Issue while simulating a swarm of ArduPlane SITL instances using Mission Planner

ArduPlane Plane Simulation
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1

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on simulating a swarm of fixed-wing aircraft in Mission Planner using SITL (Software-in-the-Loop). However, I have been facing multiple issues while setting up and operating the simulation. I have gone through the available documentation and discussions on ArduPilot Discourse but couldn’t find much information to resolve these problems.

I would really appreciate any guidance or suggestions to troubleshoot the following issues:

  1. Aircraft Moving Without Input: As soon as the aircrafts are selected, the aircraft begins moving on the map towards north on its own without any control input.
  2. Automatic Disarming: The aircrafts disarms automatically even after I successfully arm them in AUTO mode.
  3. Waypoint Following Issue: Despite configuring and setting up a leader-follower system, the aircraft do not follow the waypoints as expected.
  4. Swarm Behavior Issue: I attempted to simulate a swarm of planes. However, only one out of the three planes follows the path, and strangely, it is a follower plane, while the leader remains disarmed. The follower planes start following the mission only when I manually switch them to AUTO mode.
  5. Leader Plane in Auto Mode Issue: When I put the leader plane in AUTO mode to follow the mission, only one of the other planes starts the mission, while the remaining aircraft do not follow the same.

I would really appreciate any insights or suggestions on how to properly configure and run a swarm simulation in SITL. If anyone has successfully executed a similar setup, please share your experience or any resources that might help.

Thank you in advance!

2

I am also facing same issue.
did you got the solution ?

3

I was able to resolve the issue, but I’m still unsure about the exact cause. I initially connected the GPS module to the GCS just to set the home location and after that, the problem disappeared. It’s possible that SITL started with an incorrect default position, and connecting the GPS updated the coordinates, resolving an EKF initialization issue or a stuck parameter in MAVLink. However, I’m not entirely sure if this was the root cause.

Could you try this on your setup and let me know if it works for you?