Noether

Tool path planning and surface segmenter

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Prerequisites

• These packages run on Ubuntu 16.04 and ROS
• Uses the catkin tools build system

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Installation

This package depends on PCL 1.8 and VTK 7.1.

Prerequisites

• checkinstall
  • sudo apt install checkinstall

Dependencies Installation

1. VTK

1. Download VTK 7.1

2. Unzip or extract into a user accessible directory

3. CD into that directory and create a new build directory

4. Run cmake

   cd build
   cmake ..
   

5. Build the library

   make
   

   This will take a while ...

6. Install

   sudo checkinstall --pkgname=vtk-7.1
   

   The installation process will prompt you to accept/reject some options prior to building the debian, just follow the recommended prompts.

   NOTE: Using checkinstall instead of make install has the advantage that it builds a debian package which can be easily uninstalled with sudo dpkg -r [packagename].

2. PCL

1. Download PCL 1.8

2. Unzip or extract into a user accessible directory

3. cd into that directory and locate the CMakeLists.txt file.

4. Locate the find package(VTK) line (close to line 362) and edit it to find_package(VTK 7.1 REQUIRED)

5. Configure and build

   cmake .
   make
   

   Wait until the build finishes, it may take a couple of hours ...

6. Install

   sudo checkinstall --pkgname=pcl-1.8
   

   The installation process will prompt you to accept/reject some options prior to building the debian, just follow the recommended prompts

   NOTE: Using checkinstall instead of make install has the advantage that it builds a debian package which can be easily uninstalled with sudo dpkg -r [packagename].

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Build

• Create a catkin workspace and clone this repository in the src directory

• Build the noether packages

  catkin build noether
  

  Note: You can just run catkin build in order to build everything in your workspace including the noether packages

Run Unit Tests

• Run the unit tests for a package:

  catkin run_tests tool_path_planner --no-deps
  

• Run all unit test in the noether repository

  catkin run_tests noether --no-deps
  

  NOTE: Press 'q' to close the vtk window and proceed with the test program.

Run applications

The noether package has a surface raster planner executable which is able to take in a mesh file (.stl format), and generate raster paths on it, you can run it through the launch file with preconfigured parameters as follows:

roslaunch noether surf_raster_planner_application.launch filename:=</absolute/path/to/my/mesh.stl>

or you can run it with your own custom parameters as well by calling the node directly:

rosrun noether surface_raster_planner_application _pt_spacing:=0.05 _line_spacing:=0.15 _intersecting_plane_height:=0.05 _min_hole_size:=0.01 _min_segment_size:=0.01 _debug_on:=False _console_debug_on:=False _file_path:=</path/to/mesh/file.stl> 

The debug_on and console_debug_on argurments enable visual and console debugging respectively. During visual debugging press 'q' on the vtk window in order to step through.

Work is in progress to read in point cloud (.pcd) files, but meshing results are not reliable right now.