Installation

This project has been developed and tested for ROS2 Lyrical on following system configurations. It is recommended to also use a similar configuration.

Ubuntu	ROS
26.04	Lyrical

Step by Step Instructions

1. If you have not already done so install ROS 2 Lyrical on your system.

   Make sure to also install ros-dev-tools, which includes vcstool needed by the setup script:

   sudo apt install ros-dev-tools
   

2. These dependencies are required:

   sudo apt-get install ros-lyrical-tf-transformations
   sudo apt install python3-colcon-common-extensions
   

3. Clone the ds-crazyflies (this) repository

   git clone https://github.com/DynamicSwarms/ds-crazyflies.git
   cd ds-crazyflies
   

4. Configure what you want to build with the setup script.

   ./setup.sh [options]
   

   Available options are:

   • hardware: This will allow you to use real crazyflies with a crazyradio and external tracking systems.

   • simulation: A lightweight simulation that can be used for testing.

   • sitl: The crazyflie firmware as software in the loop. Requires hardware to be selected as well.

   Recommended Build

   ./setup.sh simulation hardware
   

5. Build the workspace with colcon:

   source /opt/ros/lyrical/setup.bash
   colcon build
   

End of Life Support for Webots

Webots support will be removed in the future. Probably it currently still works, if you want to, try the following:

Build with Webots

1. Install the Webots Simulator (We are currently supporting Webots2025a):

   For this you can follow the instructions from Cyberbotics: https://cyberbotics.com/doc/guide/installation-procedure#installing-the-debian-package-with-the-advanced-packaging-tool-apt

   sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
   cd /etc/apt/keyrings
   sudo wget -q https://cyberbotics.com/Cyberbotics.asc
   

   echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/Cyberbotics.asc] https://cyberbotics.com/debian binary-amd64/" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/Cyberbotics.list
   sudo apt update
   

   sudo apt install webots
   

   Note

   Avoid installing Webots via snap as this causes issues with the ROS2 integration.

2. Configure with the webots option.

   ./setup.sh webots
   

3. Export the webots home variable before building.

   export WEBOTS_HOME=/usr/local/webots
   

The webots world is not included in this repository. It needs to be downloaded separately:

1. Download the crazywebotsworld repository:

   git clone https://github.com/DynamicSwarms/crazywebotsworld.git
   

2. Open webots with the world:

   webots crazywebotsworld/worlds/crazyflie.wbt
   

Next up follow the Getting Started guide.