I was lucky enough to be given a new Dell Alienware 15 R4 laptop. With its Intel i9 processor and Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card, it's the perfect laptop for robotics or computer vision projects. Setting up the laptop comprises of two main steps: installing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with a Windows 10 dual boot, followed…Read more Step-by-step setup of a new laptop for robotics
Robotics
Troubleshooting: Rosbuild to Catkin migration
Migrating from Rosbuild to Catkin can be accomplished using the ros-industrial catkinize script as described in Quickly migrating from Rosbuild to Catkin. Although this script attempts to replace rosbuild commands with catkin ones, some errors arise when compiling using the catkin_make command. This troubleshooting guide covers steps to take after catkinizing a package. Update messages…Read more Troubleshooting: Rosbuild to Catkin migration
Quickly migrating from Rosbuild to Catkin
ROS uses CMake, a powerful cross-platform build tool, at its core. Rosbuild and Catkin are ROS scripts for managing the CMake-based build system for ROS. Catkin is the newer, preferred option. ROS packages that are build using Rosbuild do not work in a Catkin workspace thus it becomes necessary to migrate from Rosbuild to Catkin.…Read more Quickly migrating from Rosbuild to Catkin
How the Intel RealSense R200 camera works
The Intel RealSense R200 is a USB powered long range stereoscopic camera that can be used for robotics and HCI computer vision applications. About the camera The camera consists of two infrared and one full HD colour imaging sensors, as well as an infrared laser projection system. As a result, the camera provides three video…Read more How the Intel RealSense R200 camera works
ROS performance testing: C++ vs Python
ROS supports both Python and C++ programming languages, however, using Python can come at a performance cost. I did an experiment to test this by writing four combinations of publisher to subscriber and then checking whether the real loop rate (of the publisher) is equal to the actual loop rate of the subscriber. The combinations…Read more ROS performance testing: C++ vs Python
Using ROS with OpenCV
When developing perception algorithms for robotics, OpenCV is an excellent open source computer vision library to use. Like ROS, it has interfaces for both Python and C++ and is designed for real-time applications. ROS Kinetic actually comes with OpenCV v3.2.0. There are two packages, both available on the GitHub link from the ROS Wiki, that…Read more Using ROS with OpenCV
Getting started with ROS nodelets
ROS nodes communicate using TCP/IP protocol which might be too slow for applications that require sending large amounts of data (like 3D point clouds or video streams). For processes running on the same computer, a pointer to the data can be sent rather than sending the data itself over TCP/IO. The Intel RealSense Robotics Development…Read more Getting started with ROS nodelets
