ArduPilot MALLARD

ArduPilot MALLARD (AP-M) is a customised ArduPilot firmware for MALLARD. It is built based on the current stable ArduSub release (ArduSub-4.0.3).

AP-M provides a Custom frame configuration adapted to the thruster allocation used on MALLARD. This frame configuration allows higher level motion command input such as move_forward, turn_left, etc. AP-M also provides two new frame configurations, i.e. Joystick PWM Control and ROS PWM Control, which enables sending a PWM signal directly to each individual motor by pushing a joystick or publishing a ROS topic, respectively. The ROS PWM Control frame assumes thruster allocation is dealt with within ROS.

Hardware

For this build guide, we use a Pixhawk 4 and direct USB connection to a PC running Ubuntu.

Build

Install git

In case you have not yet installed git, run the following commands in terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git

Clone repository

Open a terminal and cd to our desired root folder for the repository, then clone the main ArduPilot MALLARD repository using your preferred authentication protocol.

• HTTPS:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/EEEManchester/ArduPilot_MALLARD.git

• SSH:

git clone --recursive [email protected]:EEEManchester/ArduPilot_MALLARD.git

Make sure you log into the correct GitHub account that has access to EEEManchester.

Setup environment

A script is provided to automatically setup your build environment.

cd ArduPilot_MALLARD
Tools/environment_install/install-prereqs-ubuntu.sh -y

Note: If the end of the command promp is not showing something similar to echo xxx end------, the setup is unsuccessful. If it complains about 'some-python-package' has no installation candidate, your system is probably configured for Python3. You need to run the follow instead:

Tools/environment_install/install-prereqs-ubuntu-py3.sh -y

Reload the path (log-out and log-in to make permanent):

. ~/.profile

Build with WAF

Make sure you are in ardupilot folder.

Note: For Python3 users, you need to replace waf with waf-py3.

If you have previously built the firmware, you may want to clean WAF first:

./waf clean

Then

./waf configure --board Pixhawk4
./waf sub

After the code finishes, you can find the new firmware ardusub.apj in the build/pixhawk4/bin directory.

Upload

Using WAF

There are two conditions for this to work:

1. with a direct USB connection to the Pixhawk
2. only after configuring and building with waf before

./waf --upload sub

Using GCS

• Mission Planner
• QGroundControl

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Original guides

In unlikely situation that the above instructions do not work, you may want to check out the original ArduPilot guides:

• Developers on ArduSub Wiki
• Setting up the Build Environment (Linux/Ubuntu)
• BUILD.md

USE

Frame selection

ROS