APACE

This is the code repository for the paper contributed to ICRA2024: APACE: Agile and Perception-aware Trajectory Generation for Quadrotor Flights.

APACE is a systematic, flexible and efficient framework for Agile and Perception-Aware trajeCtory gEneration for quadrotor flights. APACE empowers a quadrotor with visual sensors to maneuver in challenging environments while maintaining stable visual odometry, such as in a darkness scenario with only a few light spots.

Please cite our paper if you use this project in your research:

• APACE: Agile and Perception-Aware Trajectory Generation for Quadrotor Flights, Xinyi Chen, Yichen Zhang, Boyu Zhou, and Shaojie Shen, 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2024).

@article{chen2024apace,
  title={APACE: Agile and Perception-Aware Trajectory Generation for Quadrotor Flights},
  author={Chen, Xinyi and Zhang, Yichen and Zhou, Boyu and Shen, Shaojie},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.08365},
  year={2024}
}

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Getting Started

The setup commands have been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 (ROS Noetic). If you are using a different Ubuntu distribution, please modify accordingly.

• Install dependency and clone the repository

    sudo apt install libgoogle-glog-dev libdw-dev
    cd ${YOUR_WORKSPACE_PATH}/src
    git clone https://github.com/HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/APACE.git
    git clone https://github.com/xchencq/VINS-Fusion.git
    cd ..
    catkin_make
    source devel/setup.bash
  

• Download the map files from Google Drive and put them in the APACE/voxel_mapping/data folder.

• Download the pre-built AirSim simulator package and the Airsim library utilized in our experiments from Google Drive. You can put them in any directory you like and remember to extract them. For example, you may put them in a folder ~/source.

• Build the AirSim library

    cd ~/source/AirSim_source
    ./setup.sh
    ./build.sh
  

• Move the settings.json file from the repository to ~/Documents/AirSim folder and replace the original one.

• Setup the AirSim root as the directory path of the AirSim_source folder in the beginning of APACE/airsim_ros_wrapper/CMakeLists.txt.

Run

After successful installation, you can run the APACE planner in the AirSim simulator.

• Launch RViz visualization

    roslaunch plan_manage rviz.launch
  

• Launch pre-built AirSim simulator, e.g. under ~/source folder

    ~/source/CenterFeature/LinuxNoEditor/AirSimStreetView.sh -windowed
  

• Launch AirSim ROS wrapper

    roslaunch airsim_ctrl ctrl_md_exploration.launch
  

• Launch VINS estimator

    roslaunch vins vins_airsim.launch
  

• Launch APACE planner

    roslaunch plan_manage agile_planner_airsim.launch