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Rover Configuration/Tuning

This topic provides a step-by-step guide for setting up your rover.

Successive steps enable drive modes with more autopilot support and features:

StepConfigurationUnlocked PX4 Drive Mode
1Basic SetupFull manual mode
2Rate TuningManual acro mode
3Attitude TuningManual stabilized mode
4Velocity TuningManual position mode
5Position TuningAuto modes

WARNING

A drive mode will only work properly if all the configuration for the preceding modes has been completed.

Flashing the Rover Build

Rover is built as a firmware variant, and must be installed as "Custom Firmware" in QGC (other vehicles are present in the default variant).

The release versions of Rover firmware for different boards are attached to the associated GitHub release tag. For example, you can find px4_fmu-v5x_rover.px4 on PX4-Autopilot/releases/tag/v1.16.1. For the main branch version of Rover you will need to build the firmware.

Load the firmware onto your flight controller as "Custom Firmware" (see Loading Firmware > Installing PX4 Main, Beta or Custom Firmware).

Building Rover

Rover is built as the rover firmware variant. What this means is that when building the firmware with the make command, you replace the _default suffix in the configuration target with _rover.

For example, to build rover for px4_fmu-v6x boards, you would use the following command:

sh
make px4_fmu-v6x_rover

Note that configuration targets are constructed with the format "VENDOR_MODEL_VARIANT".

The built firmware can be installed as custom firmware, as shown above in in Flashing the Rover Build.

INFO

You can also enable the modules in default builds by adding these lines to your board configuration (e.g. for fmu-v6x you might add them to main/boards/px4/fmu-v6x/default.px4board):

sh
CONFIG_MODULES_ROVER_ACKERMANN=y
CONFIG_MODULES_ROVER_DIFFERENTIAL=y
CONFIG_MODULES_ROVER_MECANUM=y

Adding the rover modules may lead to flash overflow, in which case you will need to disable modules that you do not plan to use (such as those related to multicopter or fixed wing).