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Installation and environment configuration

This short tutorial is intended to be used as the installation guide for the development tool-chain of the SITL provided by PX4. The information provided here is based on the official documentation and was created with the git hash cab477d71550558756509ad3a6ffcbebbbbf82b1.

The operative system used is Ubuntu Linux LTS 20.04 (Focal Fossa) with ROS "Noetic" and Gazebo 11. We will go through the files needed to install each one of these as I did.

Setting up a basic environment

Install ROS Noetic (which comes by default with Gazebo 11) by following ROS Noetic installation.

Then download the PX4-Autopilot in /home/$USER/ with the next command.

git clone https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot.git --recursive
cd PX4-Autopilot
git checkout cab477d71550558756509ad3a6ffcbebbbbf82b1

Once it is downloaded it will create a folder called PX4-Autopilot. To install the basic development dependencies do as follows.

bash ./PX4-Autopilot/Tools/setup/ubuntu.sh

The last lines install a development environment that includes Gazebo 11 and jMAVSim simulators, and the NuttX/Pixhawk tool-chain which are needed to use the SITL. Additionally, I encountered some errors in the past which were solved with the next commands.

sudo apt install libgstreamer1.0-dev 
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-good  
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad  
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly

You can verify that the installation was successful by running.

arm-none-eabi-gcc --version

The result if everything was right should be:

arm-none-eabi-gcc (GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain 9-2020-q2-update) 9.3.1 20200408 (release)
Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Setting up Mavros and GeographicLib

The next steps are needed to set up Mavros and GeographicLib. This steps are based on this guide from the official PX4 documentation.

Install Mavros.

sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-mavros ros-noetic-mavros-extras
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mavlink/mavros/master/mavros/scripts/install_geographiclib_datasets.sh
sudo bash ./install_geographiclib_datasets.sh

This project has dependencies in other ROS packages which are shown below. To install find_object_2d and vision_opencv ROS packages using the following commands.

Note: Please consider installing OpenCV from source (before running these commands) to enable SIFT and SURF as these produced the best results over the project.

sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-find-object-2d
sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-vision-opencv

Models configuration

Once the PX4 SITL is installed, create your own model of the F450 model with the files provided in mavros_off_board/urdf and mavros_off_board/sdf. The instruction and steps are explained in this thread. The steps are listed below.

  1. Create a folder under Tools/sitl_gazebo/models for the F450 model called quad_f450_camera
  2. Create the following files under Tools/sitl_gazebo/models/quad_f450_camera: model.config and quad_f450_camera.sdf (The sdf file and model.config is located in mavros_off_board/sdf). Additionally, create the folder meshes and urdf and add the files in mavros_off_board/urdf, mavros_off_board/meshes
  3. Create a world file in Tools/sitl_gazebo/worlds called grass_pad.world (file located in mavros_off_board/worlds)
  4. Create an airframe file under ROMFS/px4fmu_common/init.d-posix/airframes (This can be based off the iris or solo airframe files), give it a number (for example 1076) and name it 1076_quad_f450_camera. (You can find the airframe file at mavros_off_board/files)
  5. Add the airframe file, for example 1076_quad_f450_camera to ROMFS/px4fmu_common/init.d-posix/airframes/CMakeLists.txt at the bottom of the list starting with px4_add_romfs_files(...
  6. Add the airframe name (quad_f450_camera) to the file platforms/posix/cmake/sitl_target.cmake in the command that starts with set(models … as-well as the world file grass_pad to the line starting with set(worlds...
  7. Copy the models located at mavros_off_board/worlds/gazebo into .gazebo/models. In case the folder models does not exist within .gazebo, create it first.

Finally, add the three ROS packages to your catkin_ws and compile the project with catkin_make.

At this point everything should be up and running to start playing with the SITL of PX4.