Using ROS Buzz with hector quadrotor

[jag1799]

Hello MISTLab,

I'm currently working on a drone swarm search simulator using the hector quadrotor model. From what I've seen, hector doesn't integrate with the mavros package at all. Is there any way to bypass the mavros requirement and integrate the buzz scripts directly with hector?

[vivek-shankar]

Hai @jag1799,

I first thank you for your interests on ROSBuzz.
If I understand correct, I think it is definitely possible to integrate ROSBuzz with hector msgs but when we designed ROSBuzz our idea was to always use mavros to communicate with ROSBuzz even when your FC/Simulator is non-mavros. We propose to design an adapter ROS node that will transform the msgs and service calls from any of your Simulator/FC related messages to be mavros. If you really want to connect hector msgs directly with ROSBuzz you will have to modify the rosconroller.cpp by converting all callback functions to be able to handle hector msgs and accordingly the publishers/services. I strongly recommend that you don't take this route, it is some considerable work that can be avoided by designing an adapter node that transforms the msgs.
The following is an example of an adapter that I am referring to, this adpter connects dji SDK with ROSBuzz, you could design something similar. https://git.mistlab.ca/dasto/drones/-/blob/sim/src/mistlab_rosbuzz_sdk/src/mavdji.cpp

Good luck!

Best,
Vivek

[vivek-shankar]

Also in the same repo, that I shared with you there is an integration of hector_uav with ROSBuzz, you could also take advantage of that.