Popular robotics sensors such as the Hokuyo laser range finder have a USB interface. Plugging in the sensor will normally cause Ubuntu to set up USB communication via the /dev/ttyACM0 port which allows the sensor to interface with the OS, provided the correct permissions are set. The official hokuyo_node ROS package recommends using the following …Read more Consistent USB sensor device naming
Robotics
Converting the KITTI dataset to rosbags
The KITTI Vision Benchmark Suite dataset is a popular robotics dataset from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Several benchmarking datasets are provided including stereo, flow, scene flow, depth, odomerty, object, tracking, road, semantics and the raw data. To use this dataset in ROS, the streams should first be converted to…Read more Converting the KITTI dataset to rosbags
3D Computer Vision in ROS
The RealSense D435 camera can be readily set up to publish all the image and pointcloud streams via ROS topics. For an in-depth setup, read Integrating the Intel RealSense D435 with ROS. Once this data becomes available in ROS, processing it via custom nodes requires a larger ROS ecosystem for perception. Three popular 2D/3D computer…Read more 3D Computer Vision in ROS
Integrating the Hokuyo URG Lidar with ROS
The Hukuyo URG is a lightweight, affordable USB powered lidar sensor. It outputs a single planar scan with 240º scanning range at 0.36º angular resolution and scan rate of 100ms/scan. This sensor can be used for, amongst other things, indoor mapping or collision avoidance. There is presently no pre-compiled driver available for ROS kinetic so…Read more Integrating the Hokuyo URG Lidar with ROS
Integrating the Intel RealSense D435 with ROS
The Intel RealSense D435 is the latest RGBD camera available from Intel, and is an upgrade from the Intel R200 camera already discussed in a previous post. The D435 is a stereo depth camera that is designed to work both indoors and outdoors. The 3D reconstruction is constructed using active Infrared (IR) stereo. The camera is…Read more Integrating the Intel RealSense D435 with ROS
Step-by-step setup of a new laptop for robotics
Setting up a new laptop for robotics can be time consuming. This post will focus on using the 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…Read more Step-by-step setup of a new laptop for 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
