ROS Package

Installation

Requirements

ROS : noetic is recommended. (If you have built OpenCV (3.3.1 or later) manually, you can use melodic or later.)
stella_vslam
image_transport : Required by this ROS package examples.
cv_bridge : Please build it with the same version of OpenCV used in stella_vslam.

Prerequisites

Tested for Ubuntu 18.04.

Please install the following dependencies.

ROS : Please follow Installation of ROS.
stella_vslam : Please follow Installation of stella_vslam.

Note

Please build stella_vslam with PangolinViewer or SocketViewer if you plan on using it for the examples.

Install the dependencies via apt.

apt update -y
apt install ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-image-transport

Download the source of cv_bridge.

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone --branch ${ROS_DISTRO} --depth 1 https://github.com/ros-perception/vision_opencv.git
cp -r vision_opencv/cv_bridge ~/catkin_ws/src
rm -rf vision_opencv

Build Instructions

When building with support for PangolinViewer, please specify the following cmake options: -DUSE_PANGOLIN_VIEWER=ON and -DUSE_SOCKET_PUBLISHER=OFF as described in build of stella_vslam. stella_vslam and stella_vslam_ros need to be built with the same options.

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone --recursive --branch ros --depth 1 https://github.com/stella-cv/stella_vslam_ros.git
cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make -DUSE_PANGOLIN_VIEWER=ON -DUSE_SOCKET_PUBLISHER=OFF

Examples

Run the core program required for ROS-based system in advance.

roscore

Note

Please leave the roscore run.

Publisher

Publish Images by a video

rosrun image_publisher image_publisher ./aist_living_lab_1/video.mp4 /image_raw:=/camera/image_raw

Publish Images of a USB Camera

For using a standard USB camera for visual SLAM or localization.

apt install ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-usb-cam

rosparam set usb_cam/pixel_format yuyv
rosrun usb_cam usb_cam_node

Republish the ROS topic to /camera/image_raw.

rosrun image_transport republish \
    raw in:=/usb_cam/image_raw raw out:=/camera/image_raw

Subscriber

Subscribers continually receive images. Please execute one of the following command snippets in the new terminal.

Note

Option arguments are the same as the examples of stella_vslam.

Tracking and Mapping

We provide an example snippet for visual SLAM. The source code is placed at stella_vslam_ros/src/run_slam.cc.

source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
rosrun stella_vslam_ros run_slam \
    -v /path/to/orb_vocab.fbow \
    -c /path/to/config.yaml \
    --map-db-out /path/to/map.msg

Localization

We provide an example snippet for localization based on a prebuilt map. The source code is placed at stella_vslam_ros/src/run_slam.cc.

source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
rosrun stella_vslam_ros run_slam \
    --disable-mapping \
    -v /path/to/orb_vocab.fbow \
    -c /path/to/config.yaml \
    --map-db-in /path/to/map.msg