# ROS Aerial Community Work Group ![logo](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/130599769?s=200&v=4) ## Meeting Notes - March 20nd, 2025 Forum Post: https://discourse.ros.org/t/aerial-robotics-meeting-march-20th-2025/ **Hosts** * Kimberly McGuire * Ramón Roche **Attendees** _12 people attended_ * Pierre Kancir - ArduPilot Developer * Ryan Friedman - AeroVironment, ArduPilot Developer * Frederik Mazur Andersen - University of Southern Denmark - DroneCenter * Mayank Joneja * Nolan Ige - AeroVironment * Rhys Mainwaring * Arnaud Taffanel * Joe Dinius - AeroVironment * Pasquale Siciliano * Tanumaya Bhowmik ## Agenda * Announcements * Guest Presentation * Discussion * Announcement next meeting ### Announcements * [PX4 Meetup in Philadelphia](https://www.meetup.com/dronecode-foundation-meetups/events/306242099/) 26th of March (next week!) * Open Source Summit (Embedded Linux Conference) has a Robotics track! https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-summit-europe/program/cfp/ 25-27 August in Amsterdam. * CFP Closes April 14th! * Kim will be at [European Robotics Conference](https://erf2025.eu/) next week in Stuttgart to correspond for [Weekly Robotics](https://www.weeklyrobotics.com/). Reach out if you are also going! * May 1st - is Tutorial Party for ROS 2 kilted * Get your ROS features in if you still can ;) * 24th of May - Release ROS 2 Kilted Kajiu * Pierre: Appications open to support [Ardupilot trough Google Summer of Code](https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/gsoc.html) * Upcoming events * 14-17 May - [ICUAS](https://uasconferences.com/2025_icuas/) in Charlotte, NC, USA * 19-20 May - [Xponential](https://xponential.org/) in Houston, TX, USA * 19-23 May - [ICRA](https://2025.ieee-icra.org/), Atlanta, GA, USA ([aerial robotics workshop](https://aerial-robotics-workshop-icra.com/)) * More aerial related events on the [aerial robotics landscape](https://ros-aerial.github.io/aerial_robotic_landscape/) *Anybody has anything to share here?* * Personal/your companies project or platfrom * A cool project or platform from someone else * An event related to aerial Robotics (and if you are going) ### Guest Presentation Guest: Pierre Kancir Project: ‘FROST APE : Flying ROS The ArduPilot Experience! **Questions from chat** Q: GSoC for ROS + Ardupilot: Restarting simulation w/o restarting flight stack? A: Pierre: it would be great but it might a bit out of scope for a student but there needs to be a bit more of explanation. Q: Is there any plan to extend HITL with companion computers being in the loop? Would be quite relevant for ros2/autonomy since performance can vary greatly between companion computers A: No there is not currently a plan to support this yet, but we did get this question from the community. Feel free to make an issue and see if anyone likes to step in. Q: Is there an interface or standarized message for arming in ROS A: Ryan- We tried to add it to REP 147 https://ros.org/reps/rep-0147.html. But arming and changing modes it's vehicle specific. So it does not cover all usecases for each platform. We can also settle on a programing language like c++ packages that is easier perhaps to contribute to (on message api level). MAVlink is quite standarized but MAVROS is not preferred due to the performance issues. At one point it would be great to work on the REP 147 interfaces for this. Once a standard message get's implemented in multipe autopilot platforms the changes are high that it will get accepted here. links: * https://ros.org/reps/rep-0147.html * https://mavlink.io/en/services/arm_authorization.html * https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep/pull/407 * https://github.com/osrf/vehicle_gateway ### Discussion _Best practices ROS 2 support on Aerial Vehicles ?_ Kim: Some background - I've been trying to divert some of the robotics stack exchange questions to the different aerial robotics discord servers if it is related to their autopilot suite to get more of them answered. But, the complaint I got is that a lot of these questions are very difficult to answer and that not all developers have time to do so. So hence that I wanted to start up this discussion. **Polls:** *1- As a User, where would you like to have your questions answered?* * 4 x ROS Discourse forum * 3 x Robotics Stack Exchange * 1 x ardupilot of PX4 forum *2- As a developer, where would you rather help users out?