Actuator Control in Real World

[ZifeiJiang]

Hi Jaeyoung, 

I know you are an expert on Mavros controllers. I have googled about the mavros offboard control on internet. I have found examples of controlling the outer loop of a quad in offboard control mode, which sends body rate and attitude to px4, basically the same as in this repo. 

I am wondering whether it is possible to use actuator control in the real world. I have tested actuator control in SITL and it works fine.

Further more, is it possible to use the following uORB message from a companion computer with ROS2 or MavROS in real world? I think this can enable user to bypass the built in mixer and send rotor speed commands directly.

Thank you very much!

[Jaeyoung-Lim]

@ZifeiJiang In principle there is nothing stopping you from using actuator control.

However what you need to be careful is the timedelay of sensor measurements to actuator commands that require a round trip to the companion computer. This requires you to have a very fast and reliable link between the companion computer and firmware. Normally the time delay introduced by the link is large enough to degrade the performance when doing offboard control with actuator setpoints