Deployment of Simulink designed controller to Pixhawk Cube Orange

Hello!

I have designed a controller in simulink using the UAV Toolbox Support Package for PX4 Autopilot. I want to deply the designed contoller on the Pixhawk Cube Orange but I am unable to figure out how to do that.

There are MATLAB examples for doing the same in case of HITL Simulation. But I want to deploy on the hardware and test it physically. I am not sure what is the difference in the procedure for both the tasks (if there is any). So if anyone has deployed simulink based controller on Pixhawk and tested it on a physical hardware, please help.

Thank you

Answer 1

[Arun Mathamkode]

Even for the HITL Simulation the Simulink based cotroller will be deployed to the Pixhawk/Cube Orange Hardware. There are not much difference in the behavoiur from controller side, sensors/actuators are the modules that have different bahaviours based on HITL mode or not. So they same way you deploy a controller for HITL mode can be followed for your usecase as well. Ensure that you uncheck the 'Enable HITL Mode' in the Model Configuration paramters. Cube orange is not available as a unique target as of now, but still you can use Cube Orange using the generic PX4 autopilot target. Follow the documentation for details.

[Tanay]

In the documentation under the limitations it is mentioned that connected I/O Simulation is not supported with PX4 Pixhawk Series boards. Does that mean I can't perform HITL because the bootloader port and main communications com port are different?

[Arun Mathamkode]

You can perform HITL Simulation using PX4 Pixhawk Series as the hardware board. To handle the case with two different port for Bootloader and communication, follow this documentation.

[Tanay]

I shall try that. Thanks a lot for your help!

[Tanay]

@Arun Mathamkode I was trying to implement this expample provided by MATLAB. I was able to perform HITL simulations and was trying to implement the controller on an actual quadrotor. The controller Simulink model used in this example reads the waypoints from QGround Control mission. So I wanted to know whether this controller is being used only in mission mode and not any other modes like manual mode?

Answer 2

[Ankur Bose]

The support for Cube Orange is available from R2022b. As Arun pointed out, follow the documentation to understand how to deploy to Cube Orange from Simulink