CrazySim: A Software-in-the-Loop Simulator for the Crazyflie Nano Quadrotor

This code accompanies the work in the ICRA 2024 accepted paper "CrazySim: A Software-in-the-Loop Simulator for the Crazyflie Nano Quadrotor" [1]. CrazySim is a simulator platform that runs Crazyflie firmware in a simulation state on a desktop machine with integrated communication with Gazebo sensors and physics engine. The simulated Crazyflie firmware is intended to communicate with a custom Crazyflie Python library (CFLib) provided in this code. This enables simulating the behavior of CFLib scripts that are intended to control single or multiple Crazyflies in a real hardware demonstration. With CFLib communication capabilities, users can choose to use CrazySwarm2 with CFLib as the backend for a ROS 2 interface with the simulator. In this code we also provide a case study that uses model predictive control (MPC) using Acados for decentralized control of Crazyflie drone fleets.

References

[1] C. Llanes, Z. Kakish, K. Williams, and S. Coogan, “CrazySim: A Software-in-the-Loop Simulator for the Crazyflie Nano Quadrotor,” To appear in 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024.

@INPROCEEDINGS{LlanesICRA2024,
author = {Llanes, Christian and Kakish, Zahi and Williams, Kyle and Coogan, Samuel},
booktitle = {2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)}, 
title = {CrazySim: A Software-in-the-Loop Simulator for the Crazyflie Nano Quadrotor},
year = {2024},
pubstate={forthcoming}
}

CrazySim Setup

Supported Platforms

This simulator is currently only supported on Ubuntu systems with at least 20.04. This is primarily a requirement from Gazebo Sim. The simulator was built, tested, and verified on 22.04 with Gazebo Garden.

To install this repository use the recursive command as shown below for HTTPS:

git clone https://github.com/gtfactslab/CrazySim.git --recursive

crazyflie-lib-python

cd crazyflie-lib-python
pip install -e .

crazyflie-clients-python [Optional]

[WARNING] This modified client package is only for software-in-the-loop and has several hardware specific features disabled. Do not use this package for your hardware.

If you want to test a single Crazyflie with a custom crazyflie-clients-python for SITL, then run the following command in your terminal. If pip reinstalls cflib, then you may have to remove it and install from source above.

Clone the custom crazyflie client.

git clone https://github.com/llanesc/crazyflie-clients-python
cd crazyflie-clients-python

Switch to the sitl-release branch and install.

git checkout sitl-release
pip install -e .

crazyflie-firmware

[WARNING] This is a modified version of the crazyflie-firmware for software-in-the-loop. At this time do not use this firmware for your hardware. SITL integration with Kbuild is being developed for cross-platform building.

The installation instructions and usage are referenced in the documentation file.

Dependencies

Run the following commands to install dependencies.

sudo apt install cmake build-essential
pip install Jinja2

Building the code

First install Gazebo Garden from https://gazebosim.org/docs/garden/install_ubuntu

Run the command to build the firmware and Gazebo plugins.

cd crazyflie-firmware
mkdir -p sitl_make/build && cd $_
cmake ..
make all

How to use

Currently, users have to restart Gazebo after each CFLib connect and disconnect cycle. Supporting a restart cycle without restarting Gazebo is on the list of things to do.

Start up SITL

Open a terminal and run

cd crazyflie-firmware

We can then run the firmware instance and spawn the models with Gazebo using a launch script. All launch scripts require a model argument -m. All currently implemented models are tabulated below.

Models	Description
crazyflie	The default Crazyflie 2.1.
crazyflie_thrust_upgrade	The Crazyflie 2.1 with thrust upgrade bundle.

Option 1: Spawning a single crazyflie model with initial position (x = 0, y = 0)

bash tools/crazyflie-simulation/simulator_files/gazebo/launch/sitl_singleagent.sh -m crazyflie -x 0 -y 0

Option 2: Spawning 8 crazyflie models to form a perfect square

bash tools/crazyflie-simulation/simulator_files/gazebo/launch/sitl_multiagent_square.sh -n 8 -m crazyflie

Option 3: Spawning multiple crazyflie models with positions defined in the agents.txt file. New vehicles are defined by adding a new line with comma deliminated initial position x,y.

bash tools/crazyflie-simulation/simulator_files/gazebo/launch/sitl_multiagent_text.sh -m crazyflie

Now you can run any CFLib Python script with URI udp://0.0.0.0:19850. For drone swarms increment the port for each additional drone.

