Mission Planner - Swarm Functionality

[Brendan Smith]

Hi all,

After a few days of trying to get this to work, and realizing just google-ing and reading forums wasn't going to work I decided to post here. I am at the University of California, Merced starting up my research in UAVs. Although our lab primarily used Paparazzi prior to 2012, we are trying to integrate APM into our aircrafts and rotorcrafts pretty quickly. Specifically, we are trying to get multiple multirotors in the air simultaneously.

I have had luck with connecting to multiple UAVs over the 3DR telemetry unit, using the ctrl+f hidden functions menu. I am able to arm on of the UAVs and "take-off" (I haven't placed the props on yet for safety). I can then "land" by hitting the button. But once I connect here, I can no longer read attitude information from the APM board in Mission Planner, and they UAVs seem to be stuck in land. It is very strange, and I have already had to swap out one board because it seems to have "bricked it" (I will attempt to flash later today). Does anyone here have experience with this functionality? Once I wrap my head around how this is currently functioning, I may be able to help with some of the swarming concepts and potentially contribute some code.

Best Regards,

Brendan Smith

[Chris Anderson]

Brendan,

Brandon Basso from the 3DR team has the most experience with this. It's a little fiddly, but we did get it working and he can walk you through the steps. He's on the list here. We'd love your help in making it easier to use!

Chris

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[Brendan Smith]

Chris,

Thanks for the reply! What's the best method for getting into contact with Brandon?

-Brendan

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[Brandon Basso]

Hi Brendan,

I'll reply here with what I know about swarming, and then we can take it offline if you have any further questions:

The swarming workflow that has produced the best results for me is as follows:

• Connect to leader, Have follower powered up and ready
• Ctrl+F >Swarm
• Set Leader
• Connect Mavs (if you have the terminal open you can see it connecting)
• Drag the follower on the grid to set the offset
• 'Start'
• I usually arm the aircraft manually, but I believe the 'Arm' works as well.  The disarm button definitely works too, don't press it when flying :)

That being said, I haven't been able to get swarming to work consistently well for me.  I also think that there is an altitude bug in the 'takeoff' command.  I haven't picked this stuff up in a few months, but am happy to show you around the code if you are interested.

Best,

Brandon

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[Brendan Smith]

Hi Brandon,

Thanks for the instruction, I'll have to test this on Monday. I'd really appreciate it if you could walk me through the code when you have a chance. My email is: smithbre...@gmail.com

-Brendan

[Clayton Smith]

This is the closest thread I could find. I'm wondering two things:
1) is there a ground control capable of communication to more than one UAV?

2) is there a way to do this using MAVProxy?

[Brandon Basso]

Clayton,

You can access the swarm functionality in Mission Planner in the Ctrl+F menu.  This is a beta interface, but has worked for me for at least two vehicles (recent example).  Re: MavProxy, i'm not very up to date on that, so maybe someone else can answer.

-Brandon

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[Craig Elder]

You can also use Q Ground Control the control multiple vehicles.

[Michael Day]

Howdy,

Our research group is very interested in scaling up the number of agents in a swarm.  One of our problems is the 3DR radio appears to require a 1:1 matching between the radio on the GCS (ground radio) and an air radio.  Has anybody successfully had a setup where multiple air radios were connected to a single ground radio?  We quickly run out of USB ports on our GCS laptop when we want to fly >5 planes.

Thanks,

Michael

[Brendan Smith]

Hi Michael,

I imagine you could use a USB hub to give you extra COM ports, if you wanted to stay in line with the 1:1. Also there is some research on Mesh networking using XBee radios, where I believe you could transmit from one source to multiple radios. This would definitely not be native to the Ardupilot software. If you have any headway on this, please let us know.

-Brendan

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