{"id":412490,"date":"2024-06-29T22:34:32","date_gmt":"2024-06-29T22:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/savepearlharbor.com\/?p=412490"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T21:00:00","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/savepearlharbor.com\/?p=412490","title":{"rendered":"UAVCAN HITL UAV Simulator for PX4<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hi from\u00a0RaccoonLab<\/a>, a team of enthusiasts in field robotics! We want to share our true-HITL UAVCAN-based simulator for PX4. Quick demo:<\/p>\n

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This post is based on our PX4 Developer Summit 2021 lighting talk<\/a>. <\/p>\n

We believe a unified UAVCAN bus for drone onboard electronics will become a mainstream approach shortly. Our simulator is already based on UAVCAN (in opposition to UART-MAVLINK) and emulates exactly the same messages as real UAVCAN-sensors.<\/p>\n

The project is part of our team’s efforts to create reliable control systems and applications in the field of aerial robotics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"RaccoonLab\"
RaccoonLab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our team is called RaccoonLab, it’s an acronym for robotics and control and also because coons are funny.<\/p>\n

Motivation<\/h2>\n
\"Motivation\"
Motivation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The project itself is focused on a proof-of-concept of a new approach for HITL simulation. But it has a wider scope and its motivation is connected with the new UAVCAN-bus-oriented architecture of onboard electronics. We believe a unified digital bus for onboard drone electronics will be the dominant approach shortly. After all, cars already have an onboard CAN bus. Why do drones have to be behind?<\/p>\n

\"Motivation\"
Motivation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let’s imagine, we want to develop a highly reliable onboard control system for an air taxi or last-mile drone delivery based on the PX4 ecosystem.<\/p>\n

I’m sure, in such a case, we’ll need distributed architectures to provide fault tolerance and reliability. Also, we need tools to test our control system in the configuration as close as possible to the final flight configuration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Problem<\/h2>\n
\"Problem\"
Problem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We address the problem, that the current MAVLINK-HITL approach has a list of drawbacks:<\/p>\n