Intro

swarm_gcs is a 3d user interface (or ground station) for robots and aerial swarm based on ROS and Three.js. You may use it as a web app on your PC and mobile devices (iPad for example) or standalone application.

This project stands as a part of Omni-swarm: A Decentralized Omnidirectional Visual-Inertial-UWB State Estimation System for Aerial Swarm. You may use it alone on any type of robot or as a part of Omni-swarm for swarm robots.

Prerequisite

To take the full advantage of swarm_gcs, messages defined in swarm_msgs and our custom mavlink protocol are required now. We are going to modified protocols and messages for swarm_gcs to be more generic.

The swarm mode of swarm_gcs:

The single drone mode on an iPad with dense map:

Related Paper

Omni-swarm: A Decentralized Omnidirectional Visual-Inertial-UWB State Estimation System for Aerial Swarm The VINS-Fisheye is a part of Omni-swarm. If you want use VIN-Fisheye as a part of your research project, please cite this paper.

Build

Prerequirements LCM is required now.

git clone https://github.com/lcm-proj/lcm
mkdir -p lcm/build
cd lcm/build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j8
sudo make install

For ros, rosbridge_suite and inf_uwb_ros is required. System rosbridge_suite may conflict with latest Python.

pip install pymongo
pip install autobahn
pip install twisted
sudo apt install ros-<ROS_DISTRO>-rosauth

For rosbridge

cd catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/RobotWebTools/rosbridge_suite
git clone https://github.com/HKUST-Swarm/inf_uwb_ros

Build to executable

./build.sh

Usage

Way 0: Most convient way:

roslaunch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket.launch

Then open

http://swarm-gcs.xuhao1.me in browser on PC or mobile devices and select Server IP: (127.0.0.1 if you are running rosbridge on localhost)

Way 2: Use nginx as webserver

Clone swarm_gcs

cd path-to-swarm_gcs/
git clone https://github.com/HKUST-Swarm/swarm_gcs
git submodule init
git submodule update

sudo apt install nginx

Modified mime types for serving mjs file

sudo gedit /etc/nginx/mime.types

Add

application/javascript mjs;

after line 8.

Modified default server

sudo gedit /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

to

server {
	listen 80 default_server;
	listen [::]:80 default_server;

	root path-to-swarm_gcs/swarm_gcs;

	server_name _;

	location / {
		# First attempt to serve request as file, then
		# as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
		try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
	}

}

And reload nginx:

sudo nginx -s reload

Then open http://127.0.0.1 or open http://your-ip/ on mobile device (iPad 12 inch) or other computer. And for ros serving:

roslaunch launch/swarm_simulation.launch

Note: After updating code, you may need to clear your Chrome cache or refresh with Ctrl+F5.

Way 3: Download executable from Release and unzip it

cd swarm_gcs-linux-x64
roslaunch launch/swarm_simulation.launch

cd swarm_gcs-linux-x64
./swarm_gcs

Way 4:

Clone swarm_gcs

cd path-to-swarm_gcs/
git clone https://github.com/HKUST-Swarm/swarm_gcs
git submodule init
git submodule update

Install nodejs and http-server.

sudo npm install http-server -g

cd swarm_gcs
http-server -c-1

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8080 in Chrome