Add support for HIL

[tayyabkhalil-313]

Describe problem solved by this pull request

With reference to PR # 28 for enabling HITL with JSBSim bridge, this uses the modifications from that PR and further builds on it to successfully run HITL for Rascal with JSBSim Bridge. Using that PR directly resulted in takeoff issues which have now been resolved.

Steps for HITL

1. Change the mixer file referenced in 1000_rc_fw_easystar.hil to plane_sitl.main.mix required by rascal.
2. Build and upload the code on hardware. Select the HILStar airframe from QGC.
3. Build the jsbsim bridge with make px4_sitl jsbsim.
4. Change the directory to the location of build of jsbsim bridge. It is usually PX4-Autopilot/build/px4_sitl_default/build_jsbsim_bridge.
5. From the above directory, run the following command: HEADLESS=1 ./jsbsim_bridge rascal -d /dev/ttyACM0 -s ~/13.2/PX4-Autopilot/Tools/jsbsim_bridge/scene/LSZH.xml Where:

• rascal is the name of config file.
• -d specifies the port of connected hardware.
• -s specifies the path of the scene file.

6. From QGC, upload the vehicle specific and HIL parameters provided here. rascal_hitl.zip
7. Now simply command the vehicle through QGC as required.

Testing

The method has been successfully tested on Pixhawk 4 with PX4 v1.13.2. A screenshot of the vehicle in mission mode is shown below: The log file is here.