SUAS-Competition

This is Flint Hill School's code for the Student Unmanned Aerial Systems competition.*

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License Information

• Developed in 2014-2015 by Vale Tolpegin.
• Developed in 2015-2016 by Vale Tolpegin.
• Developed in 2016-2017 by Vale Tolpegin, Peter Hussisian, & James Villemarette.
• Developed in 2017-2018 by Vale Tolpegin, James Villemarette, John Moxley, Zachary Yin, Rod Aryan, Leo Li, & Nathan Spivy.
• Developed in 2018-2019 by Amrith Kumaar, Devin Host, Owen Krause, & Shiv Sharma.

Licensed under the MIT License.

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Installation

This section details how to install the necessary libraries in order to run our code.

Installing OpenCV -- Mac OS X

OpenCV must be installed for this project to work. To install OpenCV's latest release, use Homebrew:

brew install opencv3 --with-tbb --with-cuda --with-contrib

This is a long process. After it is completed, you will have to link the python libraries. Find the generated cv2.so file, then copy it. Next, identify your local python instance's site-packages repository. Finally, copy the cv2.so file into the site-packages directory.

To test the installation, simply enter a quick command into terminal

python -c 'import cv2; print(cv2.__version__)'

This should print something like 3.1.0. If you get an error, that means that you did not install OpenCV correctly.

Installing Other Dependencies

All libraries except SimpleWebSocketServer will install when you run bash ./install.sh. To install SimpleWebSocketServer, clone https://github.com/FlintHill/simple-websocket-server and run a pip install command.

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Usage

This section details how to

Using MAVProxy

To run MAVProxy, find the ID of the radio module (run ls /dev/ and find the name of the usbserial device corresponding to the radio module) and then run the following commands:

For the UAV

sudo python mavproxy.py --console --master=/dev/tty.usbserial-DEVICE_ID_UAV --out=tcpin:127.0.0.1:14551 --out=tcpin:0.0.0.0:14550

For the UGV

sudo python mavproxy.py --console --master=/dev/tty.usbserial-DEVICE_ID_UGV --out=tcpin:127.0.0.1:14561 --out=tcpin:0.0.0.0:14560

To use MAVProxy to connect to and read telemetry from a simulated mission on ArduPilot Mission Planner follow the process below:

1. cd into the scripts directory and run the run_dronekit_sitl.py file
2. Open a new terminal window and run the following command

sudo python mavproxy.py --console --master=tcp:127.0.0.1:5760 --out=tcpin:127.0.0.1:14551 --out=tcpin:0.0.0.0:14550

Assuming the python command references a Python 2.7.13 installation

Using GCS

To run the Client script, cd into the gcs directory, then run:

export FLASK_APP=flask_gcs.py
python -m flask run --with-threads

Ensure that the version of Python that you are using is 2.7.x. If you attempt to use Python 3, the program will crash with a timeout exception.

Broad Overview

The client script is run through the flask_gcs.py file. The gcs.py file, which runs processes relating to interop server communiation, vehicle connection, and image processing, is called from the flask_gcs.py file. We use MAVProxy to get data in JSON format from our unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV) which is then used in both the SDA process and getting necessary telemetry to forward to the interop server. Our code communicating to the interop server is in the interop_client.py file.

Our autonomous image processing algorithm, which is built off of the open source OpenCV platform, makes use of a cropper function to more efficiently find relevant images containing targets.

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Git Cheatsheet

This is a quick cheatsheet for those that are new to git in the command line. Each bullet point below explains a different command in git.

• Clone a repository
  • git clone https://github.com/user_name/SUAS-Competition.git : This command will clone a remote git repository locally in the current directory
• Help
  • git remote add suas https://github.com/FlintHill/SUAS-Competition : This will add a remote repository to the local git repository, allowing you to pull/push to a different remote
• Rebase your Local Repository
  • git pull --rebase origin master : This will update your local repository with the origin's master branch. If you want to update your local repository from the official repository, run git pull --rebase suas master. This will pull the master branch from the suas remote repository. These commands should be run after every time you commit, and before you make changes to your local code
• Track (add) your changes
  • git add --all : This command will make all changes in a local git repository tracked. This command must be executed before you attempt to commit your code
• Commit your changes
  • git commit -m "MESSAGE" : This command will commit your code with the commit message "MESSAGE". Please change the message to match what changes you made in the code during this commit
• Send your changes to GitHub
  • git push : This command will push your local changes to the origin remote repository