AFAR Instructions

Please follow the following sequence to obtain access to the development environment. All instructions refer to the user manual available here: https://sites.google.com/ncsu.edu/aerpaw-wiki/


1) For all participants, please make an account following instructions in section 2.1 of the user manual, then upload your public keys to the system (see section 2.2).


2) For the PIs, please request PI privileges (see section 2.2).


3) For the PIs, once you have PI privileges, create a project for you team, please include the team name in the name of the project, as well as the word AFAR. See section 2.3.


4) For the PIs, add each of the experimenters in your team to the project (see Section 2.3).


5) Either one of the experimenters or the PI create one experiment and add all the other experimenters to the experiment. For the experiment choose two portable nodes (e.g., LPN1 and LPN2) and choose a rover for one of them (e.g., LPN1) and an UAV for the other one (e.g., LPN2)  (see Section 2.4).


6) Once the experiment is created, initiate the development and access the development environment (see Section 2.6).


7) If you are not familiar with the AERPAW setup, please read background information in sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4.


8) You will likely want to have a QGroundControl installation to be able to drive the rover, so please read the instruction on installing QGroundControl (and connect it) in 3.1.1.


9) Get connected to the two E-VMs (for the LPNs on the drone and the rover), and to the OEO-Console. Start QGroundControl and verify that you see the drone and the rover.


10) You'll likely want to "hide" the rover - for that you'll need to do a manual drive of the rover following the instructions under Section 4.2 (manual flight):

https://sites.google.com/ncsu.edu/aerpaw-wiki/aerpaw-user-manual/4-sample-experiments-repository/4-2-vehicle-control-software/4-2-2-gps-logger/manual-flight?authuser=0


11) To setup the rover search sample experiment,

  a) select a transmitter on the Rover E-VM as the radio script (GE2 transmitter part in Section 4.1.3)

  b) select the corresponding receiver on the UAV E-VM as the radio script (GE2 receiver part in Section 4.1.3)

  c) select the Rover Search Section 4.2.4 as the vehicle script for the UAV

For instructions on making the selection see Section 3.4.


12) To run the experiment, first start the rover transmitter (either manually with start experiment from the rover EVM, or from the OEO console), then start the drone (similarly, manually or OEO). You should see the drone take-off in QGroundControl and try to find the rover.

13) Alternatively, instead of running rover search, you can setup a predetermined trajectory, or insert your own vehicle script that fits your preferred method of localization for the competition.