Overview

Welcome to this tutorial on building and programming smart drone swarms using Crazyflie tiny drones.

This tutorial presents a Gazebo-based simulation environment, Python control scripts to command individual or swarms of drones via simple web endpoints, and, at a later stage, a bigraph-driven programming model.

Specifically, the so-called UniAgent environment provides a full-stack setup to simulate and control autonomous Crazyflie collectives, from low-level motor commands to high-level swarm logic. It’s designed to support both research and practical experimentation in the perspective of drone coordination and spatial computing.

You’ll learn how to:

• Set up a simplified (i.e., a not yet very realistic) simulation environment using Gazebo with preset and custom worlds and the Crazyflie drone models.
• Use Python with the Crazyflie firmware stack to issue control commands.
• Define, control, and analyze collective behavior using bigraphs, a formalism well suited for modeling both connectivity and spatial configuration in dynamic systems.

Methodology

Reference:

Software Stack

The software stack employed in this tutorial:

• sim_cf2 (Gazebo) (Simulation)
• cf.PyControl (cflib/Python) (Controller)
• Eclipse CDO (Database)
• Bigraph Framework, BDSL, Spring Data CDO (Java) (Frameworks)

Everything is open source and provided through Docker images for easy installation and use.

Demo Video