Understanding ROS Build Systems

A build systems is a functional program or scripts developed to automate and simplify compiling and linking source code.  A meta-build system like CMake  generates native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in the compiler environment of your choice. CMake is a powerful open-source cross-platform set of tools designed to build, test and package…Read more Understanding ROS Build Systems

Step-by-step guide for contributing to Open Source projects

Contributing to open source projects can feel very daunting in the beginning. A good way to get started is to contribute small changes such as bug or documentation fixes. Most open source projects publish guidelines which outline best practices and contributors are sometimes invited to attend meetings to discuss the direction of the project. Regardless…Read more Step-by-step guide for contributing to Open Source projects

Step-by-step Autoware.Auto installation guide

Open source autonomous driving projects have simplified autonomous vehicle development, particularly where resources are constrained. Popular projects include Apollo (an open autonomous driving platform), openpilot (an open source driver assistance system), CARLA (an open source simulator for autonomous driving research) and Autoware.Auto (an open source autonomous driving platform). This article focuses on setting up a…Read more Step-by-step Autoware.Auto installation guide

Extracting Images and Sensor Data from ROS bag files to Python

The ROS bag file format is popular in robotics, where it is used to store ROS message data. Several tools for working with ROS bag files exist, such as rosbag (a tool for recording, playing back, and filtering data), rqt_bag (a tool for visualising rosbag data), rostopic (a tool for listing and echoing the content…Read more Extracting Images and Sensor Data from ROS bag files to Python

Optimising the RealSense R200 camera for outdoor use

The RealSense cameras are widely used on robots which often have to venture outdoors. Using any camera outdoors can pose some challenges with glare from sunlight. The RealSense D435 camera's default settings work quite well outdoors. This is however not the case for the older R200 cameras. This tutorial outlines how to optimise the R200…Read more Optimising the RealSense R200 camera for outdoor use

Running the RealSense R200 camera with librealsense and pyrealsense legacy libraries

The legacy Intel RealSense cameras such as the R200/F200/SR300/LR200/ZR300 can be challenging to work with because support is limited. Documentation is sparse, so this tutorial provides a step by step guide for installing librealsense and pyrealsense for running the older RealSense R200 camera in ROS or natively in Python. Install librealsense The first part of…Read more Running the RealSense R200 camera with librealsense and pyrealsense legacy libraries