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arXiv · 2605.23386

Droneulator: A Portable UAV Simulator for Agricultural Workflows with RotorPy and Godot 4

Jacob Swindell·Michael Lowen·Marija Popovic·Riccardo Polvara
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Abstract

Agricultural UAV research requires simulators that integrate realistic 3D scenes, high-fidelity vehicle dynamics, and robotics middleware, while remaining practical to deploy across heterogeneous development machines. We present Droneulator, a portable UAV simulator architecture that combines RotorPy for multirotor dynamics with Godot 4 for rendering and sensor generation. Droneulator exposes both PX4-based control and a lightweight WebSocket command path, and publishes synchronised visual and state streams through a Zenoh-based ROS~2-compatible pipeline. This integration enables a single stack to support inspection-oriented data capture, ROS~2/PX4 local planning, and reinforcement learning experiments without modifying the simulator infrastructure. We present quantified validation of the current system across three agricultural UAV workflows: tree-scale image collection for 3D reconstruction with COLMAP, local planning around canopy obstacles using EGO-Planner, and closed-loop reinforcement learning through a custom Gymnasium environment. In the reported setup, the results show that the simulator can sustain low-latency sensing, support reconstruction-oriented data collection under varying capture density, execute collision-free local planning around canopy obstacles, and support stable depth-sensing-based policy training for obstacle-aware navigation. Together, these results show the potential of Droneulator for agricultural UAV inspection, planning, and learning within one deployable stack.

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Jacob Swindell, Michael Lowen, Marija Popovic, Riccardo Polvara. 2026-05-22. Droneulator: A Portable UAV Simulator for Agricultural Workflows with RotorPy and Godot 4. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23386

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