The hardest part of learning about flying robots is the constant crashing. From learning flight control for the first time, to testing new hardware or flight algorithms; the resulting failures can have a huge cost in terms of broken hardware components. To answer this difficulty, a simulated air vehicle designed and developed for ROS is ideal.

A simulated quadrotor UAV for the ROS Gazebo environment has been developed by the Team Hector Darmstadt of Technische Universität Darmstadt. This quadrotor, called Hector Quadrotor, is enclosed in the hector_quadrotor metapackage. This metapackage contains the URDF description for the quadrotor UAV, its flight controllers, and launch files for running the quadrotor simulation in Gazebo.

Advanced use of the Hector Quadrotor simulation allows the user to record sensor data such as Lidar, depth camera, and so on. The quadrotor simulation can also be used to test flight algorithms and control approaches in simulation.

The hector_quadrotor...