March 18th, 2020
Agenda
- Status update by component/project
- Roadmap, and Release discussion
- Community Q&A
- In-Depth discussions
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Meeting ID: 946 175 205
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Component update
Pixhawk
Flight Testing
The weather condition is still not suitable for flight; it looks like it will be raining all week. There were multiple indoor tests conducted.
PR #14168 contains a bug, and that’s why it didn’t arm in testing.
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14168
System Architecture
OS / NuttX
F4 and F7 DMA changes were upstreamed to NuttX and are pending testing.
UAVCAN SocketCAN driver was updated in NuttX, and we can start testing that It’s still sending 0.9 UAVCAN messages above the transport layer.
Driver
UAVCAN Sensor drivers PR
Big driver refactors for better reusability and scalability.
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14345
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14386
Commander
Significant improvements in the preflight checks user experience.
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14322
Estimation
There are a lot of smaller cleanups going on.- The yaw estimator was merged.
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14301
VTOL
Further discussion needed on how to handle the optional configuration of FMUv2 without VTOL
Fixed Wing
@sfuhrer working on bringing the fixed-wing position controller into the local frame
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14298
- @Jaeyoung-Lim has catapult launch working in simulation, but it’s not part of CI yet.
Fixed-wing is still not supported by MAVSDK.- MAVSDK CI tests cannot do fixed-wing yet.
Multicopter
Only outdoor testing open PR 14326
Hover thrust estimator testable by parameter PR 14378
We should have this for the release, still pending a fix of the integrator problem PR #14212
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14326
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14378
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14212
MAVSDK
Improved testing ready to be merged, running in CI, giving better feedback
Next step: extend to automated real-world testing
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14296
MAVROS / RTPS / ROS2
@TSC21 porting avoidance to ROS2
Avoidance
New MAVROS support for the bezier interface that was later added to the flight control. @jkflying
Simulation
- @Jaeyoung-Lim MacOS homebrew has conflicting dependencies and is currently broken. There will be a fix soon.
Roadmap, and Release discussion
- PX4 v1.11 Release Notes
- Beta flight-testing.
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/issues/14402
Discussions about when to cut a feature freeze. @dagar is concerned about e.g., the CPU load on some older resource-constrained boards. These might require additional driver “features” to improve performance. It’s a fine line between freezing and slipping the release. We should have a low barrier beta announced, but make sure the testers don’t have a horrific experience.
The hover thrust estimator could be enabled by default in the beta, and in case we still find any significant issues, we could always disable it for the release.
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14419
In-Depth discussions
- Way forward with PX4 unit tests, ntest, gtest:
Adding ntest for unit testing on NuttX by julianoes · Pull Request #12106 · PX4/PX4-Autopilot · GitHub
test_and_ci: more notes about mavsdk_tests by julianoes · Pull Request #982 · PX4/PX4-Devguide · GitHub
Idea making C++ standard library available on the MCU might also help for UAVCAN 1.0. But that’s a big task. The proposition to get existing unit tests that are now SITL test over to gtest. What’s necessary on the MCU is a HITL style integration test with realistic timing and all drivers still running in the background with constant monitoring of all the resources during flight.
@dagar How do we handle the optional configuration of FMUv2 without VTOL? (from above)
It’s not currently possible to have a VTOL only/enabled build for FMUv2. We’d need a way to strip out unused airframes to make an FMUv2 VTOL build, @LorenzMeier seems to have some ideas to do that.
Community Q&A
coder_kalyan:
- Difference between Main and AUX output, he wants to have his Octocopter running with DSHOT?
- Is there support for brushed motor output to control a non-BLDC motor? @dagar offered pointers offline
- The idea about redundant RC values via duplicate MAVLink. We have to be careful about link differences e.g., latency. It might require a high complexity, and that could induce more failure cases than what we have right now.
- In mission mode or autonomous landing, there’s ALT1 and ALT2 to slow down the landing. Questions about how it works and how to configure not to land too slow or too fast. @MaEtUgR offered offline suggestions.
PX4 Dev Summit
by @rroche
Survey about postponing, canceling for this year?
We canceled until further notice. We’ll do our best to have an in-person event, and we’ll wait that out no matter how long it takes.
Errata and Feedback
Let me know below if I failed to capture anything the right way, and if there are any updates, or you have feedback on the call format.
