ROS Wrapper

LIPS AE Series SDK is fully compatible with ROS. In this article, we demonstrate how to use ROS wrapper to access 3D cameras and display pointcloud in Rviz viewer.

Prerequisite

• Install AE Series SDK

ROS Installation

Method 1: Docker (ROS Noetic + Ubuntu 20.04)

We provide ready to use docker image for AE400 ROS wrapper.

docker run -it hedgehao/lipsedge-ae4xx:ros-wrapper

Method 2: Install Manually

we use Ubuntu 20.04 and ROS Noetic in the following tutorial. You can also find official install documentation here

• Install ROS via apt

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-noetic-desktop-full

• Install dependencies

sudo apt install python3-rosdep python3-rosinstall python3-rosinstall-generator python3-wstool build-essential python3-rosdep

• Install some useful ROS packages (e.g. rviz viewer)

sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-rgbd-launch ros-noetic-image-view rviz

• Before using any ROS command, some environment variables need to be setup. You can do that by executing setup.bash which ROS provide

source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

• Initialize ROS and install all ROS dependencies

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

Using ROS Wrapper

• Create the workspace

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src/

• Clone ROS application source code

git clone https://github.com/IntelRealSense/realsense-ros.git
cd realsense-ros/
git checkout `git tag | sort -V | grep -P "^2.\d+\.\d+" | tail -1`
cd ..

• Install all dependencies

catkin_init_workspace
cd ..
catkin_make clean
catkin_make -DCATKIN_ENABLE_TESTING=False -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
catkin_make install

Launch ROS Application

• Launch ROS service

roslaunch realsense2_camera rs_camera.launch

• Start a new Terminal and launch rviz.

rosrun rviz rviz

• Set Fixed Frame to camera_depth_frame on the left menu.

• Click Add from left menu. On the By topic tab, add DepthCloud topic.

• Now, you can see the pointcloud on rviz