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Telemetry

The communication between the UAV and GCS takes place by the transmission and reception of a defined set of messages, which are encoded using Mavlink. A custom Mavlink dialect is used to improve customization and reduce overhead caused by standardization.

The communication is divided into subprotocols, where each subprotocol specifies the sequence of interchanging and a subset of the total messages to meet a specific objective. Subprotocols are themselves loosely grouped into the following categories -

  1. Discovery & Connection - Handles discovery of system components (UAV, GCS) and connection lifecycle.
  2. State Transitions - Handles initiation and notification of state transitions in either of the three orthogonal states (activity, flight control mode and error).
  3. Input & Output Channels - Handles transmission of input and output channels (from RC and to motors/control-surfaces).
  4. Sensor & Pose Data - Handles transmission of raw sensor data and estimator pose.
  5. PID gains exhange - Handles exchange and synchronization of PID gains for the different controllers.
  6. Home Location - Handles exchange and synchronization of the Home Location.
  7. Geofence - Handles exchange and synchronization of the Geofence.
  8. Mission - Handles exchange and synchronization of the Mission.
  9. UAV Configuration - Handles exchange and synchronization of the UAV Configuration.