[ros-users] Announcement of hector_quadrotor stack

Dear ROS community,

we are happy to announce the hector_quadrotor stack
(http://www.ros.org/wiki/hector_quadrotor). While impressive results
have been demonstrated by different groups using real quadrotor UAVs and
ROS in the past, to our knowledge so far there is no solution available
for comprehensive simulation of quadrotor UAVs using ROS tools.

We hope to fill this gap with the hector_quadrotor stack. Using the
packages provided, a quadrotor UAV can be simulated in gazebo, similar
to other mobile robots. This makes it possible to record sensor data
(LIDAR, RGB-D, Stereo..) and test planning and control approaches in
simulation.

The stack currently contains the following packages:
* hector_quadrotor_urdf provides an URDF model of our quadrotor UAV. You
can also define your own model and attach our sensors and controllers to
it.
* hector_quadrotor_gazebo contains launch files for running gazebo and
spawning quadrotors.
* hector_quadrotor_gazebo_plugins contains two UAV specific plugins: a
simple controller that subscribes to a geometry_msgs/Twist topic and
calculates the required forces and torques and a sensor plugin that
simulates a barometric altimeter. Some more generic sensor plugins not
specific to UAVs (IMU, Magnetic, GPS, Sonar) are provided by package
hector_gazebo_plugins in the hector_gazebo stack.
* hector_quadrotor_teleop contains a node and launch files for
controlling the quadrotor using a joystick or gamepad.
* hector_quadrotor_demo provides sample launch files that run the
quadrotor simulation and hector_slam for indoor and outdoor scenarios.

As many users of real quadrotors can probably confirm, testing with the
real thing can lead to broken hardware quickly in case something goes
wrong. We hope our stack contributes to a reduction of the number of
broken quadrotor UAVs in research labs around the world

We plan to convert the plugins for Gazebo 1.0.0 as soon as ROS fuerte is
released.

Two demo videos (one showing a indoor scenario, the other showing a
outdoor scenario) are available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJbJbcZVY28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CGIcc0jeuI

regards,
Johannes Meyer & Stefan Kohlbrecher