Simulator for Flocking Algorithm

[neverorfrog]

Hi! Thanks for your amazing work. I'm pretty new to all this stuff regarding Ros 2, crazyflies etc.., so I'm trying to wrap my head around it. I have to implement a very basic flocking algorithm (let's say around 8-10 robots) for a university project, but I would like to simulate the whole algorithm before using the real robots. Now, ideally a base station would publish a /cmd_hover topic, but as i see from this link, this is not possible with the sim backend. Also, I need to give a different command to every robot, so I guess I have to publish a different topic for every crazyflie. What's the best way to simulate this situation? I've tested this, but just with one robot: it seems easy to use, but I have no idea how to adapt it to multiple robots in simulation using crazyswarm2. I saw there's also this, but I'm not sure what's the difference to using gazebo as done in the first repo. Sorry if the question is a bit generic and somehow stupid. Just a quick insight would be immensely helpful.

Thank you in advance

[whoenig]

You could use cmd_full_state (just provide desired pos and vel; you can integrate the position on your flocking controller side).

The current simulator in Crazyswarm2 is pretty slow if physics is enabled, so I would first disable the physics backend and just visualize the setpoint, then you can try some of the more sophisticated backends.

[whoenig]

You might also be interested in our recent survey paper on UAV simulation: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10665978.

[neverorfrog]

Thanks! I'll look into it