Jaeyoung Lim

Previously, it was only possible to simulate multiple vehicles in SITL by extending ROS launchfiles. However, this is not scalable especially when you are trying simulate large number of vehicles or change the number of vehicles a lot.

Now you can simulate multiple vehicles in PX4 SITL gazebo, without depending on ROS. Simply run the following command. A more detailed instruction can be found in the PX4 Devguide

Tools/gazebo_sitl_multiple_run.sh [-m <model>] [-n <number_of_vehicles>] [-w <world>]

Spawning different models

Tools/gazebo_sitl_multiple_run.sh -m iris -n 20

Tools/gazebo_sitl_multiple_run.sh -m plane -n 10

Tools/gazebo_sitl_multiple_run.sh -m standard_vtol

Spawning into different worlds

The vehilces can be spawned into different worlds. For example, the baylands world. The list of worlds can be found in the documentation

Tools/gazebo_sitl_multiple_run.sh -w baylands

PRs that enabled this feature

• https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/13729
• https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/13985
• https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14126
• https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/pull/14764

Anecdote

When I was starting with PX4 SITL years ago, I did something similar but failed miserably. After 4 years, I ended up fixing it myself. 🙂