60 (From PR https://github.com/microsoft/AirSim/pull/2861), I've tried to make SimMode names constants like kVehicleType*. For a shortcut right now, you could just add ArduPlane in https://github.com/microsoft/AirSim/blob/master/Unreal/Plugins/AirSim/Source/Vehicles/Multirotor/SimModeWorldMultiRotor.cpp#L95

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

@AOS55 Just tried out the latest commits, the fixedwing model looks awesome :heart_eyes: For someone following, use UE 4.25, that's the version the assets are saved with. Some pics - Screenshot from 2020-08-28 23-21-05 Screenshot from 2020-08-28 23-22-13

Side Note: Adding to the above parallel discussion going on about a new communication platform (having chat and preferably voice, video) Discord looks like a good option, creating a server's pretty easy, anyone can do it, and supports multiple chat & voice channels, and has video support also

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

I have aimed to add the fixedwing class to the AirSimSettings.hpp file. arduplane should be set as the default FixedWing variable, referenced to static constexpr char const * kVehicleTypeArduPlane = "arduplane". This commit shows the changes I made to the repo. In particular I have added variable simmode_name == "fixedwing" to the createSimMode method in simHUD.cpp.

When I run airsim in unreal with "SimMode": "FixedWing" I get an error as follows: Error at startup: invalid map<K, T> key.

UE4Editor-Win64-DebugGame.exe then logs exception thrown in VisualStudio and produces a breakpoint @ line 73 in AirSimGameMode.cpp. I think this is because it can't StartPlay as it doesn't know where the files are. I'm guessing I have not defined the keys at some point, but not sure where this is? Could it be to do with the VehicleSettings method in AirSimSettings.hpp line 807?

Not sure if this has come up before?

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Opened https://github.com/AOS55/AirSim-1/pull/5 which fixes a compilation error and the pawn path aka Invalid Key error After this the ArduPilot Plane backend starts working!

[2020.08.29-18.05.26:678][971]LogTemp: Using UDP port 9003, local IP 127.0.0.1, remote IP 127.0.0.1 for sending sensor data
Using UDP port 9003, local IP 127.0.0.1, remote IP 127.0.0.1 for sending sensor data
[2020.08.29-18.05.26:678][971]LogTemp: Using UDP port 9002 for receiving rotor power
Using UDP port 9002 for receiving rotor power
Error while receiving aircraft control data - ErrorNo: -1
Error while receiving aircraft control data - ErrorNo: -1
...

However I'm seeing some problems with the assets, need to look into them-

[2020.08.29-18.05.26:125][971]LogActor: Warning: BP_CameraDirector_C /Game/FlyingCPP/Maps/UEDPIE_0_FlyingExampleMap.FlyingExampleMap:PersistentLevel.CameraDirector has natively added scene component(s), but none of them were set as the actor's RootComponent - picking one arbitrarily
1001[2020.08.29-18.05.26:128][971]LogLinker: Warning: While loading '../../../../../Github/AirSim-FixedWing/Unreal/Environments/Blocks/Plugins/AirSim/Content/Models/FixedWingUAV/BUDDI3D_1.uasset' failed to load '/AirSim/Models/FixedWingUAV/Budee': Can't find file.
1001[2020.08.29-18.05.26:129][971]LogLinker: Warning: While loading '../../../../../Github/AirSim-FixedWing/Unreal/Environments/Blocks/Plugins/AirSim/Content/Models/FixedWingUAV/BUDDI3D_1.uasset' failed to load '/AirSim/Models/FixedWingUAV/phong4': Can't find file.
[2020.08.29-18.05.26:135][971]LoadErrors: Failed to load /AirSim/Models/FixedWingUAV/Budee.Budee Referenced by FbxStaticMeshImportData_0
[2020.08.29-18.05.26:135][971]LoadErrors: Failed to load /AirSim/Models/FixedWingUAV/phong4.phong4 Referenced by BUDDI3D_1

