Gazebo MOCAP

This script simulates a motion capture system using Gazebo to supply a MAVLink enabled drone with position data rather than GPS. The vehicles pose data is obtained in Gazebo through the pygazebo module and sends ATT_POS_MOCAP MAVLink messages using DroneKit. An overview of using external position estimation for PX4 can be found here.

Dependencies

• pygazebo
• DroneKit

Usage

Use default Gazebo connection localhost:11345 and default normal MAVLink PX4 connection localhost:14550,

python gzmocap.py 

Optionally supply arguments for the connection,

usage: gzmocap.py [-h] [--gzhost GZHOST] [--gzport GZPORT]
                       [--px4host PX4HOST] [--px4port PX4PORT]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  --gzhost GZHOST    Gazebo SITL host
  --gzport GZPORT    Gazebo SITL port
  --px4host PX4HOST  PX4 onboard MAVLink host
  --px4port PX4PORT  PX4 onboard MAVLink port

Additional Notes

This script cannot be run sharing the same MAVLink connection used by your offboard flight computer. A heartbeat timeout will occur causing the motion capture system to halt and the drone to fly out of control. For this reason the MAVLink connection by default is for normal mode while your flight computer should use onboard mode. To share the same MAVLink connection this script should run in a separate thread/process and share the same dronekit vehicle object.