3D mapping on Robotont

Although 3D mapping requires much more resources and is less developed field than 2D mapping, it is worth to try out how 3D mapping works in ROS using RTABMap.

  1. Create a ssh-connection to the robot and launch roscore to keep ROS running and prevent us from having to restart all nodes every time. (If you close the first roslaunch you ran, whole ROS system will collapse because it is the same as killing the core.)

  2. Create a ssh-connection to the robot and launch

    roslaunch robotont_demos 3d_mapping.launch

  3. In another terminal in your PC, set up distributed ROS by exporting a ROS_MASTER_URI to a robot’s IP. Then, for visualization, run:

    roslaunch robotont_demos 3d_mapping.launch

  4. Configure one more terminal to be connected to the robot via ROS_MASTER_URI and run the teleoperation node:

    rosrun teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard.py

  5. Drive around the room and try mapping it.

  6. You should notice, that default settings do not create a very good map.

Currently, it can be seen, that the mapping software needs some tuning.

Explore the lines in the 3d_mapping.launch file. Some example parameters have been set there with which you can play with.

But if you want to explore more options/parameters, refer to http://wiki.ros.org/rtabmap_ros#rtabmap .

  1. Hit CTRL+C 3d_mapping.launch.

  2. Instead, run:

    roslaunch robotont_teleop teleop_3dmapping.launch angular_update:=0.1 linear_update:=0.1 cell_size:=0.1

    And here you can change some values and hopefully get a better 3D map.