Re: [Paparazzi-devel] support of multiple UAVs? ... now with video link included

[David Conger]

My apologies, forgot to include the video URL (also you can YouTube
search for "Paparazzi the free autopilot")

http://wiki.paparazziuav.org/wiki/GCS

Cheers,
DC

On 2/16/15, David Conger <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> From at least 2005 (when I first found Paparazzi) multi-drone control
> with a single GCS ground station has been working very well.
>
> Here is a video from 2007 showing a drone in Germany and another in
> France being controlled from Berlin Germany over a mobile Internet
> link.
>
> 2007!!!! ... can you imagine that's quite a long time ago in Drone
> years. No other open source project at the time even flew properly
> much less in a configuration anything like this.
>
> If there is a single drone to single GCS limit is it not Paparazzi GCS
> you are using. Possible one of the others? QGround Control?
>
> Even more interesting info about multi-drone flights:
> Paparazzi airframe configuration tool assigns an aircraft ID which is
> used by GCS to plot each aircraft with a different colored trace. As
> you fly each drone will have it's own color assigned. Full control of
> each is maintained via the same buttons and commands and a nice
> colored trace of the flight path is seen.
> Even more interesting is the security built in via a shared (aircraft
> and GCS) hash code. A hash is done at compile time that assures only
> the GCS with the correct hash code will send data to the aircraft that
> is accepted. If someone else runs Paparazzi and tries to control your
> drones the aircraft code will reject the messages as invalid without
> having the proper hash code. At the time even some (maybe all) of the
> military drones did not have this security.
> Note: For the flight you see in the video they had to share the hash
> code to the operators in Berlin.
>
> Imagine all the new features you find inside Paparazzi today (if you
> search) if this was circa 2005 I'm talking about now.  ;)
>
> It is expected few people outside Paparazzi (and many inside) still
> are not aware of so many powerful features inside. Everyone in a truly
> open project like this is more interested in coding and building vs
> marketing and selling. It's a good sign I think of a truly open
> project that you do not see so much marketing and hype to get you to
> buy something.
>
> What I have seen is the Paparazzi foundation is very cutting edge even
> today. Cutting edge things like Ivy, OCaml, run the risk of lack of
> adoption. Like Beta vs VHS for video tape wars a superior way to do it
> can fail to gain wide adoption. I encourage everyone to learn Ivy,
> learn OCaml vs trying to pull these powerful things out from under
> Paparazzi. They are not trivial to substitute or replace and are IMHO
> key components.
>
> Do not be misled by Apache IVY. Here is the Ivy inside Paparazzi:
> http://www.eei.cena.fr/products/ivy/
>
> GCS is written in this (Caml):
> http://caml.inria.fr/resources/doc/index.en.html
>
> There are so many cool, useful, features in GCS. Sure it does not look
> like an F35 cockpit but look at the troubles complexity brings (joking
> about F35 problems). From day 1 I have followed other ground control
> stations and feel they are trying to be too much like an airplane
> cockpit. Drone control should not be like airplane control. You are
> interacting with it not flying it. GCS is what you need how you need
> it and flexible an extensible. Please review this:
> http://wiki.paparazziuav.org/wiki/GCS
>
> I hope this reply helps you to realize you have a lot of exciting new
> features to learn about with Paparazzi. Ones that exist now and are
> just waiting for you to learn and use now.
>
> I hope for any newbies or those on the fence watching Paparazzi that
> you have learned Paparazzi is the best project for real work
> yesterday, today and tomorrow. Maybe someday the others will catch up
> but I doubt it. Paparazzi is constantly evolving and adding new
> features. Now if only Parrot would adopt it and mention Paparazzi
> instead of QGround Control their product would be perfectly aligned
> for the new FAA rules. Imagine BeBop and ARDrones doing gas pipeline
> surveys, following miles of power lines and looking at the top of cell
> towers. Parrot has the capacity to delivery huge volumes quickly so
> should a major telco or power company adopt these they could get them
> in their hands quickly. :)
>
> Cheers,
> David B Conger
>
> On 2/16/15, Hector Garcia de Marina <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> I guess this is not new here. I was wondering if there was/is any effort
>> for integrating to the system more than one vehicle at the same time.
>>
>> With integration to the system I mean monitoring and communicating to
>> multiple vehicles in the GCS and communication among vehicles without
>> passing to the GCS.
>>
>> The objective is to perform some formation control. I guess this would be
>> interesting for certain scenarios where flying in formation is a
>> requirement or an improvement/advantage. The formation is not only
>> restricted to a platoon with a particular shape, but surveillance of an
>> area following a trajectory where the distance between vehicles has to be
>> constant or another applications.
>>
>> This year I will have time for making efforts in this direction. But
>> since
>> I never took a look at the GCS, I do not know how difficult will be to
>> implement a "multivehicle" feature (or if there exists one already!).
>>
>> In addition, what is the status of PPZ with ChibiOS? A new stable version
>> of ChibiOS is going to be released (3.0) with a lot of important changes
>> but I guess the PPZ branch is using 2.6.x right?
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> --
>> Héctor
>> Webpage: http://mathtronics.wordpress.com/
>>
>
>
> --
> address@hidden
> http://www.ppzuav.com
>


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