PX4-Autopilot Main Release Notes

This contains changes to PX4 since the last major release (v1.14).

Read Before Upgrading

TBD ...

Major Changes

• TBD

Upgrade Guide

Other changes

Hardware Support

• TBD

Common

• SYS_MC_EST_GROUP has been removed and there are now dedicated parameters EKF2_EN, ATT_EN, and LPE_EN for Switching State Estimators. Most setups should enable EKF2_EN (the default). Changed in PX4-Autopilot#22567.

Control

• [offboard]ros2 offboard control allows for direct motors and servo control. Added in PX4-Autopilot#22222.

Estimation

• TBD

Sensors

• TBD

Simulation

• Gazebo: Support for Advanced Plane, a simulated fixed-wing vehicle that provides better aerodynamic simulation than the regular plane. Added to PX4 in PX4-Autopilot#22167 and gz-sim#2185 (advanced lift drag plugin).
• Gazebo: The environment variable PX4_SIM_MODEL can now be used to indicate the simulation model. This supersedes PX4_GZ_MODEL, which is now deprecated. Added to PX4 in PX4-Autopilot#22400.
• Gazebo: Separation of Gazebo and PX4 SITL. The two parts of the simulation are now separated. They can be independently launched in any order, and even run on different hosts across a network. Gazebo additional supports drag-and-drop via the resource spawner in Gazebo GUI. Added to PX4 in PX4-Autopilot#22467.

uXRCE-DDS / ROS2

• uXRCE-DDS: DDS Topics YAML now allows the use of subscription_multi to specify that indicated ROS 2 topics are sent to a separate uORB topic instance reserved for ROS 2. This allows PX4 to differentiate between updates from ROS and those from PX4 uORB publishers. With this change ROS2 users can now decide if the messages that they are sending to PX4 will overlap with the existing uORB ones or be kept in separate instances. Added in PX4 in PX4-Autopilot#22266.

MAVLink

• TBD

Multi-Rotor

• Throw launchExperimental: Start a multicopter by throwing it into the air. Added to PX4 in PX4-Autopilot#21170.
• Position Slow Mode: A slower version of Position mode, where the maximum horizontal velocity, vertical velocity and yaw-rate axes can be configured to lower values (using parameters, RC controller knobs/switches, or MAVLink). Added to PX4 in PX4-Autopilot#22102.

VTOL

• TBD

Fixed-wing

• Simplified airspeed sensor configuration: Replacef parameter CBRK_AIRSPD_CHK with SYS_HAS_NUM_ASPD and renamed parameter FW_ARSP_MODE to FW_USE_AIRSPD. To be able to arm without an airspeed sensor set SYS_HAS_NUM_ASPD to 0. To not use the airspeed sensor data in the controller, set FW_USE_AIRSPD to 0. Added to PX4 in PX4-Autopilot#22510.

Rover

• Aion R1Experimental: ESC Driver for Roboclaw motor controller. This comes with build instructions and support for the Aion R1, a new differential drive rover, along with information about integrating the Roboclaw motor controller.

ROS 2

• PX4 ROS 2 Interface LibraryExperimental: A new C++ library that simplifies controlling PX4 from ROS 2. Supports adding flight modes in ROS 2 that are peers of the PX4 modes running on the flight controller. Added to PX4 in PX4-Autopilot#20707 (initial support). Goto Setpoint: https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot/pull/22375