# 로봇공학

Drone APIs let you write code to control and integrate with PX4-powered vehicles, without having to understand intimate details of the vehicle and flight stack, or having to think about safety-critical behaviour.

PX4는 MAVSDK (opens new window) 및 ROS를 포함하는 로봇 공학 API와 함께 사용할 수 있습니다. DroneKit 도 사용 가능하지만, PX4에 최적화되지 않았습니다. Under the the hood the APIs communicate with PX4 using MAVLink or RTPS.

PX4 supports the following SDKs/Robotics tools:

# What API should I use?

We recommend using MAVSDK where possible, primarily because it is far more intuitive and easier to learn. It can also run on more operating systems and less performant-hardware.

You may prefer ROS if you already know how to use it, or if you want to leverage pre-existing integrations (for example computer vision tasks). More generally, ROS is likely to be a better choice for tasks that require very low latency or a deeper integration with PX4 than is provided by MAVLink.

The main difference are:

MAVSDK:
- Intuitive and optimised for drones, with a small learning curve and easy setup.
- You can write apps in C++, Python, Swift, Java, Go, and more.
- Runs on resource-constrained hardware
- Runs on broad range of OSs, including Android, Linux, Windows.
- Communicates over MAVLink.
  - Stable and widely supported.
  - Limited to MAVLink services - needed information may not be exposed.
  - Latency may be too high for some use cases.
ROS:
- General-purpose robotics API that has been extended to support drone integration:
  - Conceptually not as well optimised for drones
  - Significant learning curve
- Many pre-existing libraries: useful for code-reuse.
- Supports C++ and Python libraries
- Runs on Linux
- ROS2 is the latest version, which connects via DDS.
  - DDS interface layer allows deep integration into any aspect of PX4 that is exposed as a UORB topic (almost everything).
  - Can provide much lower latency.
  - Still under development. At time of writing requires a deeper understanding of PX4 than ROS1
- ROS1 is older version that can connect over MAVLink or via ROS2. Users are encouraged to update to ROS2 for new projects.