Removed extra lines, some other preexisting problems with the Airsim master

Side note: I think these kind of errors like the PawnPath name can be reduced, made into constant vars like the vehicle types. The SimMode name changes like in the other PR if accepted would be a good step forward

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Thanks a lot, merged the commit back onto fixedwing branch. I see the asset problems, and it now proceeds directly to the breakpoint, Ill start looking into what is not there. Did you get the ArduPilot Plane backend output from the Visual Studio command line output? Yes I agree reducing the PawnPath names to the same structure as teh vehicle types would make life simpler.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

I'm on Linux :) So all the output comes on the terminal itself from where UE is launched, makes life simpler. But more painful for debugging, VS is better for that. Output should be possible from there, but not sure.

Asset problems a PITA, was poking around with some Weather problems today

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Uh ok nice will probably switch back to linux at some point. That makes sense Ill take a closer look what was your settings.json file set as that might be it? I have this: { "SeeDocsAt": "https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim/blob/master/docs/settings.md", "SettingsVersion": 1.2, "SimMode": "FixedWing" }

Haha, ok sure that sounds like fun.

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Yeah sorry, my settings.json -

{
  "SettingsVersion": 1.2,
  "SimMode": "FixedWing",
  "Vehicles": {
    "Plane": {
        "VehicleType": "ArduPlane",
        "UseSerial": false,
        "LocalHostIp": "127.0.0.1",
        "UdpIp": "127.0.0.1",
        "UdpPort": 9003,
        "ControlPort": 9002
    }
  }
}

Wouldn't call it fun per se, ran my system at full throttle though, packaging multiple times does that. Issue #2988 if interested I progressed (more aptly regressed) from crashing binary to when API called, then when pressing Play and finally starting up itself plus compilation, in an infinite loop

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Also, just remembered this, you'll want to use SteppableClock for AP, so need to add the simmode here - https://github.com/microsoft/AirSim/blob/master/AirLib/include/common/AirSimSettings.hpp#L1116 Not sure about PX4, but AP definitely would like SteppableClock

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Great thanks, just ran with that settings.json and got the same in the VS output.

Yes Im sure Ill take a look, and likewise the BLUEPRINTS are also new to me. It looks very frustrating Ill feedback if I can think of anything while debugging the FixedWing blueprints.

I was thinking about that today actually, yeah its certainly going to be needed at some point. Cool Ill add kVehicleTypePX4Plane into there and an or "FixedWing" in the if statement.

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Ive made some more progress with the errors and ArduPilot/ArduPlane. I renamed and updated the aircraft mesh within ardupilot on the fixedwing side this resolved most of the can't find file errors discussed earlier. I still have some of the earlier weather can't find errors described above as a current issue.

The following is the final outpu with ErrorNo: 10040, an error in red.

[2020.08.30-09.41.01:184][159]PIE: Server logged in
[2020.08.30-09.41.01:186][159]LogTemp: Error while receiving aircraft control data - ErrorNo: 10040
[2020.08.30-09.41.01:186][159]PIE: Play in editor total start time 0.539 seconds.

I have updated the Arduplane SITL on the FixedWing branch with an arduplane implementation. This can be compiled and run with WAF by typing: sim_vehicle.py -v ArduPlane -f airsim-plane --console --map within the ardupilot directory. This is yet to be merged with the main repo and is currently on a fork.

