Control UAV in Gazebo With Simulink

I added a quadcopter, installing some packages, in the preset "Differential-Drive Robot" simulation environment for co-simulation in Gazebo with Simulink and i modified the blocks. The rotors are rotate but the drone does not take off. Anyone have experiences?

Answer 1

[Jianxin Sun]

Set motor joint velocity will rotate the rotors but that will not generate lift since Gazebo is not simulating aerodynamices. You would need to compute lift and torque yourself based on motor speed and apply them to the UAV's motor link. You can check out GazeboMotorModel::UpdateForcesAndMoments in https://github.com/ethz-asl/rotors_simulator/blob/master/rotors_gazebo_plugins/src/gazebo_motor_model.cpp for reference.

[Ans Stramberk]

Thanks @Jianxin Sun

So, i can calculate thrust and torque directly on simulink, based on the speed of the rotors, or i can modify the quadcopter model on Gazebo with a series of if and else as you showed me?

[Jianxin Sun]

You can use Simulink to directly compute force and torque and apply to Gazebo links.