Secure Pprzlink released

March 26, 2018 Michal Podhradsky

The Paparazzi team is proud to announce a release of an encrypted version of pprzlink. The new secure Pprzlink uses a strong and fast cipher ChaCha20 with Poly1305 authenticator. For better security and user convenience, a variation of station-to-station key-exchange protocol is implemented, to allow seamless key-exchange between the UAV and the GCS.

Secure Pprzlink is backed by a formally verified cryptographic library HACL* (yes, the same library that is a part of new Mozilla Firefox).

Why should you care? Without encryption, anyone can listen to your drone communication, and can potentially send modified or outright “fake” commands to it, steering it of course, or causing it to crash. Using encrypted radio link is similar to using encrypted connection on internet, and should be a common practice.

Why is using a formally verified crypto library important? In short, cryptography is hard to do right, and formal methods help make sure that the encryption algorithms behave as intended. The short video below gives you a better idea:

Secure Pprzlink uses a formally verified cryptography library, but is not verified itself. However, it could be verified in the future, to provide additional guarantees.

How to use it? We prepared a wiki page with instructions and examples. In short, choose a secure link as your mode of communication when building the autopilot code, and the rest is handled automatically. Also, the GCS part of secure pprzlink is written in Rust, which is a memory-safe language, which guarantees that the code written in Rust is itself memory-safe and thus eliminates a large amount of possible software bugs.

Secure Pprzlink was created with the help of Galois, Senman and is currently used by AggieAir at Utah State University.

Give it a try and give us any feedback and ask questions on paparazzi gitter channel, or via paparazzi mailing list.

Wishing everyone happy (and secure) flying!

Research

Pilot a super rotorcraft!

December 2, 2017 Hector Garcia de Marina

So far all my results with rotorcraft were in simulation… until now! In this experiment, performed at TU-Delft (thanks Ewoud Smeur!), a team of four rotorcraft behaves as a single unit. The proved stability properties of the whole system allows for applications such as collaborative transportation of objects.

If you want to know the mathematical aspects and why this setup works, then check my thesis.

A wiki entry explaining how you can have the same setup running employing Paparazzi will be available soon!

Research

Multi-UAV capabilities

August 12, 2017 Hector Garcia de Marina

Video done at ENAC (Toulouse) showing some capabilities of Paparazzi for controlling multiple fixed-wing aircraft.

We have already a wiki entry explaining how to implement the circular formations.

Hardware, Release

New Paparazzi autopilot Chimera released

March 20, 2017 Gautier Hattenberger

The ENAC UAV lab is proud to release its latest autopilot board. Named Chimera, it is based on the latest STM32F7 micro-controller and offers a large connectivity.

The design have been made with the ease of use and integration for end-users, especially researchers. With the usual features like IMU and barometer, the Chimera also carries a differential pressure sensor, a SD card slot, a XBee modem slot and a 5V power supply dedicated to external companion processor.

Please check the general pinout diagram below or the Wiki page for more details.

The Chimera have been successfully used on the hybrid airframe currently developed by Enac with the help of TUDelft for the control.

Community, Hardware, Release, Research, Videos

First flights of the hybrid vehicle Cyfoam with Chimera board

March 12, 2017 Hector Garcia de Marina 1 Comment

The Cyfoam is a hybrid vehicle developed at ENAC Drone Lab. The aircraft is a foam, with a 3D printed fuselage, version of the composite-made Cyclone.

The vehicle is powered by the new autopilot board Chimera! which executes the control algorithms developed by Ewoud from Delft MAV Lab. We are currently aiming at a total autonomous mode, e.g., auto take off and auto landing.

Community, Hardware, Release, Research, Software, Videos

Flying Parrot’s Disco aircraft with Paparazzi

February 24, 2017 Gautier Hattenberger 1 Comment

The Disco from Parrot is a fixed-wing aircraft designed for FPV with all the feature already available on their Bebop2, plus some extra things, like airspeed sensor, SBUS input and PWM outputs.

