Drone Control Using Pixhawk and ROS

Vinicius Ferreira*, Bernardo Martinez, and Guilherme Pereira
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26505

Presentation No.: 55

Assigned Category (Presentation Format): Engineering (Poster Presentations)

Student’s Major: Aerospace Engineering

Drones are very popular in applications that range from cinematography to precision agriculture and industry automation. The project purpose is to create and test an interface capable of control and give commands to an autonomous drone using a communication between a computer and the drone`s flight controller, named Pixhawk. With this interface the drone would be able to perform any flight task. These tasks include takeoff, return to home, land and waypoints navigations. To be able to perform those tasks, the drone’s onboard computer needs to communicate to a ROS (Robot Operational System) node running in a remote computer using a protocol named Mavlink. In this project, it was used a simulator called Gazebo, where the code created was simulated in a virtual drone using Mavlink communication, before it is tested in the actual drone. In the simulation the drone performed all the tasks included in the interface that was created. In conclusion, it is possible to control perfectly a drone using Pixhawk while running a ROS code and communicate both using a Mavlink protocol.

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: My efforts were mainly voluntary.