* * 3 x ROS discourse forum * 1 x Open Robotics Discord * 2 x Ardupilot or PX4 discord * 1 x Robotics Stack Exchange Ryan: Although I'm a developer at Ardupilot, currently I can consider myself a user of PX4. I see many people asking questions on Discord all the time. Only recently I've been getting consistent anwers, but lot of users struggle especially when they are new. It seems that once developers recognize my name in discord they are willing to help out more. I find Discord also much easier to follow since channels can be seperated. The robotics stack exchange is just one masive thread with most of the stuff that you don't care about. Frederik: We aren't developers but we use the PX4 autopilot wuite a lot, so perhaps a User/Developer. I find Discord quite difficult to search ini if you wnat to check if an person has answered a question before. So I usually try to use google or other search enegines to find examples and just stick together. Frederik: In discord, it depends on the timezone if you get an answer straight away, and ironically it will be easier to follow since you can have a quicker discussion. So if I'm missing to add information it's easier to have that discussion. But on stack overflow, the response time is way longer between messages and answers. Ryan mention getting answers isa challenge but developers don't have time. And also I don't feel comfortable answering other people that I might be able to help as well. Kimberly: To make the robotics stack exchange more doable, there are ways to streamline it a bit. I've made profiles to get notified when support comes from certain tags, like UAVs, drones or other things and if that question has been unanswered. That makes it easier to dig through all the support questions on stack exchange. But, on stackexchange you'll need to retrieve a certain experience points to propose questions in the first place, so that places the bar higher to help people out Rhys: Different forums are better for different questions. Discord is really good for for mainly developers or at least users that know more what they are doing so you can help them out immediately. It doesn't require setup and and you can have an indepth discussion about the problem. And then there are question of 'look at this piece of code that I don't understand', and those questions are also quite easy to answer. And then there are questions like: 'my custoom drone is not working properly with Ardupilot and ROS, why is that?' and there are quite a few of those on robotics stack exchange. The problem is that you'll need to replicate of what they are doing and that is very difficult. Rhys: If someone opens a thread on Ardupilot discourse, posees a questions, provide esample logs and a link to the repository they are working at. If they layout the groundwork so you can properly actually answer the question they are looking for. There are good examples on the ardupilot discourse if you search for gazebo, where users provide the version of their model and a detailed list of instructions of what they've run. If their dev environment is understood, then you could help them out much better. Rhys: But usually this is nto the case, and if the user has not laid down the ground work to ask the question properly, the developers will just skip over it. These are then not short answers and it requires a certain investment of the developers to focus on this which they don't have the time for. A lot of questions of stack overflow fall in the category that the question hasn't been asked well, so you divert your focus to where people do ask the right questions, which in my case it's ardupilot discourse for users or discord for developers. Kimberly: I did had a example of that recently on the robotics stack exchange where someone laid down the full project of what they want to achieve, and clearly they missed the basics and where trying to skip a whole bunch of steps. I did put in time to explain the steps necessary (like focus on positionig, then control then autonomy), but I have the time for that now. Once I'll be busy again I won't be able to do this. Pierre (on the chat): there is also a small community on reddit : r/diydrone r/ardupilot Rhys: Many things that we are doing in aerial robotics are quite complicated and they are not turnkey solutions. Lot of effort is spend to help someone with a complex problem, but you expect the people answering the question to put in a similar amount of effort posing the questions. Perhaps guides on some of the community forums might be better to guide the users to ask different question. Kimberly: If you are a complete beginner, and you're professor or boss has given you an assignment, I would definitely imagine that it is very difficult for someone to even get started in the first place. That is why we started the aerial robotics landscape in the first place. Rhys: That is a good point, in aerial robotics there are many things in many places. You got the ROS community, You got the individual autopilot communiteis, and also simulation involved. There is not a one-stop-shop to go to and say - how do I get started. There are so many wikis with information that is quite complicated to get going. Gazebo has a good set tutorials for learning one aspect but it doesn't cover our particular area. It takes time to write good tutorials. Kimberly: I have tried to spend effort to get the multicoptor plugin to work better in gazebo, because I do find it important with beginners to first leave