Drone Dash
The official documentation and support for Drone Dash @ Summer of Innovation 2023, IIT Dharwad.
Objective
The objective of Drone Dash is to design a obstacle avoidance algorithm for a drone. There is an onboard color and depth camera which can be used for this task. You may use any algorithm you like. The goal is to reach the end of the track in the shortest time possible.
Development Environment
You will be developing the algorithm for use with the PX4 Autopilot Stack in ROS. The PX4 Autopilot is a flight control software stack for drones. ROS is a robotics middleware that provides a set of tools and libraries for developing robot applications.
You will be using the Gazebo simulator to test your algorithm. Gazebo is a 3D robotics simulator that provides a physics engine, high-quality graphics, and convenient programmatic and graphical interfaces.
Instructions for setting up the development environment are provided in the Installation Guide.
Demo Script
We have provided a demo script to get you started. The script gets the drone to takeoff and then move forward and backward in a loop. You can launch a simulation with the demo script using the following command.
roslaunch dronedash demo.launch
To see the RGB and depth images from the camera in RVIZ, set the rviz parameter to true.
roslaunch dronedash demo.launch rviz:=true
Note: If the demo does not work, and you encounter the message
Failsafe mode activatedin the terminal see the Troubleshooting section.
Resources
We have provided below a list of recommended resources that you can use to learn more about the development environment and the PX4 Autopilot Stack.