Project

Building a drone and developing its control system.

Table of Contents

• Project
  • Table of Contents
  • About The Project
    • Tech Stack
    • File Structure
  • Getting Started
    • Prerequisites and installlation
    • Installation
    • Execution
  • Algorithm Flowchart
  • Results and Demo
  • Future Work
  • Contributors
  • Acknowledgements and Resources
  • License

About The Project

Drone aviation is an emerging industry. With possibilities for its applications in agriculture, healthcare, e-commerce as well as traffic control. We wanted to get first hand experience with how a drone is designed as well as how it flies to get a firm grasp on the principles needed to work with drones in the future.
Our full project report can be found here

Tech Stack

• Solidworks
• ROS Noetic
• Gazebo
• Python 3

File Structure

📦Eklavya---Drone
 ┣ 📂assets                           #contains gifs, videos and images of the results
 ┣ 📂cfg                              #config files for the sensors
 ┣ 📂include                          #include files for the plugins
 ┃ ┗ 📂vitarana_drone
 ┃ ┃ ┣ 📜gazebo_edrone_propulsion.h   #propulsion plugin include
 ┃ ┃ ┣ 📜gazebo_ros_gps.h             #gps plugin include
 ┣ 📂launch                           #launch files
 ┃ ┗ 📜drone.launch
 ┣ 📂models                           #files and meshes used to render the model
 ┃ ┗ 📂edrone
 ┃ ┃ ┣ 📂materials
 ┃ ┃ ┣ 📂meshes
 ┃ ┃ ┣ 📜model.config
 ┃ ┃ ┗ 📜model.sdf
 ┣ 📂msg                              #contains custom messages which are used to control drone functions
 ┣ 📂scripts                          #python programs used to run the drone
 ┃ ┣ 📂__pycache__
 ┃ ┣ 📜control.py                     #brain of the drone, this file needs to be executed
 ┃ ┣ 📜pid.py                         #contains the math needed to stabilise the drone
 ┣ 📂src                              #contains custom plugins used with the drone
 ┃ ┣ 📜gazebo_edrone_propulsion.cpp
 ┃ ┗ 📜gazebo_ros_gps.cpp
 ┣ 📂worlds                           #world files
 ┃ ┣ 📜drone.world
 ┣ 📜CMakeLists.txt
 ┣ 📜README.md
 ┗ 📜package.xml

Getting Started

Prerequisites and installlation

• Tested on Ubuntu 20.04
• ROS Noetic
• Gazebo Sim
• Do visit these websites for the installation steps of the above mentioned software. It is recommended to install Gazebo along with ROS and not seperately

Installation

git clone https://github.com/Jash-Shah/Eklavya---Drone.git

Add this folder in the src directory of your catkin workspace Create the src folder if it doesn't already exist by

mkdir src

Initialise the project with

catkin_make
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

Execution

Open two terminal windows and run the following commands

• Terminal 1

source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
roslaunch drone vitarana_drone drone.launch

• Terminal 2

source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
rosrun vitarana_drone control.py

Algorithm Flowchart

Simplified code structure

Results and Demo

Drone at start of the program:

Drone when target co-ordinates are given in control.py:

final_pid_test.mp4

Future Work

• Create a control system for the drone using PID
• Stabilise the Roll, Pitch and Yaw of the Drone
• Get the drone to fly at any arbitrary altitude
• Have the drone fly to given co-ordinates and stabilise itself
• Implement obstacle avoidance

Contributors

• Toshan Luktuke
• Jash Shah

Acknowledgements and Resources

• SRA VJTI Eklavya 2021
• E-Yantra IIT-B for the plugins as well as the model of the drone.
• Nishanth Rao for the template of the PID controllers
• Tim Wescott for the paper PID without PhD which was extremely illuminating for beginners in PID
• Our mentors Saad Hashmi, Karthik Swaminathan and Dhruvi Doshi for their guidance throughout the whole project

License

MIT License