the autopilot part out of the equation of just the basics. But the plugin is not in a good state. Pierre: I just checked our ardupilot wiki and we don't have a page that says how to ask a good question. So that would be a good step. Kim: I should probably start a ROS discourse thread on this, and perhaps we can put together a nice guide or something where people can find the best support. Chat by Tanumaya: Create a pay-for-answer feature for developers. Have the person asking put a bounty on the question. Additional pay for live real-time feedback Pierre: We have also considered offering paid support for the communith on ardupilot, but that's a risk as well. If someone has very little patience, and says why does my drone keep flipping over, then they'll want to be refunded, so it is difficult to put money on it. They keep it free for now but if a company want to try this they can try Chat by Mayank: Mayank Joneja: If there aren't already then maybe it makes sense to show samples or create a guide of how to ask questions better to set expectations in a more nuanced way beyond just a template in a GitHub issue etc Chat by Ryan: The ardupilot partners program helps people integrate their autopilots, but there is no program for ROS integration. chat by Tanumaya: Those users will be very open to paying someone to help them with their problem Chat by Pierre: and that is a lot of time to answer questions so asking money can be just create a conflict especially with random questions Chat by Tanumaya:Yeah but imagine you got paid to answer that trvial question! It will prevent people that has an answer to that question less likely to gloss over it. The money should be awarded by the user that asked the question--to the answer that satisfies their issue. Next a mod can arbitrate the pay out Chat by Mayank: I think in Linux red hat made a lot of money basis enterprise support etc Chat by Pierre: rdupilot partner programme is for this but that is a lot of time from our developper and not cheap Chat by Mayank: Yes I'm aware, I was thinking of how the average student/passion project developer could benefit if expectations are more explicit Chat by Tanumaya: What about a ROS LLM? Chat by Pierre: https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardupilot-aware-ai-helps-you-configure-your-vehicle/130683. LLM aren't 100% thrustable but we got some try Rhys: I think a user guide on how to ask a question would be really good. Also an explanation that the peole who do the work are going to answer questions because that's what they are doing now and they are interested. So chances are higher if you ask a question that is allinged with what someone is doing. Open source communities do work on a voluntary basis, so interesting threads are well described. Rhys: Nature of these communities is that there are more people asking questions than answering them and it helps to be aligned in the work that the developers are doing, so it would help if the developers are more open on what they are working on at the moment. In the ardupilot community it is not entirely clear what everyone is doing at any given time. There are roadmaps but it's not cleaar. Kimberly: Also mentioning that the support help is done for free maybe also can cause some good will as well. Kim: I will start a ROS discourse about this, about this particular issue and about creating a guide that users can use. I'll share it on the right channels once it is ready. ### Next meeting Next meeting will be on Thursday 17th of April, 5 pm UTC. No presentation lined up yet but will notify once we do. Add the [ROS community event calendar ](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=c_3fc5c4d6ece9d80d49f136c1dcd54d7f44e1acefdbe87228c92ff268e85e2ea0@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=UTC)to your calendar to see our planned meetings. We also post an announcement [Aerial Vehicles category](https://discourse.ros.org/c/aerial-vehicles/14) on ROS discourse with the [wg-aerial-robotics tag](https://discourse.ros.org/tag/wg-aerial-robotics) about one week before the meeting starts. <iframe src="https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=c_3fc5c4d6ece9d80d49f136c1dcd54d7f44e1acefdbe87228c92ff268e85e2ea0@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=UTC" style="border: 0" width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> ### Want to nominate someone/yourself for a presentation? Send us a message on the #aerial-robotics channel channel (link below) we are always looking for cool open source projects to spotlight. **👉 Reach out to Kim / Ramón.** ### Handy Links * [ROS Discourse wg-aerial](https://discourse.ros.org/tag/wg-aerial-robotics) * [ROS Aerial Community Github](https://github.com/ROS-Aerial) * [#aerial-robotics Discord Channel (Open Robotics Server)](https://discord.gg/open-robotics-1077825543698927656) * [Aerial Robotic Landscape](https://ros-aerial.github.io/aerial_robotic_landscape/)