Warning Do not use this software for real drone flights. GISNav is untested and has only been demonstrated in a simulation environment.

GISNav is a ROS 2 package that enables map-based visual navigation for airborne drones in a simulation environment.

GISNav provides a precise global position by visually comparing frames from the drone's nadir-facing camera to a map of the drone's approximate global position retrieved from an onboard GIS system.

The below steps demonstrate how GISNav enables GNSS-free flight with PX4 Autopilot's Mission mode in a SITL simulation.

You will need to have the docker compose plugin and NVIDIA Container Toolkit installed.

Build the Docker images and create and run the containers (downloading and building everything will take a long time):

Note This script will automatically expose your xhost to the created Docker containers to make the GUI applications work.

git clone https://github.com/hmakelin/gisnav.git
cd gisnav
make -C docker demo

Once both the Gazebo and QGroundControl windows have appeared (QGroundControl should show the drone location near San Carlos airport), use QGroundControl to upload the sample ~/ksql_airport_px4.plan flight plan that is included inside the Docker container, and then start the mission.

Wait until the drone has risen to its final mission altitude. You should see a visualization of the GISNav-estimated field of view projected on the ground appear. You can then try disabling GPS through your MAVLink Shell (accessible e.g. through QGroundControl > Analyze Tools > MAVLink Console):

failure gps off

The drone should now continue to complete its mission GNSS-free with GISNav substituting for GPS.

You can check if PX4 is receiving the mock GPS position estimates by typing the following in the MAVLink shell:

listener sensor_gps

If the printed GPS message has a satellites_used field value of 255, your PX4 is receiving the mock GPS node output as expected. QGroundControl will most likely show 0 satellites used next to the GPS icon as shown in the demo video.

See the latest developer documentation for information on how to setup a local environment for GISNav development, for code examples and API documentation, and for contribution guidelines.

This software is released under the MIT license. See the LICENSE.md file for more information.