Drone Rider

We wanted to merge the idea of game and simulation and create a UI that is able to act as a game but control an actual drone.

Jam Site:

Plovdiv Game Jam

Jam year:

2022

Platforms:

MS Windows, Linux / Unix

Technology Notes:

We used Rust and evaluated the current state of the Bevy engine (bevyengine.org) and its ecosystem. Docker & docker-compose are used to run a simulation using PX4 (autopilot), Gazebo (simulation) and a special server for communication called MAVSDK (for the Mavlink protocol).

Installation Instructions:

(see the README.md in the repository for more details)

`docker-compose up -d` (wait a few minutes for the simulation to start & all the accompanying services)

`cargo run`

As we haven't implemented the functionality in the game where the drone model is moving in space correctly in order to see the actual drone movements you can use software like QGroundControl (http://qgroundcontrol.com).

Only going up is somewhat visible in the game.

w - forward (pitch)

s - backward (pitch)

a - left (roll)

d - right (roll)

Space - take the drone up (thrust)

z - arm the drone before takeoff

t - takeoff

First arm the drone (wait a few seconds)

Then make it take-off

Credits:

Drone model bought from (see licensing): https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/petrone-battle-drone-149aa3e19502471db0d...