Setup ROS

Once the drone's networking infrastructure is established, we can set up ROS.

Setup ROS on VOXL

This guide was used to setup ROS on the VOXL.

Specifically, the following values were set in the my_ros_env.sh on the VOXL:

export ROS_IP=10.0.0.20                                # VOXL Static IP
export ROS_MASTER_IP=10.0.0.10                         # NUC Static IP
export ROS_MASTER_URI=https://${ROS_MASTER_IP}:11311/  # ROS URI on NUC

Setup ROS on the NUC

MAVROS

MAVROS is used to send MAVLink commands (i.e. flight commands) from a ROS node to the VOXL's PX4 Flight controller.

First, MAVROS comes preinstalled on the VOXL but the NUC will need to have MAVROS installed (tutorial). An example program provided by PXY is their MAVROS Offboard control example

ModalAI provide a mavros_test node to fly in a figure 8, which can be done using this tutorial. You will also need to build your ROS package before running it (tutorial).

You may need to configure the NUC to run the ROS Nodes on boot.