Using Vicon Data from ROS and feed it to the Mambo Parrot Drone Flight Control System in Simulink

Hi there,

I am trying to interface the Mambo Parrot Drone with a Vicon Motion Capture System. I am accessing the Vicon data through ROS on my Ubuntu laptop. I also have Matlab 2018b & Simulink installed on the same laptop. I want to feed the pose estimate of the Mambo Drone that is captured by Vicon to the Mambo Flight Control System in Simulink. Could you please advise how this can be done?

Thank you.

Answer 1

[Cam Salzberger]

Hello Ben,

If you have the Vicon pose estimate coming in over your ROS network, you can access it directly in Simulink through the use of the Subscribe block.

If the information coming in over ROS from Vicon needs processing to translate it into a usable pose estimate, that can still be accomplished. If the processing is done out of MATLAB, you can simply have the code re-publish on a different ROS topic, and have Simulink listening for that. If the processing is done in MATLAB, you can do that too, but there are better alternatives. The most efficient would probably be to add the processing to the Simulink model as native blocks. An alternative would be to put your MATLAB code that does the translation in as a MATLAB Function Block.

-Cam

[Ben Isaac]

Hello Cam,

Thanks for your response.

I have tried using the Subscribe block as you mentioned above. However, I am getting the error shown in the attached screenshot.

I have done the following:

1- Lauched the vicon brdige ROS launch file. [roslaunch vicon_bridge vicon_nodelet.launch]

2- Confirmed that the vicon marker x,y,z positions are being published. [rostopic echo /vicon/markers]

3- Created a blank simulink project and added the Subscribe block.

4- In the Subscribe block properties, I conigured the network and tested it. Please see the attached snapshot.

5- Then, in the Subscribe block properties, I set the 'Topic source' to 'Select from ROS network'. Selected topic: /vicon/markers

6- Added the Bus Selector block and display at the outputs.

7- I get the error shown in the attached snapshot.

I am wondering if I have to create custom messages? The attached snapshot shows the setup of the message folder. Please advise.

Thank you.

Sincerley,

Ben

[Cam Salzberger]

Hello Ben,

Yes, you will need to make the custom messages available to MATLAB in order to use them within Simulink. Please see the documentation on how to do so.

-Cam

[Ben Isaac]

Great. Thank you.

Ben