Sonar 3D-15 ROS Driver

Overview

This package provides a ROS 2 driver for the Water Linked Sonar 3D-15, a real-time multibeam imaging sonar. The sonar streams 3D range images over UDP multicast, which are decoded and published as standard ROS messages:

• 3D point clouds: sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 on /sonar_point_cloud
• Raw range images: sensor_msgs/Image on /sonar_range_image

The driver listens to RIP1 multicast packets, extracts and parses RangeImage protobuf messages, and converts the sonar data into formats usable by standard ROS visualization and processing tools.

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Features

• Receives and decodes RIP1 packets via UDP multicast
• Publishes point clouds and range images at real-time rates
• Automatically enables sonar acoustics and udp multicast on startup
• Compatible with ROS 2 (tested on Jazzy)

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Topics

Topic	Message Type	Description
/sonar_point_cloud	sensor_msgs/PointCloud2	3D point cloud in ROS frame
/sonar_range_image	sensor_msgs/Image	Raw float32 range image (in meters)

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Usage

1. Clone the repository into your ros2 workspace

cd ~/ros2_ws/src
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/waterlinked/Sonar-3D-15-ROS-driver.git

2. Install requirements

Install requirements:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Set IP-address of Sonar 3D-15

Change to your sonars IP-address in the sonar3d.launch.py file:

    {'IP': '192.168.194.96'},  # Change to your sonar IP, '192.168.194.96' is the fallback ip.

Alternatively, you can modify the default parameter in multicast_listener.py directly.

    self.declare_parameter('IP', '192.168.194.96')#  <-- your sonar's IP here, '192.168.194.96' is the fallback ip.

4. Build the package from the root of your ros project

cd ~/ros2_ws
source /opt/ros/jazzy/setup.bash
colcon build --packages-select sonar3d
source install/local_setup.bash

5. Run the package

ros2 launch sonar3d sonar3d.launch.py

6. License

This package is distributed under the MIT License.