Aerial Swarm Tools and Applications

Half-Day Tutorial and Workshop at RSS 2024

Objective

This workshop will focus on the management of aerial robotic swarms. The workshop will contain tutorials for the major aerial swarm tools, namely Skybrush, CrazyChoir, Aerostack2, and Crazyswarm2 (the latter three are based on ROS 2). These are meant to help researchers who are looking for aerial swarm validation in simulation and/or with physical robots to understand the capabilities and the first steps with these tools. At the same time, more experienced users or swarm tool developers will gain insights about tools. Moreover, there will be real-world applications for aerial swarms, with invited talks from both academia and industry. These talks will give insight on the challenges of aerial swarm management in the real world.

Important Information:

Workshop day: July 19th, 2024 (14:00 - 18:00)
Workshop location: TU Delft Mechanical Engineering (ME) Building, Lecture Hall F - Simon Stevin (and Zoom).

Zoom

Schedule

13:50 - Introduction workshop
14:00 - "Trustworthy swarms for large-scale environmental monitoring" (by Sabine Hauert, remote)
14:30 - Skybrush Tutorial (by Gábor Vásárhelyi)
15:00 - Aerostack2 Tutorial (by Miguel Fernandez Cortizas and Rafael Perez Segui)
15:30 - Coffee break
16:00 - Crazyswarm2 Tutorial (by Kimberly McGuire and Wolfgang Hönig)
16:30 - Crazychoir Tutorial (by Lorenzo Pichierri and Andrea Testa)
17:00 - "Safe Decision-Making for Aerial Swarms - From Reliable Localization to Efficient Coordination" (by SiQi Zhou on behalf of Angela Schoellig)
17:30 - "Onboard relative localization for agile aerial swarming in the wild" (by Martin Saska)

Invited Speakers

SiQi Zhou (on behalf of Angela Schoellig)

Technical University Munich

Talk: "Safe Decision-Making for Aerial Swarms - From Reliable Localization to Efficient Coordination"

Martin Saska

Czech Technical University in Prague

Talk: "Onboard relative localization for agile aerial swarming in the wild"

Sabine Hauert (remote)

University of Bristol

Talk: "Trustworthy swarms for largescale environmental monitoring"

Gábor Vásárhelyi

CollMot Robotics Ltd. & Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös University, Budapest

Tutorial: "Skybrush - an open-core ecosystem for drone shows and large-scale aerial swarming missions"

Tutorials

Skybrush

Skybrush is an open-source software suite for managing multi-UAV and fleet-level drone operations, suitable for drone shows in particular and swarm-level missions for R&D and industry in general. Skybrush code is professional, transparent and modular; it includes onboard drone firmware (forks of the ArduCopter and Crazyflie autopilots), a versatile Python-based GCS backend (Skybrush Server), a full-featured multi-UAV GCS frontend written in JavaScript/TypeScript (Skybrush Live), a custom swarm-friendly communication protocol (FlockWave), multi-UAV SITL simulator support and more. Built by researchers, tested in demanding live events.

Aerostack2

Aerostack2 is a framework built on ROS 2, offering a versatile and platform-independent environment for developing autonomous aerial robotics systems. Its modular software architecture and multi-robot orientation enable the integration of diverse capabilities for autonomous operation. Key contributions include a logical mission specification level, component and sub-system reuse, and the development of complete control architectures. Aerostack2 has been extensively tested in simulation and real flights with heterogeneous swarms. It is open source and community-oriented, fostering accessibility for autonomous drone developers.

Crazyswarm2

Crazyswarm2, built on ROS 2, controls Bitcraze Crazyflie drones. It continues the legacy of Crazyswarm (based on ROS 1) and offers improved connectivity to external ROS2 packages. With support for multiple positioning systems, it has a focus on precision swarm path-planning and execution. Additionally, it supports multiple backends and provides Python bindings for hybrid software in the loop, such that the step to the real-world is as small as possible. Notably, Crazyswarm2 also includes swarm monitoring tools for managing and observing drone swarms.'

Crazychoir

CrazyChoir is a Python framework based on ROS 2 that allows users to run experiments on swarms of Crazyflie nano-quadrotors, both in a virtual scenario, e.g., with Webots, and in a real one, including the support for MoCap Systems as, e.g., Vicon. CrazyChoir is a follow-up of ChoiRbot, a multi-robot ROS 2 toolbox, and provides features to develop and test distributed control and optimization tasks as, e.g., vehicle routing, formation control, for teams of Crazyflies. Key feature of the toolbox includes local communication among the nano-drones, optimization routines (via Disropt toolbox) and other single and multi-robot functionalities.