Skip to content

External Packages and Nodes

Terminology

  • + : interesting topics and hardware abstraction
  • ~ : interesting, but quite a lot of work to do for hardware compatibility or mapping
  • - : bad solution

Overview

ROS Packages Overview
Figure 1: ROS Packages Overview

3D Mapping

SLAM

Octomap_server : +

3D occupancy grid mapping, independent from sensor, looks like it does not need odometry

  • https://youtu.be/yp0f8-AKvDU
  • https://wiki.ros.org/octomap_mapping
  • https://wiki.ros.org/octomap_server
  • http://octomap.github.io/

Plus :

  • maintained
  • compatible with melodic
  • documentation available as well as many
  • no odometry
  • independent from hardware (only require the right input topics)

Minus :

  • ...

Inputs required :

  • sensor_msgs/PointCloud2

Hector slam : +

  • https://github.com/tu-darmstadt-ros-pkg/hector_slam
  • http://wiki.ros.org/hector_slam

Not sure whether we’re interested in hector slam itself, or on the

Plus :

  • maintained
  • not directly compatible with melodic, but easy to build it from source for melodic
  • odometry not needed

Minus :

  • mostly created for 2D mapping and robot navigation
  • not much documentation

Inputs required :

  • ...

REMODE : ~

  • https://www.ros.org/news/2016/02/open-source-release-remode-probabilistic-monocular-dense-reconstruction-in-real-time.html

modeling of many 3D objects, like rooms, persons, ...

Plus :

  • noise reduction
  • nice rendering

Minus :

  • not much documentation and precisions about hardware/drivers/topics
  • maybe “too much” for our needs ?
  • looks like it is not maintained anymore : latest commit was 4 years ago

Inputs :

  • ...

LOAM

RTABMAP : +

  • http://wiki.ros.org/rtabmap_ros

Plus :

  • maintained
  • compatible with melodic
  • real time mapping

  • publishes :

  • 3D point clouds

  • 2D occupancy maps

  • tutorials and documentation available

Minus :

  • oriented towards robot navigation, although “top-down” modeling seems to be possible

Inputs required :

  • odometry (not mandatory in all cases)
  • scan 2D or 3D

Spin Hokuyo : +

  • https://github.com/RobustFieldAutonomyLab/spin_hokuyo
  • http://wiki.ros.org/spin_hokuyo

It creates a point cloud with a 2D LiDaR and a servomotor. The interesting node compiles small point clouds to make one big point cloud. Could be very useful to make our digital model.

Plus :

  • has a node that compiles point clouds and publish them on a topic
  • great rendering

Minus :

  • designed for another sensor, but the node that compiles point clouds does not care about that
  • need some odometry work

Inputs required :

  • laser scan
  • odometry

Lego-LOAM : ~

  • https://github.com/RobustFieldAutonomyLab/LeGO-LOAM

Plus :

  • good rendering

Minus :

  • designed for robot navigation, not for “top-down mapping”
  • designed for another sensor (velodyne)

Inputs :

  • ...

Velodyne loam : ~

  • http://wiki.ros.org/loam_velodyne

Plus :

  • good rendering
  • builds 3D maps

Minus :

  • for velodyne sensor
  • robot navigation

Inputs :

  • ...

Bad solution -

  • https://github.com/koide3/hdl_graph_slam : not what we need. creates maps with corridors and doors, but not “top-down” mapping
  • http://wiki.ros.org/robot_pose_ekf : not what we need
  • http://wiki.ros.org/ethzasl_icp_mapper : doc not up to date, slowly not maintained anymore, ...
  • https://github.com/ethz-asl/libpointmatcher/blob/master/doc/index.md

Modbus

  • http://wiki.ros.org/modbus

Object Tracking

Multiple objects lidar tracking : ~

  • https://github.com/praveen-palanisamy/multiple-object-tracking-lidar

Plus :

  • tracks objects in real time
  • hardware independent

Minus :

  • 2D maps, most likely used for robot navigation

Inputs :

  • ...

Object Detection

  • https://www.acin.tuwien.ac.at/vision-for-robotics/software-tools/v4r-library/
  • https://rgit.acin.tuwien.ac.at/v4r/v4r_ros_wrappers
  • http://wiki.ros.org/object_recognition
  • https://www.osrfoundation.org/ros2-object-detection-demo/
  • http://wiki.ros.org/find_object_2d

QR code readers

  • http://wiki.ros.org/zbar_ros
  • https://github.com/mdrwiega/qr_detector
  • http://wiki.ros.org/visp_auto_tracker