Navigator Board with Ubuntu / ROS

Blue Robotics Products Flight Controllers
1

Hello,

We are investigating setting up a Surface Vessel with the navigator and RPI. Most of our systems use ROS so we would prefer to run ubuntu on the RPI with ROS, and utilise the navigator flight controller for sensor input and thruster output. This system would not use BlueOS. I know this would require plenty of work to enable all the functionality provided by the Navigator, however for a basic setup with SBUS for RC input, and PWM thruster output would this be possible or is raspbian required.

We would be able to set up an RPI with an arduino for thruster output however the navigator would be a clean and expandable solution for our problem.

Any ideas or feedback would be appreciated! Thanks in advance

2

Hi @mgalea,

You can use Navigator with latest ArduSub 4.1.0 and mavros as a bridge between MAVLink and ROS.

3

Hello,
On this, from my understanding we need the custom raspbian image for all the device interfaces to be configured correctly. This was at least the case to use the Navigator C++ and Python library. When we install the firmware linked here, does it automatically configure the OS level device mapping? i.e. /dev/ttyS0 becoming the Serial 1 / RC input bus on the Navigator board?
Thanks!