rs_isaac_uav_sim

GPU-accelerated UAV flight simulation built on NVIDIA Isaac Sim 6.0, with MAVLink HIL integration so PX4 SITL can fly the simulated drone in lockstep over TCP.

What you get

• A working 3DR Iris quadrotor asset (USD) with PhysX articulation, custom thrust + drag dynamics, and a sensor suite (IMU / barometer / magnetometer / GPS) plumbed through MAVLink.
• A lockstep PX4 HIL backend that speaks HIL_SENSOR, HIL_GPS, HIL_STATE_QUATERNION, and HIL_ACTUATOR_CONTROLS over TCP, with strict sim-time / autopilot-time lockstep enforced through time_drift monitoring.
• A one-command live demo (scripts/live_flight_demo.py) that boots Isaac Sim + PX4, waits for EKF + arming checks, arms PX4, switches to AUTO.TAKEOFF, climbs to ~5 m, and loiters until you Ctrl-C.
• A self-contained Docker image with ROS 2 Jazzy + Isaac Sim 6.0 + PX4-Autopilot v1.16 prebuilt, so the only host requirement is the NVIDIA driver + container toolkit.
• A real test suite (colcon test) covering lint, type checks, state rotation conventions, an end-to-end mock-controller flight, and an end-to-end PX4 SITL takeoff.

Reading order

If you want to run it, start at the Quickstart.

If you want to understand how it works, read the Architecture — it walks the physics loop, the MAVLink lockstep handshake, and the coordinate frames the codebase juggles between.

If you want to change a drone’s parameters, see the Configuration page for the YAML schema.

License

Apache License 2.0. The MAVLink HIL backend is ported from PegasusSimulator (BSD-3-Clause, © Marcelo Jacinto), credited inline.