PX4 Developer Summit | Zurich 2019

UAVCAN is a compact and robust protocol designed to provide publish/subscribe and remote procedure call (RPC) transports on top of real-time, reliable, and redundant networks for highly-deterministic applications. It is a modern protocol focused on cyber physical systems making it relevant to the emerging class of vehicles that are largely software defined and increasingly autonomous. Being first proposed in 2014, the protocol has been integrated into numerous systems and is supported by several vendors worldwide. Experience from years of real-world integration and deployment has culminated in the first long-term stable version – UAVCAN v1.0. New features in this version include compatibility with transport protocols such as CAN FD and UDP/Ethernet, DSDL message versioning, a simplified on-wire representation of UAVCAN frames, and a clear process for the registration and deconfliction of message identifiers between systems and vendors.

This session introduces an educational platform based on PX4 hardware and software, which also consists of open-source libraries, free Raspberry Pi image for drone control, documentation and hardware drone kit. Thousands of students in Russian schools, colleges and centers of STEM education use this educational kit, and developed and performed autonomous flights in OFFBOARD mode via simple ROS API. This session will also introduce the drone challenges and competitions that have been organized using this platform, and will seek inputs on how to promote this initiative in other regions of the world.

The Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) supports the development of an open and interoperable UTM concept. The architecture includes an open source project as one of its key component for strategic deconfliction. FOCA is interested to present its UTM architecture and to engage with the community to further explore how to integrate open source in its development.