PX4 SITL on AWS — Automated Simulation & Testing Pipeline

This repository demonstrates an automated workflow for running PX4 SITL (Software-In-The-Loop) simulations on AWS infrastructure — fully managed by GitHub Actions.

GitHub Actions UI as SITL Simulation Manager

Multiple parallel simulations can be launched from the GitHub Actions UI: The Run workflow can be manually dispatched with several simulation parameters, including the number of simulations. Each scenario will generate a random radius based on the specified radius standard deviation (STD) parameter and will be launched on a separate EC2 instance. At the end of the simulation, an analysis script will download the simulation bag files from S3 and generate an X-Y trajectory report.

Watch again on YouTube.

Continues Integration

Whenever CI Workflow triggered, a new Docker image is built (only if necessary), containing the required environment to run the SITL simulation. Then, an EC2 instance is launched, pulls the simulation Docker image from ECR, and runs the scenario.

Once the simulation ends, a simple analysis script runs to count the number of messages per topic, helping to detect bugs or anomalies. Finally, the ROS 2 bag file that was recorded during the simulation is uploaded to an S3 bucket for storage and later analysis. Watch again on YouTube.

Workflow Diagram

flowchart TB
    A[Manual Dispatch] --> C[Pipeline Triggered]
    B[New Git Tag] --> C
    C --> D[Build New Docker Image]
    D --> E[Push Image to AWS ECR]
    C --Manual Dispatch--> F[Push Image to AWS ECR]
    E --> F[Launch EC2 Instance]
    F --> G[Pull Docker Image from ECR]
    G --> H[Run PX4 SITL Simulation]
    H --> I[Upload ROS 2 Bag File to S3]
    I --> J[Terminate EC2 Instance]
    J --> K[Generate Bag Report as Workflow's Artifact]
    K --> |If Triggered by Git Tag| M[Release]

Repository Contents

This repository contains:

• A devcontainer setup for develop offboard algorithms for PX4 flight stack, based on ROS 2 and XRCE-DDS.
• ROS 2 nodes implementing high-level logic for the px4-offboard project by @Jaeyoung-Lim — handling mission control, behaviors, and simulation logic.
• Dockerfiles and scripts to build a complete PX4 SITL environment including PX4 Autopilot, ROS 2 workspace, and dependencies.
• GitHub Actions workflow to automate the entire simulation pipeline: build, deploy, simulate, and upload results.
• Infrastructure setup documentation for AWS (VPC, EC2, ECR, S3, IAM Roles).
• Example analysis scripts to inspect simulation results (ROS 2 bag file analysis).
• Ready-to-use example for cloud-based PX4 SITL testing pipeline integrated with ROS 2.

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Repository Structure

p4_sitl_on_aws/ 
│── src/ # Contains all ROS 2 packages 
  ── px4-offboard
  ── px4_msgs
  ── px4_ci_aws
│── dockers/ # Docker images for building and running the SITL
│── scripts/ # Build, run, and deployment scripts 
│── docs/ # Documentation and setup guides
|── PX4-Autopilot # 

Use Case

This repository provides an infrastructure example for:

• Automated testing of ROS 2 nodes in PX4 SITL.
• Running PX4 SITL on scalable AWS infrastructure.
• Offloading heavy simulations from local machines.
• Auto-uploading simulation output for post-processing.

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AWS Resources Required

Resource	Purpose	Example Name
VPC	Networking for EC2	px4-vpc
EC2 Instance	Run PX4 SITL simulation	c6i.2xlarge
ECR Repository	Store simulation Docker image	px4_sitl_on_aws
S3 Bucket	Store simulation output (bags)	px4-sitl-on-aws-bags
IAM Role	Permissions for EC2 instance	px4_sitl_on_aws

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Documentation

See Wiki