Spawn vehicles via RPC

[rajat2004]

Closes #2922

Rebased version of #1937

airsim_spawn_drones.mp4

Future improvement possible - pass JSON object as string for the vehicle settings

The example script is very minimal one right now, will need to improve it

Fun fact: I did test with 50 drones, AirSim was able to create them :) but my laptop was definitely struggling to keep up, also had a crash when closing the editor due to RPC error.

[rajat2004]

Need to rebase and test again. One thing I'm not sure about is how the Airsim.sln file is updated, it seems to indicate it's for Version 15, but we're now using 16 (2019), so doesn't it need to be updated? Or that it doesn't affect the build, etc?

[rajat2004]

Working on Linux, Pending Windows .vcxproj update, testing

[zimmy87]

Thanks for creating this PR @rajat2004! Once you're ready to submit this PR, I can take another look at this PR in case you've already addressed some of these comments in your next update.

[rajat2004]

@zimmy87 and others also, If possible, could you test this on Windows as well, I'll also try to do so on my end. The changes in AirSim.sln & .vcxproj files are something which I have no idea about, these were already present in the old PR and have been carried forward here.

[rajat2004]

I'm marking this PR as Ready for review since the first review comments as well as Unity non-implemented method has been tested, plus the HelloSpawnedDrones and the Python script (See video in PR description for the behaviour of HelloSpawnedDrones). The Python script could be enhanced a bit though
Additionally, I've tested this PR on top of #2936 which adds an APi to get the list of current vehicle names. Somewhat useful in normal cases, and more so when combined with this PR. After running ./HelloSpawnedDrones 5, the API -

>>> cl.listVehicles()
['SimpleFlight', 'UAV_0', 'UAV_1', 'UAV_2', 'UAV_3', 'UAV_4']

[zimmy87]

Hi @rajat2004, as per updating HelloSpawnedDrones.vcxproj and HelloSpawnedDrones.vcxproj, I've made a update to both these files in a commit here in my own AirSim fork that you can feel free to copy into this PR. With this commit, I'm able to build HelloSpawnedDrones from the AirSim solution locally, however this is breaking the Windows build check for me, so I'm still missing some dependencies in this commit. I will try and spend more time fixing the Windows build, and keep you updated once I've reached some resolution.

[rajat2004]

@zimmy87 Sure, will bring that commit in later. I think it might be best to do that after all the problems have been figured out so can be done in one swoop. Once it's fixed, let me know and I can cherry-pick the commits onto my branch, or you could push to mine as well since maintainers can do that

[zimmy87]

Thank you for the contribution @rajat2004! Tested latest version locally on Windows & Ubuntu and it's working & building just fine for me, so I am moving ahead with merging.

[rajat2004]

@zimmy87 Thanks for the Windows fixes and merging! I think the Python script can be improved further, and probably should add a bit of info in the docs as well, will do so in another PR

Also, could you have a look at #2936, it becomes more useful now that this is merged

[rajat2004]

@Roopesh-Bharatwaj-K-R Are you using the latest master rather than some other branch that isn't up to date and doesn't include this PR? Also, did you use import setup_path before doing import airsim? This is required to use the airsim module from local repo, rather than the pip installed one.

[Roopesh-Bharatwaj-K-R]

@rajat2004 I Used import setup_path before import airsim. I'm not sure about the master.please give more details on this.