The autopilot itself is all integrated in a box called C.H.U.C.K. and it allows nice and easy flights with the SkyController2 and the Cockpitglasses, connected via Wifi.

Just like the Bebop and ARDrones, it is now possible to fly this drone using Paparazzi. Just connect to the plane, upload your code and you’re ready to go! Here is the video of the maiden flight:

More information are available on the wiki: http://wiki.paparazziuav.org/wiki/Disco

Special thanks to ArduPilot and Andrew Tridgell who implemented the driver for PWM output on this plane and his tips for debugging the Paparazzi version.

Research, Videos

Circle formations of fixed-wing aircraft

February 21, 2017 Hector Garcia de Marina

We have recently developed and tested a formation control algorithm for fixed-wing aircraft in Paparazzi at ENAC. The position of an arbitrary number of vehicles can be controlled in a circular path. In fact, we are not restricting ourselves to circles but to any closed orbit, such as ellipses, thanks to the guidance vector field that guides the planes.
The algorithm is under more tests, but it should be soon available for the general public. It is quite easy to employ, the user has to declare only the IDs of the planes, the communication topology (neighbors’ relationships) and the desired inter-angles. A detailed explanation will be posted soon in the wiki.
In the following video the planes exchange positions every second. Delays, out-of-date positions (GPS delays), packet losses, etc are expected to be (and actually they are) present. It is quite interesting to remark how robust the algorithm is. According to our calculations the impact of such nasty things are not very important (ofc up to a certain point) for the convergence of the algorithm.

Research, Videos

Multi-UAV Scientific Flights Video

January 18, 2017 Gautier Hattenberger

Last year we had post here about meteorological flights using multiple UAVs. Now, the video of those experiments is finally on-line.

In total 3 planes are used for the scientific measurements and an extra one for aerial footage of the other planes. They are all using Apogee boards with an extra sensor board developed in-house at Enac: the MeteoStick.

Community, Hardware, Release

1Bitsy & Black Magic Probe Kickstarter

November 29, 2016 Danika Esden-Tempski

As many of you know a programmer and debugger is a tremendously useful tool for many Paparazzi UAV based autopilots like the Lisa/MX and Lisa/S.

Our friends at 1BitSquared are running a Kickstarter to make a new revision of their Black Magic Probe JTAG SWD debugger and programmer with the addition of the 1Bitsy. 1Bitsy is a development board using the same CPU as Elle0 and Lisa/MX Paparazzi autopilots. It can serve as a good prototyping platform for payload control or for your next autopilot project.

Every hobbyist and hardware enthusiast will find these boards to be an indispensable part of their tool kit. Check out their campaign and spread the word! 😀

Community, Competition, Events, Research

IMAV2016

October 24, 2016 Gautier Hattenberger

The International Micro-Air Vehicle Conference and Competition was held last week in Beijing, China, organized by the Beijing Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore.

As usual, the level of the teams involved in the competition is higher year after year and we had a great show. The team from the MAVLAB of TUDelft was participating to both indoor and outdoor session. During the outdoor, they unfortunately couldn’t show their best due to many communication issues, preventing them to fully use their RTK Bebop2 (and also some regressions in Paparazzi code, hum hum… 🙁 ).

The next day, the indoor team did its best to perform well. And despite the difficult tasks to pick up and drop objects, they tried hard until the end. It was worth the effort as they reached the 3rd place of the competition, a few points ahead the Spanish team of Madrid (CVG-UPM)! We could almost call it a draw as both team really did their best with great spirit.

But, this was not their only great achievement. The paper Control of a hybrid helicopter with wings by Christophe De Wagter and Ewoud Smeur received the Best Paper Award of the conference for their work on the control issues raised by the novel design of the Delftacopter and the solution they found to solve them. Congratulation to them and all the team involved in the Delftacopter!

Paparazzi UAV Blog