MavRos takeoff and land

Install ROS [1]

Open a terminal and then copy and paste the following commands into it. (each block can be copied and pasted at once)

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://ha.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-key 421C365BD9FF1F717815A3895523BAEEB01FA116
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-desktop-full

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

echo "source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

sudo apt install ros-kinetic-mavros ros-kinetic-mavros-extras
sudo /opt/ros/kinetic/lib/mavros/install_geographiclib_datasets.sh

Download and run PX4 Gazebo simulator

Prepare tools for building PX4

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-argparse git-core wget zip python-empy qtcreator cmake build-essential genromfs -y
sudo apt-get install ant protobuf-compiler libeigen3-dev libopencv-dev openjdk-8-jdk openjdk-8-jre clang-3.5 lldb-3.5 python-toml python-numpy -y
sudo apt-get install python-pip -y
sudo -H pip install pandas jinja2

Download source files from Github

cd /tmp
mkdir me190
cd me190
git clone https://github.com/PX4/Firmware.git
cd Firmware
git submodule update --init --recursive

Wait until downloading finish correctly, then run

make posix_sitl_default gazebo

A window will pop up shows a quadcoter

Create ROS work space, make and run our ROS node

Open a new Terminal and run:

cd ~
mkdir catkin_ws
cd  catkin_ws
mkdir src
cd src

Create an empty ROS package called ex1 node which depends on mavros. It will create CMakeLists.txt and packages.xml for you.

catkin_create_pkg ex1 mavros

Then you can pull the given c++ source code to your ex1 package folder

cd ex1/
wget https://github.com/UCM-ME190/MavRos-takeoff-n-land/raw/master/takeoff_n_land.cpp

After that, let's change the generated CMakeLists.txt file so that ros knows how to build this package

gedit CMakeLists.txt

Put those two lines at the end of the CMakeLists.txt file.

add_executable(takeoff_n_land takeoff_n_land.cpp)
target_link_libraries(takeoff_n_land ${catkin_LIBRARIES})

Here you have finished modifing files. Build this ROS package by

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

run following command so that rosrun can find our new nodes in your ex1 package

Run roscore, mavros and this ros nodde

In the terminal you have, run

roscore

Open another two terminals, inside one you run

roslaunch mavros px4.launch fcu_url:="udp://:14540@127.0.0.1:14540"

inside another, run the ROS node you just built

cd ~/catkin_ws
source ./devel/setup.bash 
rosrun ex1 takeoff_n_land 

[1] http://wiki.ros.org/kinetic/Installation/Ubuntu

[2] https://dev.px4.io/en/simulation/ros_interface.html

[3] https://dev.px4.io/en/simulation/gazebo.html