/crazyswarm

A Large Nano-Quadcopter Swarm

Primary LanguagePythonMIT LicenseMIT

crazyswarm

A Large Nano-Quadcopter Swarm.

Description

This repository should be all you need to set up a development environment for the USC Crazyflie swarm. A high-level overview is given in our scientific papers "Crazyswarm: A Large Nano-Quadcopter Swarm", by James A. Preiss , Wolfgang Hönig, Gaurav S. Sukhatme, and Nora Ayanian, published as extended abstract at IROS 2016 and submitted for review to ICRA 2017.

It mostly consists of links to other submodules, tied together with a build script. The submodules are:

repo description
crazyflie-clients-python The official Crazyflie GUI client. Not customized. Useful for manual flight and sanity checks.
crazyflie-firmware Our fork of the software that runs onboard the Crazyflie on the main CPU. Extensively modified with new controller, EKF, spline trajectories, etc.
crazyflie-lib-python A dependency of crazyflie-clients-python. Slightly modified for improved flashing.
crazyflie2-nrf-firmware Our fork of the onboard software that controls the Crazyflie's radio. Modified to support broadcast communication to swarms.
crazyradio-firmware (Public) fork of the Crazyradio firmware. Modified to support broadcasts.
ros_ws/src/crazyflie_ros The main ROS stack dealing with sending commands and receiving telemetry from the Crazyflie in ROS. Modified for low latency and swarm support.

Git submodules behave in a somewhat counterintuitive way. They point to a specific commit in the submodule's commit tree. They don't point to a named branch head like you might expect. Therefore, if you modify one of the submodules listed above, you must also modify this repository via git submodule update so it points to your new commit.

Prerequisites

  • Install ROS
  • Install GNU ARM toolchain following these instructions
  • For legal reasons we are not allowed to include the VICON DataStream SDK in this repository, which is used to capture data from a VICON motion capture system. Please download the SDK from http://www.vicon.com and place the following files in ros_ws/src/crazyflie_ros/externalDependencies/vicon_sdk
├── include
│   └── vicon_sdk
│       └── Client.h
└── lib64
    ├── libboost_locale-mt.so.1.53.0
    ├── libboost_system-mt.so.1.53.0
    ├── libboost_thread-mt.so.1.53.0
    ├── libboost_unit_test_framework-mt.so.1.53.0
    ├── libDebugServices.so
    └── libViconDataStreamSDK_CPP.so
  • ??? (create an issue/PR if there are some we missed)

Setup

git clone https://github.com/USC-ACTLab/crazyswarm.git
./build.sh

Firmware (NRF)

cd crazyflie2-nrf-firmware
tools/build/download_deps
make
make cload

Crazyradio

cd crazyradio-firmware/firmware
make CRPA=1
python ../usbtools/launchBootloader.py
python ../usbtools/nrfbootload.py flash bin/cradio.bin

Unplug and replug radio.

Debugging

Firmware

Use SEGGER Real-Time Transfers (RRT):

./JLinkExe -if swd -device STM32F405RG -speed 4000 -autoconnect 1

In a second terminal:

./JLinkRTTClient

Simulation

Setup

  • Clone this repository
  • Clone the firmware into crazyflie-firmware
  • cd /ros_ws/src/crazyswarm/scripts/pycrazyswarm/cfsim
  • make (this builds the simulator components which use the firmware)

If you want to use the vispy backend:

Usage (Matplotlib)

  • Enable a subset of Crazyflies by editing ros_ws/src/crazyswarm/launch/crazyflies.yaml
  • cd ros_ws/src/crazyswarm/scripts
  • python figure8_canned.py --sim

Usage (Vispy)

  • cd ros_ws/src/crazyswarm/scripts
  • python figure8_canned.py --sim --vis vispy --dt 0.01

Usage

  • The Crazyflies (initial position and channels) are defined in ros_ws/src/crazyswarm/launch/crazyflies.yaml. You can use the GUI in ros_ws/src/crazyswarm/scripts/chooser.py to enable or disable individual Crazyflies and execute commands such as powering them on- or off.
  • Use roslaunch crazyswarm hover_swarm.launch to connect to the Crazyflies and show the current tracking state in rviz.
  • Run one of the scripts in ros_ws/src/crazyswarm/scripts to execute a motion.

If you use our work in academia, please cite us:

@inproceedings{crazyswarm,
	Author = {James A. Preiss and Wolfgang H\"onig and Gaurav S. Sukhatme and Nora Ayanian},
	Booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ Intl Conf. Intelligent Robots and Systems (Late Breaking Results)},
	Title = {Crazyswarm: A Large Nano-Quadcopter Swarm},
	Year = {2016}
}