TPC Mapping

This package provdies pan-tilt and camera integration along with the thermal mapping capabilities for the SUMMIT-XL Robot. The package implements the gmapping and R3live packages to create both navigational costmaps and thermal point clouds. This package is tested on Ubuntu 18.04 with ROS Melodic.

Installation

For the PTU

• flir_ptu_ethernet
  • robotnik_msgs
  • rcomponent
  • robotnik_sensors
• flir_ptu

For the Camera

• Spinnaker SDK
• FLIR_camera
• pointgrey_camera_driver (only image_exposure_msgs, statistics_msgs, and wfov_camera_msgs are specifically needed from this. Recommended to delete pointgrey_camera_description and driver to prevent errors)

For R3LIVE

Follow the prerequisites under their Github Page.

Simulated Thermal Point Clouds

The TPCMapping package can be executed in simulation via gazebo. To do so, execute

roslaunch thermal_mapping tpc_gmapping.launch

To create a map of the simulated environment. Navigation can be simulated using a costmap through

roslaunch thermal_mapping tpc_costmap.launch

Real-World Thermal Point Clouds

Real-world maps can be executed either live or through a bag file. To generate a map in real time, use the following:

roslaunch thermal_mapping tpcmapping.launch

Otherwise, a bag file can be created and then processed later. This can be done as follows:

roslaunch thermal_mapping record.launch

This will launch the visualization tool. Wait until you are receiving input from the LiDAR sensor before proceeding. When ready, record the topics to a bag file.

rosbag record -O record /thermal/image_raw_sync /thermal/image_raw_sync/compressed /robot/imu/data_raw /robot/ouster/points

After the bag file is created and completed, the thermal point cloud can be created later using:

roslaunch thermal_mapping bag.launch

ive

PTU-Control

Files for controlling FLIR Pan Tilt Unit with the FLIR A65 Infrared Camera.

IP Addresses

Make sure that the network is setup with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 with a network IP of 192.168.50.0

• PTU: 192.168.0.21
• FLIR Camera: 192.168.0.22

Usage:

To launch with both the pan tilt and camera nodes:

roslaunch ptu_control ptu_control.launch

To launch with just the pan-tilt node:

roslaunch ptu_control pan_tilt.launch

To launch with just the camera node:

roslaunch ptu_control camera.launch

All above launch files will initiate the Graphical User Interface for operating the relevant nodes, as seen below:

Commands for the pan tilt unit can be placed through the service caller via the /pan_tilt service. Alternatively, the service can be called directly through a command-line terminal via:

rosservice call /pan_tilt "pan: 0.0
tilt: 0.0
max_pan_speed: 0.0
max_tilt_speed: 0.0"