PX4 Autopilot with 8 Lift Motors and 1 Pusher Motor

PX4 Autopilot
1

Hello, I’m a university student who is just getting started with PX4 and Gazebo. I attempted to extend the standard_vtol model by adding four additional lift motors to create an octo-VTOL (8 lift motors + 1 pusher motor). However, I continually ran into Ninja and CMake errors and ultimately failed to get the model building and running.

Has anyone successfully implemented an 8-motor + 1-pusher-motor VTOL? If so, could you please share your code or offer guidance? I really want to get this working… any help would be greatly appreciated!

2

Can you please share a link to your branch and the full build output?

3

Hello,

I’ve uploaded my Octo-VTOL files here:

Right now I’m running into this error when I try to launch the simulator:

yjh@yjh-IdeaPad-Gaming-3-16IAH7:~/PX4-Autopilot$ PX4_SIM_MODEL=standard_vtol make px4_sitl_default gz
[0/9] git submodule Tools/simulation/gz
[5/9] Performing configure step for 'gz'
CMake Error: The source directory "/home/yjh/PX4-Autopilot/Tools/simulation/gz" does not appear to contain CMakeLists.txt.
Specify --help for usage, or press the help button on the CMake GUI.
FAILED: external/Stamp/gz/gz-configure /home/yjh/PX4-Autopilot/build/px4_sitl_default/external/Stamp/gz/gz-configure 
  cd /home/yjh/PX4-Autopilot/build/px4_sitl_default/build_gz \
    && /usr/bin/cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -GNinja /home/yjh/PX4-Autopilot/Tools/simulation/gz \
    && /usr/bin/cmake -E touch /home/yjh/PX4-Autopilot/build/px4_sitl_default/external/Stamp/gz/gz-configure
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
make: *** [Makefile:222: px4_sitl_default] Error 1

Because of this CMake issue I can’t even verify whether my SDF is correct, and I’ve already lost two days just trying to fix CMake. I really need your help.

4

did you try compiling at least once before making your changes? Did you setup the dev environment? Are submodules updated?

5

That error means the Gazebo simulation submodule hasn’t been initialized. Run:

git submodule update –init –recursive

Then rebuild with:

PX4_SIM_MODEL=standard_vtol make px4_sitl_default gz

That should fix the missing CMakeLists.txt issue.