Blogs

On March 23rd in San Jose, we had the first DroneCode conference, as part of the Embedded Linus Conference. Above is just the first meeting of official DroneCode members (mostly representatives of the member companies), but the rest of the day was in a much larger forum for technical presentations. 

The presentations have now been posted here and here, and copied below:

Monday kicked off our first Dronecode conference as part of the Embedded Linux Conference.  Here is a summary of the presentations made at the Dronecode conference and Drone related presentations made as part of the Embedded Linux Conference.

1. Keynote - Chris Anderson

   • Alignment on 2015 roadmap

   • 2. Clarity about what we want from the members

   • 3. Clarity about division of labor between companies and community

   • 4. Improved “Architecture of Participation”

   • 5. Plan for outreach to potential partners/communities

2. ArduPilot Overview - Andrew Tridgell

3. PX4 Overview - Lorenz Meier

Drone related ELCConference Summary 23-25Mar2015

1. Ardupilot and Linux - presented at ELC - Andrew Tridgell

2. Qualcomm and PX4 -Mark Charlesbois

3. Edison Takes Flight - Joel B. Rosenzweig Mark F. Brown

4. Open Sourcing Humanitarian Airlift - Mark Jacobson and Jessie Mooberry

5. Flying Penguins - Clay McClure.pdf

   • Embedded Linux applications for autonomous UAVs​​​​​​

​​​ 6. Application of Data Fusion to Aerial Robotics - Paul Riseborough

Unconference:

1. IMU Temperature Compensation - Hessel van der Molen

   • Temperature compensation goals

   • Calibration procedure

2. PX4 VTOL Vector Control - Roman Bapst

   • VTOL support in PX4 native

   • High-level overview of the benefits of the new controller (submitted to IROS 2015)

   • Current simulation capabilities

   • System identification and infrastructure (wind tunnels)

3. UAVCAN - Pavel Kirienko

   • PX4 ESC codebase

   • ESC developments and test state

   • Future convergence of the individual CAN node codebases

   • The onboard distributed system with all actuators and sensors on the same bus

4. Automated 3D SITL with 3D Physics - Thomas Gubler and Andreas Antener

   • Additional capabilities of the 3D physics simulator over standard flight simulators

   • Headless and interactive benefits

   • Logging and post-flight analysis

5. IMU experiments and filtering strategy - Jonathan Challinger

   • IMU sampling strategy

   • API for accessing raw samples from PX4 IMU sensor drivers

   • handling of delta angles and delta velocities

   • use of filtered and unfiltered data in EKF

   • IMU temperature calibration

   • libraries/AP_InertialSensor/examples/coning.py

6. EKF developments - Paul Riseborough

   • fusing of optical flow and rangefinder data

   • handling of GPS and non-GPS operation transition

   • handling of height above ground estimates

   • special cases for landing and takeoff

7. Ardupilot VTOL - Trevor Strand and Mike Remaly

   • Tiltrotor Fundamentals

   • Combining The Strengths of “ArduPilot”

   • Tiltrotor Challenges

   • Testing

   • Tiltrotor Road Map

8. Travis, Jenkins and Hans - Lorenz Meier

   • Travis unit testing and general CI

   • Jenkins automated SITL testing with environment / physics / simulated camera views

   • Hans - automated on-hardware testing

9. ROS and Gazebo - Tully Foote

   • ROS in general

   • ROS on drones

   • existing ROS use cases

10. DroneAPI Structure and Usage - Kevin Hester

    • structure of DroneAPI

    • language bindings

    • ROS vs DroneAPI - when to use them?

    • licensing of core components

    • future steps: stats, gcs df upload, px4 support,  mavlink evolution