Quickstart

Quickstart Guide

This is a quick guide to get the source, compile all the features and run a simulation.

Install Pre-Requisites

Install Gazebo

The project uses Gazebo as simulation environment, so it needs to be installed if that feature is desired. Check your distro for available packages for gazebo. If none is available, the last stable version can be obtained at [gazebosim.org] (http://gazebosim.org/).

Besides Gazebo itself, our test infrastructure depends on two additional plugins in order to execute the simulation and automated testing: Gazebo Sitl and Gazebo Realsense, so thoses will have to be properly installed as well. Please, follow the instructions of each project on how to do it.

Install Autopilot

The project supports Ardupilot and PX4 as autopilots. For this quick guide we will be using Ardupilot. The project is available at the project's [github page] (https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot). Check Ardupilot's project wiki for instructions on how to build and install.

Build and Install

Detailed instructions on how to build and install the project can be found in our README. To be able to run simulations and automated tests, its necessary to enable Tools and Gazebo support during compiling, so make sure that -DWITH_TOOLS=ON -DWITH_GAZEBO=ON is passed to cmake.

Running the Simulation

The project provides a simple script to automate the process of running the autopilot, running gazebo, running coav-control and linking it all together. The script is called coav-sim.sh and can be found in the testbed directory. The following command will start a simulation using Gazebo RealSense and sensor, Simple Detector as detector, Stop Avoidance as avoidance strategy and Ardupilot as autopilot:

AUTOPILOT=AP_APM ./coav-sim.sh -a QC_STOP_AVOIDANCE -d DI_SIMPLE -s ST_GAZEBO_REALSENSE

The simulation will start only gazebo server. To see the simulation in Gazebo's graphical interface, open a separate terminal an run the command:

gzclient