ArduPilot Software-in-the-Loop Simulator Docker Container

The purpose of this is to run an ArduPilot SITL from within Docker.

DockerHub

A pre-built Docker image is available on DockerHub at:

https://hub.docker.com/r/duckietown/ardupilot-sitl

• To download it, run docker pull duckietown/ardupilot-sitl
• To run it, run docker run -it --rm -p 5760:5760 duckietown/ardupilot-sitl
• To use it with Docker Compose, add the following service to your docker-compose.yml file:
  • You can launch it with docker-compose up -d
  • To check the logs in ArduCopter.log, run docker exec -it "$FOLDER_NAME_ardupilot-sitl_1" watch -n 1 "cat /tmp/ArduCopter.log", where you should update $FOLDER_NAME with the folder containing the docker-compose.yml.

services:
  ardupilot-sitl:
    image: duckietown/ardupilot-sitl
    tty: true
    ports:
      - 5760:5760

Quick Start

If you'd rather build the docker image yourself:

docker build --tag duckietown/ardupilot-sitl github.com/duckietown/ardupilot-sitl-docker

You can now use the --build-arg option to specify which branch or tag in the ardupilot repository you'd like to use. Here's an example:

docker build --tag duckietown/ardupilot-sitl --build-arg COPTER_TAG=Copter-4.5.6 .

If no COPTER_TAG is supplied, the build will use the default defined in the Dockerfile, currently set at Copter-4.0.3

To run the image:

docker run -it --rm -p 5760:5760 duckietown/ardupilot-sitl

This will start an ArduCopter SITL on host TCP port 5760, so to connect to it from the host, you could us mavproxy (install instructions available here):

mavproxy.py --master=tcp:localhost:5760

Options

There are a number of options available to configure the simulator, for example, to run an ArduRover instance on port 5761, you could:

docker run -it --rm -p 5761:5760 --env VEHICLE=APMrover2 duckietown/ardupilot-sitl

We also have an example env.list file which can help you maintain your options and called like so:

docker run -it --rm -p 5761:5760 --env-file env.list duckietown/ardupilot-sitl

The full list of options and their default values is:

INSTANCE    0
LAT         42.3898
LON         -71.1476
ALT         14
DIR         270
MODEL       +
SPEEDUP     1
VEHICLE     arducopter

So, for example, you could issue a command such as:

docker run -it --rm -p 5761:5760 \
   --env VEHICLE=APMrover2 \
   --env MODEL=rover-skid \
   --env LAT=39.9656 \
   --env LON=-75.1810 \
   --env ALT=276 \
   --env DIR=180 \
   --env SPEEDUP=2 \
   duckietown/ardupilot-sitl

Vehicles and their corresponding models are listed below:

ArduCopter: octa-quad|tri|singlecopter|firefly|gazebo-
    iris|calibration|hexa|heli|+|heli-compound|dodeca-
    hexa|heli-dual|coaxcopter|X|quad|y6|IrisRos|octa
APMRover2: rover|gazebo-rover|rover-skid|calibration
ArduSub: vectored
ArduPlane: gazebo-zephyr|CRRCSim|last_letter|plane-
    vtail|plane|quadplane-tilttri|quadplane|quadplane-
    tilttrivec|calibration|plane-elevon|plane-
    tailsitter|plane-dspoilers|quadplane-tri
    |quadplane-cl84|jsbsim