Add easy way to restart sim after collision without restarting launch file about flightgoggles HOT 11 CLOSED

Hi @ashwinvk94,

At the moment, restarting the launch file is the only way to restart the simulation after a collision. If you'd like to do tests without collisions enabled, it is possible to disable them. We're looking into making an easier way of restarting the simulation in the future, but for right now restarting the launch file or disabling collisions is the only way.

Best,
-Winter

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Got it thanks.

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@Winter-Guerra I've disabled collisions, the drone starts to fly, then I want to reset it. Is /uav/input/reset topic working? I've tried a number of ways to publish to it and nothing seems to reset it (by which I mean put the drone back to the starting position on the ground).

For example, I've tried amongst others:

rostopic pub /uav/input/reset std_msgs/Empty "{}"

When I initiate that command, I get the following output and nothing ever happens with the drone:

publishing and latching message. Press ctrl-C to terminate

I see there are no subscribers to that topic. Is that a mistake or is there another way to reset the drone?

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Hi @PHRABAL, restarting the dynamics node is currently the fastest way to reset the drone to the start position. However, we accept pull requests!

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Hi all,

We have an initial implementation of a quick reset function. In our implementation the drone will reset position on every collision. We're currently testing the patch and will release as soon as possible.

Best,
-Winter

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@Winter-Guerra great. In the meantime, I implemented a function to reset the env which does a rosnode kill combined with setting those nodes to respawn=True in the launch file. It works. Takes about 1-2 seconds to complete the loop on a p3.

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The new patch is out! FlightGoggles should reset the drone to the start position after a collision.

# Pull new flightgoggles source code
cd ~/catkin_ws/src/flightgoggles
git pull
# Force flightgoggles to redownload binary at build time
catkin clean
catkin build

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@Winter-Guerra Thanks for the quick add of this function. If we want to reset it manually other than a collision, is there a way to do that? Sometimes the drone gets "stuck" without registering an actual collision. There's actually a bunch of scenarios during training where we want to reset the drone other than an actual collision too. I can keep using my old way, but would love to use the new reset function if it's accessible.

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Hi @PHRABAL ,
You can reset the dynamics by publishing an empty message std_msgs/Empty to the ropic /uav/collision. E.g. from a terminal using the command:
rostopic pub /uav/collision std_msgs/Empty

Note that there is a timeout after each reset, during which the drone cannot go to armed state (similar to when the simulation is initialized and no thrust commands have been given yet). The timeout is set to 0.1 seconds by default, but you can change this in src/FlightGoggles/flightgoggles/config/drone/drone.yamlwhere the parameter is listed as reset_timeout.

Hope this helps,
-Ezra

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@eatal you made my day ... maybe week.

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Closing since this feature request has been implemented. Instructions for manual reset will be added to the README FAQ.

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