Any thoughts on the error im getting Error while receiving aircraft control data - ErrorNo: 10040. Im not sure if the correct ports are exposed on the ArduPilot SITL side as it produces the following on start:

SIM_VEHICLE: "mavproxy.py" "--map" "--console" "--out" "127.0.0.1:14550" "--out" "127.0.0.1:14551" "--master" "tcp:127.0.0.1:5760" "--sitl" "127.0.0.1:5501"
RiTW: Starting ArduPlane : /home/quessy/ardupilot/build/sitl/bin/arduplane -S --model airsim-plane --speedup 1 --defaults /home/quessy/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/plane.parm,/home/quessy/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/airsim-plane.parm -I0
xterm: cannot load font "10x20"
xterm: cannot load font "-Misc-Fixed-bold-R-*-*-13-120-75-75-C-60-ISO8859-1"
xterm: cannot load font "-Misc-Fixed-medium-R-*-*-13-120-75-75-C-120-ISO10646-1"
xterm: cannot load font "-Misc-Fixed-bold-R-*-*-13-120-75-75-C-120-ISO10646-1"
xterm: cannot load font "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-iso10646-1"
Connect tcp:127.0.0.1:5760 source_system=255

Not sure if it is connecting to 14550 rather than 9002, 9003 or is 14550 the Xming graphical port?

rajat2004 commented 4 years ago

Awesome, thanks for the asset fix! Will try out the new commits and the AP branch soon. From a brief search, the error code 10040 seems to indicate that the packet sizes are not matching. The plane_packet sent by AP is defined here- https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/commit/83ea2fc1f30d3cf4c763b2015c13be98e828fdb9, and has an extra tla field which is not defined on the AirSim side, so the buffer size is too small and hence the error. Fixing that should solve the problem, but need to test

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Cool that was actually it commented out that line and then the asset loaded into unreal, see image below. I have set the axis slightly wrong on the static mesh so the front is currently the side, think I need to move the camera back a bit as the defaultUAV model is much larger than the default quadcopter.

Im going to start analyzing the physics model and I will add in some sensible parameters for the aircraft. This skywalker paper offers quite a nice american derivative non-linear model for the skywalker UAV that will be fine for now. They have also made an opensource matlab project for their results.

Im also going to have a think about setting up some kind of hpp or python output test file that can work out whether or not the model is correctly implemented, perhaps by running some quasi-sim based flight test. Or there might be something more direct by running the simulation hpp files in isolation and giving them a datum input & output.

image

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Just realised that the skywalker x8 is a blended wing body design and doesn't have seperate aileron elevator and rudder controls. I might implement the aircraft dynamics as described for now and artificially add in control surfaces just to see how it performs. There are other models I might take a look at there is a nice collection in Heffely and Jewell despite it being a pain to read through. Aircraft Control and Simulation also has an F16 fixedwing model. There might be a case of scaling back a generic fixedwing dynamic model for a generic-UAV model if setup in a conventional configuration. There is quite a lot out there on similtude for dynamics.

samuelctabor commented 4 years ago

An option you might want to consider would be using the same coefficients as the ArduPilot built-in fixed-wing simulator coefficients defined here https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/SITL/SIM_Plane.h

This would have the advantage that the ArduPlane tuning would be correct from the start, and if it flies well using these that would be basic validation of physics implementation.

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Cool thanks a lot, didn't realised that existed I will just use that makes life much easier. Ill set that up as the genericAircraft on the airsim side too.

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

I've added the fixedwing aircraft from SIM_Plane.h along with the model from the Skywalker X8 paper. Im going to start looking at running some tests today and using ardupilot in some more detail. I might also start looking at how to expose the API to a python client to make a helloPlane.py type script.

AOS55 commented 4 years ago

Does anyone know how to change the initialization altitude in the blocks environment. I have tried initializing the aircraft with the following JSON but it keeps starting the aircraft on the ground:

{
  "SettingsVersion": 1.2,
  "SimMode": "FixedWing",
  "Vehicles": {
    "Plane": {
      "VehicleType": "ArduPlane",
      "UseSerial": false,
      "LocalHostIp": "127.0.0.1",
      "UdpIp": "127.0.0.1",
      "UdpPort": 9003,
      "ControlPort": 9002,
      "OriginGeopoint": {
        "Latitude": 47.641468,
        "Longitude": -122.140165,
        "Altitude": -800
      }
    }

  }
}

I thought this would start at 800m above the ground but is still starting on the floor.