Drone simulator written in C++

Table of contents

• Description
• Architecture
  • Components
  • Project structure
• How to run
• How to play

Description

This project is a 2D simulation of a drone interacting with its environment. The drone can be controlled by the user through their keyboard. The environment includes obstacles that should be avoided as well as targets that should be approached by the drone.

Legend:

• +: Drone (controlled by player)
• *: Obstacles to be avoided
• Numbers: Targets to be reached

This project was developed as part of the course "Advanced and Robot Programming" .at the University of Genoa (UniGe).

Architecture

The architecture for this project was strongly dictated by the assignment.

Legend:

• B: Blackboard server
• D: Drone component
• I: Input component
• T: Target component
• O: Obstacle component
• W: Watchdog

Components

The project includes the following components:

Entrypoint

File: main.cpp

Entrypoint of the project. Responsible for creating and running the other components. Serves as the master process. Also runs the blackboard server component.

Blackboard server

Files: blackboard.(c|h)pp

Responsible for rendering the information to the window. Runs a game loop that periodically uses select to check, whether any process have new data available.

Drone component

Files: drone.(c|h)pp

Periodically receives positions of obstacles and targets as well as keyboard input. Updates the drone position accordingly, following a simple physical model and sends the new position back to the blackboard server.

Input component

Files: keyboard.(c|h)pp

Watches for keyboard input and reports it to the blackboard server.

Obstacle component

Files: obstacles.(c|h)pp

Manages the obstacles. Periodically checks, whether obstacles have and expired and should be removed or whether new ones should be created. Reports any changes to the blackboard server.

Target component

Files: targets.(c|h)pp

Manages the targets. Receives detected collision and destroys targets accordingly. Also responsible for creating new targets.

Input component

Files: keyboard.(c|h)pp

Watches for keyboard input and reports it to the blackboard server.

Watchdog

Files: watchdog.(c|h)pp

Watches other components by periodically checking shared log file. Terminates program, if one component stops responding.

Project structure

The project is structured as follows

- src/: Contains the source code files for the project.
- include/: Contains the header files for the project.
- build/: The directory where the project will be built. Gets created automatically.
- appsettings.json: The configuration file for the project.
- CMakeLists.txt: The CMake configuration file for building the project.
- build.sh: A script for building the project.

Files irellevent for the project are omitted.

How to run

Using pre-built binary

• Download latest release binary from GitHub
• make executable

chmod +x drone-simulator_linux_amd64

• copy appsettings.json from GitHub
• run binary

Compiling source

Requirements

• g++ $\geq$ 12.3.0
• cmake $\geq$ 3.10

Using build script

Execution

./build.sh

Options:

• -j {THREADS}: Number of threads for parallel building. Directly passed to cmake/make. Defaults to 8.
• -r: Run the project after build step. Defaults to false.
• -h: Show help message.

Building manually

mkdir build
cd build/
cmake ..
make

Run

./dronesim

Debugging

In order to enable debugging symbols, run cmake with the corresponding flag.

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..

How to play

• Move the drone using
  • E: Move up
  • C: Move down
  • S: Move left
  • F: Move right
  • W, R, X, V: Move diagonally
  • D: Stop moving
• Use Q to quit the game.
• Avoid obstacles (*) and reach targets (1, 2, 3, ...).