Visualization

Show drones, their trails and their references in RViz, and fly them from the RViz teleop panel.

as2_visualization shows drones in RViz, with their 3D model, the path they've flown and the reference they're chasing. as2_rviz_plugins adds a panel to RViz with take-off, land, hover and kill switch buttons.

One drone

ros2 launch as2_visualization as2_visualization.launch.py \
  namespace:=drone0 \
  use_sim_time:=true

This opens RViz with the earth frame fixed, and starts two nodes in the drone's namespace:

robot_state_publisher, which publishes the drone's model for RViz's RobotModel display.
marker_publisher, which draws the trail and the reference as markers.

Argument	Default	What it does
`namespace`		The drone. Required
`use_sim_time`	`false`	Use simulation time
`drone_model`	`quadrotor_base`	The model to show
`rviz`	`true`	Open RViz. Set it to `false` when RViz is already open
`rviz_config`	The package's `config/as2_default.rviz`	The RViz configuration to open
`paint_markers`	`true`	Start `marker_publisher`
`record_length`	500	How many past positions the trail keeps

The model is read from the as2_gazebo_assets models, such as quadrotor_base, hexrotor_base, crazyflie, x500 or px4vision, or from any folder in GZ_SIM_RESOURCE_PATH. Your own model works too, as <name>/<name>.sdf in one of those folders.

Several drones

ros2 launch as2_visualization swarm_viz.launch.py \
  namespace_list:=drone0,drone1,drone2 \
  use_sim_time:=true

This starts the nodes for every drone and one RViz for all of them. Write the list without spaces. Each drone gets the default model and markers, and swarm_viz.launch.py takes rviz_config and record_length too.

The default configuration shows drone0

as2_default.rviz has its displays set to drone0. For any other namespace, or for a swarm, add the other drones' displays in RViz, save the configuration and pass it as rviz_config.

Markers

marker_publisher reads the drone's pose and its motion reference, and draws them in the frame of the incoming messages:

Topic	Display in the default config	What it draws
`/viz/<namespace>/last_poses`	PosesHistory	The trail of the last `record_length` positions, updated 10 times a second
`/viz/<namespace>/reference_pose`	ReferencePose	A 0.1 m sphere at the position reference

Each drone gets a random color, shared by all its markers. The ReferenceVel display draws the measured velocity, and its arrow isn't drawn correctly for now.

Gates

gate_publisher draws race gates from the Gazebo assets, each at a TF frame of the same name. In Gazebo, gates with tf_broadcaster turned on publish those frames.

ros2 run as2_visualization gate_publisher --namespace gate0 gate1 --use_sim_time

The gates are published on /visualization_marker, so add a Marker display for that topic in RViz. --freq is the time between updates in seconds, 1.0 by default.

Teleop panel

The teleop panel flies one drone from RViz. Add it with Panels → Add New Panel, and pick as2_rviz_plugins/Teleop.

Type the drone's namespace in Drone ns, without a leading slash, such as drone0, and press Enter. The namespace is saved with the RViz configuration.

Button	What it does
Takeoff	Arms the drone, switches it to offboard and takes off to 1 m at 1 m/s
Land	Lands at 1 m/s
Hover	Hovers in place
Kill	Sends the kill switch, which stops the motors

Set the namespace first

Only Takeoff is disabled until a namespace is set. Pressing Land, Hover or Kill before that can crash RViz. Takeoff sends the arm and offboard requests without waiting for them, so it may need a second press.

One drone

Several drones

Markers

Gates

Teleop panel

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