Drone Race
Overview
Develop controllers for Crazyflie drones to fly autonomously through gate-based obstacle courses. Starting in simulation (CrazySim), validated controllers are deployed to hardware, then optimized for a speed competition.
Objectives
All teams are required to complete the preliminary stages. All teams will participate in the competition, but will not be graded on relative performance.
- Preliminary: Achieve safe autonomous flight (no collisions) through all obstacle courses in the simulator
- Preliminary: Achieve safe autonomous flight (no collisions) via the Crazyflie through all obstacle courses in the flight arena
- Competition: Same as the hardware preliminary, competing against other teams
Software Stack & Hardware
You will be provided with the following — your task is to develop robust controllers and operate the hardware using ROS2:
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| CrazySim | Gazebo-based simulator for development and initial testing |
| crazyswarm2 | ROS2-based autonomy stack for Crazyflie hardware |
| Obstacle course configs | Configuration files and scripts to generate your own tracks |
| Crazyflie drivers | Hardware drivers and ROS2 usage examples |
| State estimator | Basic state estimator for drone localization |
All necessary hardware will be provided.
Milestones
| # | Time | Milestone | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | First review | Setup | Setup simulator and become familiar with it. |
| 2 | Simulation | Develop all necessary software and validate flight in simulation | |
| 3 | Hover & fly (ROS2) | Get the Crazyflie to hover and fly autonomously using ROS2 | |
| 4 | Hardware flight | Test flight through obstacle courses in the testing arena with the Crazyflie | |
| 5 | Optimization | Make creative optimizations to improve speed and robustness in the testing arena | |
| 6 | Final presentation | Final race | Final race at the end of the semester and launch project site |
Primary Mentor
Abhishek
Setup
All instructions for software setup are listed on the CrazySim link below.
Please post/look at the drone project setup megathread on Campuswire if you encounter any issues.