You can also test a single crazyflie using the custom client if you installed it from the crazyflie-clients-python section.

First start up the custom client.

cfclient

Click on the SITL checkbox, scan, and connect. Once it's connected you can take off and fly using the command based flight controls.

PID Tuning Example

One use case for simulating a crazyflie with the client is real time PID tuning. If you created a custom crazyflie with larger batteries, multiple decks, and upgraded motors, then it would be useful to tune the PIDs in a simulator platform before tuning live on hardware. An example of real time PID tuning is shown below.

crazysim_pid.mp4

Crazyswarm2 and Model Predictive Control Case Study

This section follows the setup of CrazySwarm2 with CrazySim and demonstrating a case study that uses a model predictive controller (MPC) with Acados to track a set of predefined temporally parametrized trajectories.

Make sure you have ROS 2 Humble.

Install the following for Crazyswarm2:

sudo apt install libboost-program-options-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev
pip3 install rowan transforms3d
sudo apt install ros-humble-tf-transformations

If you want to run the MPC code then you will need Acados. Acados can be installed by following their documentation.

Then build the ROS 2 workspace.

cd ros2_ws
colcon build --symlink-install

Configuration

The crazyswarm2 configuration files can be found in

ros2_ws/src/crazyswarm2/crazyflie/config/

The crazyflies.yaml describes the robots currently being used. If a robot is not in the simulator or hardware, then it can be disabled by setting the enabled parameter to false. A more detailed description for crazyswarm2 configurations can be found here.

The main code for the MPC script is in the following:

ros2_ws/crazyflie_mpc/crazyflie_mpc/crazyflie_multiagent_mpc.py

The trajectory type can be changed to a horizontal circle, vertical circle, helix, or a lemniscate trajectory by changing the variable "trajectory_type" in the CrazyflieMPC class. There is also a motors variable in the CrazyflieMPC class that can be changed based on if you defined the crazyflie or crazyflie_thrust_upgrade model.

Start up the Firmware

Start up the firmware with any of the 3 launch script options. Below we demonstrate 4 Crazyflies in a square formation.

bash tools/crazyflie-simulation/simulator_files/gazebo/launch/sitl_multiagent_square.sh -n 4 -m crazyflie

Start Crazyswarm2

Make sure that cf_1, cf_2, cf_3, and cf_4 are enabled in the CrazySwarm2 configuration YAML file. Launch the Crazyswarm2 services with CFLib backend.

ros2 launch crazyflie launch.py backend:=cflib

Start MPC code

Run the Crazyflie MPC demonstration with the code below. The argument n_agents can be modified for the number of agents in your environment. Additionally, the argument --build_acados can be defined to compile the Acados optimal control problem.

ros2 run crazyflie_mpc crazyflie_multiagent_mpc --n_agents=4 --build_acados

Using the command line publisher we can command all vehicles to take off using MPC.

ros2 topic pub -t 1 /all/mpc_takeoff std_msgs/msg/Empty

Using the command line publisher we can command all vehicles to start the trajectory.

ros2 topic pub -t 1 /all/mpc_trajectory std_msgs/msg/Empty

Using the command line publisher we can command all vehicles to stop the trajectory and hover.

ros2 topic pub -t 1 /all/mpc_hover std_msgs/msg/Empty

We also implemented a MPC land feature, but it's still experimental and may result in crashing the drone.

Versions

Version	Description
1.0	Initial release
1.1	Added receiver thread for CFLib UdpDriver, new thrust upgrade model to Gazebo, and a seperate MPC solver thread with a queue for storing the controls.
1.2	Merge crazyflie-firmware with commits up to dbb09b5, update submodule motion_capture_tracking to version 1.0.5, fixed Gazebo sending external pose to firmware (wasn't receiving orientation), cleaned up launch scripts, removed some firmware module copies for sitl.