🦅 Albatross - Autonomous Drone Competition System

Currently Working On

Based on Albatross/docs/TODO.md:

• Split shared state properly for multi-thread access.
• Add timing alignment and deterministic replay support across modules and logging.
• Create a Gazebo camera adapter and support many module types beyond only Vision/EKF.
• Implement replay and offline tooling (run logger, log schema, replay runner, module eval, visualization, policy-vs-heuristic comparisons).
• Move away from one global lock to per-state objects, ring buffers for high-rate streams, last-value caches, timestamps, and freshness checks.

What This Repo Is

Albatross is a modular Python autonomy stack for autonomous drone competition workflows. It is built to run against PX4/Gazebo now, while keeping adapters, drones, runners, and modules swappable.

Competition Constraints

• Must fly using Neros Technologies drones.
• Must use DCL's AI Vector Module.
• Code must be written in Python.
• Custom drone hardware is not allowed.

Current Stack (As Implemented)

• Entrypoint: Albatross/main.py
• Runtime choices currently wired in main.py:
  • Drone: gz_x500_mono_cam
  • Adapter: GazeboPx4
  • Runner: Runner
• Core runtime thread model (Albatross/core/pipeline.py):
  • pump sensor thread
  • command loop thread
  • heartbeat print thread
• Shared cross-thread data object: SharedState (Albatross/core/types/telemetry/shared_state.py)
• Module insertion/removal is done in main.py via the modules = [...] list.

Quick Start

1. Start PX4 SITL + Gazebo (from external/PX4-Autopilot):

make px4_sitl gz_x500

2. Run Albatross autonomy (from repo root):

cd Albatross
source .venv-albatross/bin/activate
python main.py gz_x500_mono_cam GazeboPx4 Runner

Repo Layout

• Albatross/main.py: entrypoint and runtime wiring.
• Albatross/core/: pipeline, control module, types, and utilities.
• Albatross/adapters/: platform adapter interface and implementations.
• Albatross/drones/: drone interface and drone profiles.
• Albatross/orchestrators/: flight orchestration runners.
• Albatross/docs/: architecture docs and TODO notes.
• Albatross/tests/: fault injection and test scaffolding.
• external/PX4-Autopilot/: PX4 submodule.

Near-Term Goals

• Improve state synchronization/timing discipline.
• Add robust replay/offline evaluation.
• Expand adapters and module coverage.
• Harden the stack for repeatable autonomous runs.

References

• PX4 Documentation: https://docs.px4.io/main/en/