Hector Quadrotor 2d Navigation

This project focuses on simulating a quadrotor aerial vehicle for the development of flight control systems, autonomous navigation, obstacle avoidance, and path planning. This software relies on the Robot Operating System (ROS) software. ROS provides hardware abstraction, device drivers, libraries, visualizers, message-passing, package management, and more. Along with ROS, Gazebo is used for simulation. Gazebo offers the ability to accurately and efficiently simulate populations of robots in complex indoor and outdoor environments.

This project begins with simple manual control of the quadrotor with a keyboard. It then evolves to simulating GPS waypoint navigation. Once the quadrotor can follow a series of waypoints, it is possible to develop 2D maps of the environment. These maps are used for 2D and 3D path planning and obstacle avoidance.

Getting Started

These instructions will cover the installation of ROS, Gazebo, and several other basic packages required for this software to run. This first section installs ROS, and a few additional dependencies and compiled packages required for the Ardupilot simulation.

Install ROS and primary pacakges

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-key 0xB01FA116
$ sudo apt-get update

In case there was a missing dependency, you may try the following line. However, be careful not to attempt to desinstall-reinstall libgl1-mesa,for it sometimes messes up the ubuntu installation.

$ sudo apt-get -y install libgl1-mesa-dev-lts-utopic

Install ROS Kinetic

$ sudo apt-get -y install ros-kinetic-desktop-full
$ sudo rosdep init
$ rosdep update

Setup environment variables

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc'
$ source ~/.bashrc

Get rosinstall and some additional dependencies

$ sudo apt-get -y install python-rosinstall          \
                        ros-kinetic-octomap-msgs    \
                        ros-kinetic-joy             \
                        ros-kinetic-geodesy         \
                        ros-kinetic-octomap-ros     \
			            unzip

Install catkin tool kit

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu `lsb_release -sc` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
$ wget http://packages.ros.org/ros.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python-catkin-tools

Create the catkin workspace

Setup the workspace

$ mkdir -p $WORKSPACE/src
$ cd $WORKSPACE/src
$ catkin_init_workspace
$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ catkin_make
$ source devel/setup.sh

Install the MappingAndExploration package

$ cd $WORKSPACE/src
$ git clone https://github.com/MuhammadDanyialKhan/MappingAndExploration.git
$ cd Autonomous_2D_Navigation/

Install Hector Quadrotor

$ cd Autonomous_2D_Navigation/
$ git clone https://bitbucket.org/theconstructcore/hector_quadrotor_sim.git

Install Teleop twist keyboard

$ cd Autonomous_2D_Navigation/
$ git clone https://github.com/ros-teleop/teleop_twist_keyboard.git

Check for any missing dependencies.

$ rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro kinetic -y

Install rrt_exploration and m_explore package

$ git clone https://github.com/hasauino/rrt_exploration.git
$ git clone https://github.com/hrnr/m-explore.git

Compile the workspace

$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ source devel/setup.sh
$ catkin_make

To run Hector quadrotor simulation:

$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ source devel/setup.sh
$ roslaunch hector_quadrotor_gazebo camera_launch.launch 

run takeoff command

$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ source devel/setup.sh
$ rostopic pub /takeoff std_msgs/Empty "{}"

run movebase command

$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ source devel/setup.sh
$ roslaunch quadrotor_nav quadrotor_move_base.launch

launch rviz for visualization

$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ source devel/setup.sh
$ rosrun rviz rviz

Now run three robot simulation:

$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ source devel/setup.sh
$ roslaunch multirobot_sim spawn_threerobots.launch 

Run Exploration package:

$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ source devel/setup.sh
$ roslaunch multiRobot_exploration exploration.launch