h3ct0r / sensor_box_itv

ROS workspace and tutorial for the "Sensor Box" containing Velodyne, RGB and ToF cameras

Sensor Box ITV

Sensor Box ITV is a 'wooden box' to perform data acquisition. This box is provided with:

• Velodyne 16
• Axis IP RGB Camera
• ToF camera o3d3xx

The camera/velodyne calibration was made based on the following paper:

• Velas, Spanel, Materna, Herout: Calibration of RGB Camera with Velodyne LiDAR (http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~spanel/pubs.php?file=%2Fpub%2F10578%2FCalibration_of_RGB_Camera_With_Velodyne_LiDAR.pdf&id=10578)
• Implementation described in http://wiki.ros.org/but_calibration_camera_velodyne and https://github.com/robofit/but_velodyne

Installation

This tutorial was ment to be executed on a Ubuntu 16.04 machine with ROS Kinetic.

• Clone this repository

  git clone https://github.com/h3ct0r/sensor_box_itv

• Copy this repository to your catkin workspace

• Install OpenCV 3 from apt

  sudo apt install ros-kinetic-opencv3

• Install Velodyne libs:

  $ cd /tmp
  $ git clone https://github.com/robofit/but_velodyne_lib
  $ sudo apt install libboost-math-dev
  $ cd but_velodyne_lib
  $ mkdir bin; cd bin
  $ cmake ..
  $ make
  $ sudo make install

• Install ToF libs:

  $ cd /tmp
  $ git clone https://github.com/lovepark/libo3d3xx
  $  sudo apt install libxmlrpc-c++8-dev libgtest-dev libopencv-core-dev libopencv-imgproc-dev libopencv-highgui-dev libopencv-contrib-dev libgtkglext1 libgtkglext1-dev
  $ cd libo3d3xx
  $ mkdir build
  $ cd build
  $ cmake ..
  $ make
  $ sudo make install

• Run catkin_make from your catkin workspace

• Check for compilation errors

Hardware

Before running the nodes, you need to check first if everything is well connected and powered.

• Connect the blue ethernet cable from the switch to the computer (cable label says ubuntu)

• Set a ip address at the same network than the other devices:

  sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2

• Check if the devices are reachable:

  ping 192.168.1.200 (Axis) ping 192.168.1.201 (Velodyne) ping 192.168.1.69 (ToF camera)

• If a device does not respond to ping, then check cables, power, etc.

Running nodes

• After all hardware configurations and packages are installed, just need to edit the launch file to define where to save the ROS Bags and activate/deactivate the respetive bags defining "true/false" on the arguments ["record_velodyne", "record_rgb_camera", "record_tof_camera"]:

  $ roscd sensor_box_itv
  $ vim launch/init_sensors.launch

• Then finally run: roslaunch sensor_box_itv init_sensors.launch

If the RViz interface does not open run: rosrun rviz rviz

Remember to set the correct transformation on RViz to see the pointcloud correctly aligned

Todos

• Write MOAR Tests
• Add support to color maps

License

GPLv3

Free Software, Hell Yeah!