VIO (Visual Inertial Odometry)

This package is a bridge from PX4 to the Realsense T265 camera, which provides odometry data.

Dependencies

• librealsense: https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense

  • For Jetson Nano follow these instructions and install librealsense2. *T265 no longer works on the newest librealsense version. Will have to look into how to download a previous version of it.

• ROS Kinetic (Ubuntu 16.04) or ROS Melodic (Ubuntu 18.04): http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Installation (We used ROS Melodic for the tests)

Installation

These steps contain the installation process, software dependencies and building instructions.

1. This is a ROS package, it assumes you have either ROS Kinetic (Ubuntu 16.04) or ROS Melodic (Ubuntu 18.04) installed, instructions can be found here. Please also make sure you install librealsense from here. The specific installation instructions for Jetson Nano are located here.

2. Install catkin and create your catkin workspace directory.

   sudo apt install python-catkin-tools
   mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src

3. Clone this repository in your catkin workspace.

   cd ~/catkin_ws/src
   git clone https://github.com/lesc-utfpr/px4_odom_bridge.git

4. Install MAVROS (version 0.29.0 or above).

   Note: Instructions to install MAVROS from sources can be found here.

   • Melodic

     sudo apt install ros-melodic-mavros ros-melodic-mavros-extras

   • Kinetic

     sudo apt install ros-kinetic-mavros ros-kinetic-mavros-extras

5. Don't forget to install the GeographicLib datasets:

   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mavlink/mavros/master/mavros/scripts/install_geographiclib_datasets.sh
   sudo bash ./install_geographiclib_datasets.sh   

6. Install the realsense2_camera package for access to T265 in ROS:

   sudo apt install ros-melodic-realsense2-camera

7. Install the ROS Point Cloud Library (PCL):

   • Melodic

     sudo apt install ros-melodic-pcl-ros

   • Kinetic

     sudo apt install ros-kinetic-pcl-ros

8. Build the package:

   cd ~/catkin_ws
   catkin build px4_realsense_bridge

9. Run the ROS node:

   source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
   roslaunch px4_realsense_bridge bridge_mavros.launch

Note This launch file starts the mavros node as well. Mavros needs to be running but if it is started elsewhere the basic launch file bridge.launch can be used. The file bridge_mavros_sitl.launch is only for using this node in combination with the PX4 SITL toolchain (Simulation). Instructions on how to setup the PX4 SITL toolchain can be found here.