SLAM navigation through crops using Azure Kinect

[chris.ferra]

Hi,
I am trying to perform SLAM navigation using the Azure Kinect on my robot. I am therefore using the slam_rtabmap.launch launcher provided by the Azure Kinect ROS Driver. How can I tune parameters for obstacle detection?
My "obstacles" are the crop rows of an agricoltural field, just like described in this post. You suggested me to properly se the Grid/NormalsSegmentation and Grid/MaxGroundHeight parameters. How can I do it using the azure kinect ros driver?

Thanks in advance for your time,
Best regards

Christian

[matlabbe]

If you use this launch file (slam_rtabmap.launch), I suggest to start from modified version of https://github.com/microsoft/Azure_Kinect_ROS_Driver/pull/166

Your previous post is about the obstacles_detection nodelet, so I would do an example here with that. For rtabmap node, you may use same rtabmap's parameters in args of slam_rtabmap.launch.

<node pkg="nodelet" type="nodelet" name="obstacle_manager" args="manager"/>
<node pkg="nodelet" type="nodelet" name="disparity2cloud" args="load rtabmap_util/point_cloud_xyz obstacle_manager">
    <remap from="depth/image" to="/k4a/depth/image_raw"/>
    <remap from="depth/camera_info" to="/k4a/depth/camera_info"/>
    <remap from="cloud" to="cloudObs"/>
    <param name="voxel_size" type="double" value="0.05"/>
    <param name="decimation" type="int" value="4"/>
    <param name="max_depth" type="double" value="0"/>
</node>
<node pkg="nodelet" type="nodelet" name="obstacles_detection" args="load rtabmap_util/obstacles_detection obstacle_manager">
    <remap from="cloud" to="cloudObs"/>
    <param name="frame_id" type="string" value="base_footprint"/>
    
    <!-- See rtabmap's parameters Grid/*** -->
    <param name="Grid/NormalsSegmentation" type="bool" value="false"/>
    <param name="Grid/MaxGroundHeight" type="double" value="0.1"/>
</node>

This assumes that base_footprint is the frame of the robot at ground level, so that the threshold at 0.1 meters work correctly.

[BalajiRavi]

Hello Matheiu,
I am working on a similar approach where i want to identify crop rows and make robot naviagte over that for weed killing. Any suggestion on how i can proceed?

Thanks,
Balaji