QuadSoftware

Quadrotor Platform

About

This page presents instructions and software for ISR Quadrotors. This vehicle includes a Pandaboard Computer that is not recommended to do heavy computing, and so it is only appropriate to run the ROS drivers for the hardware (motors and sensors). So the suggested architecture is to use an external laptop for the main software, connecting via Wi-Fi to the quadrotor. The driver nodes can be remotely launched using roslaunch.

Software

Prerequisites

ROS Fuerte with the following packages:

• laser_drivers
• mav_tools
• scan_tools
• hector_common

Usage

Packages

• quad_drivers -- contains the main drivers (to run on Pandaboard)
• quad_launch -- contains some launch files to record the flights

Nodes

• imu_parser -- Reads data from IMU.
• quad_link -- Establish connection between vehicle and laptop.
• quad_status -- Reads some important data from vehicle.

Subscribed topics

• Under Construction

Published topics

• /scanCenter (sensor_msgs/LaserScan) -- Laser Range Finder measurements.
• /imu/data (sensor_msgs/Imu) -- IMU data.
• /quad_height/height_to_base (mav_msgs/Height) -- Height of quadrotor (in m).
• /quad_status/status (quad_status/Status) -- voltage (in V), RC status, Motors ON/OFF, ExternalCtrl ON/OFF and RunTime.