My master’s thesis involves the task of mounting and controlling an openManipulator-x on our hexacopter. Currently this requires the use of two separate microcontrollers. To fly the hexacopter, we use Pixhawk 4, while I use the Arduino Dynamixel Shield and an Arduino Mega 2560 to control the openManipulator.
My supervisor wants me to link these two systems, which means connecting the Pixhawk 4 to the openManipulator-x, possibly via the Arduino Mega. The challenge is that there is limited information on the internet about whether and how this is possible. A major obstacle is that the openManipulator-x cannot be connected directly to the Pixhawk 4, as there is no way to interact with the Pixhawk via TTL communication.
2nd idea:
I have also considered whether there might be a way to link the openManipulator and the Pixhawk via the U2D2. The crucial question that arises is how I can establish a connection between the Pixhawk 4 and the U2D2.
Perhaps someone has experience with this.
If anyone has any ideas or advice on how this can be made possible, I would appreciate any assistance.
Regarding your 2nd idea of using Pixhawk 4 with U2D2, I think that you meant would the DXL SDK work with Pixhawk 4?
From what I read about Pixhawk 4, it runs on nuttX OS which is a variant of UNIX. But a quick web search does not show any posting about using DXL SDK with nuttX OS. So it looks like that you are the first person to think of such combination! So congratulations!
The ROBOTIS Forum has this Quick Start about using DXL SDK and C on Raspberry Pi
May be these steps would work for your situation too? I do not have a Pixhawk 4 so I do not know if the Pixhawk 4 user can get down to the nuttX OS level?