Flying the Virtual Drone with Code

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This page assumes you’ve followed the steps in Environment Setup (Windows) or Environment Setup (Linux)

1. Open your AirSim Unreal Engine project
   • you can run AirSim’s default project, called Blocks, located in your AirSim folder at \AirSim\Unreal\Environments\Blocks\Blocks.uproject
     • open the uproject directly in unreal; trying to run blocks from the Visual Studio Solution probably won’t work
     • if it says that the project was built with a different Unreal version, click “Yes” to rebuild with the version you have
2. Open a terminal and navigate to the root of your cloned repository. Then, run poetry shell
   • This will activate a virtual environment outfitted with the necessary dependencies need to interact with the simulation with Python.
3. Start the Unreal Engine simulation using the editor’s Play button
   • located above the viewport to the far right
   • if not immediately visible, press the double-arrow ($>!!>$) button, then Play
4. Start the PX4 and MavSDK servers by running \scripts\run-servers.ps1
   • if you encounter any issues with PX4 and MavSDK connecting, check out the environment debugging page
5. Run your code!
   • if you don’t have code of your own, there are example/test scripts you can run in the Simulation 2023 repository under the \tests\ directory
     • drone_control.py gives you rudimentary control via a text prompt. Open the file and read the top comment for the various control commands

Whenever you want to rerun code, you must

• stop the Unreal Simulation
• close the PX4 and MavSDK PowerShell instances
• repeat steps 3-5 in the above guide

There might be a better way to do this, but we haven’t discovered it.

When finished running code, run exit to exit your Poetry virtual environment.