Use lidar and IMU without ROS

[vlad]

Hi!

Is it possible to use lidar data without ROS? I use realsense R200 on UP board with standalone (no ROS) rtab map.

Also, would it be possible to use data from any IMU (I consider to use magnetometer + GPS and IMU like GY9250 or MPU6050) to help rtab map calculations? If it is possible - how to?

Vlad

[matlabbe]

Hi Vlad,

Without changing the code, it is not possible to add a live LiDAR or IMU with the standalone. ROS (rtabmap_ros) is the preferred way to use multiple sensors with rtabmap.

cheers,
Mathieu

[vlad]

Hi Mathieu!

I think I could try to change the code. Can you please to kick of and pick direction where to look?

The reason why I want to avoid ROS is intention to port my project to some other platforms (like some mobile device) in future. Also, ROS is too complex and huge for minimalistic system I want to have.

[vlad]

Any ideas how to start to implement that in code?..

[matlabbe]

Hi,

You may extend the CameraRealSense driver by reading the lidar at the same time and filling laser scan stuff in returned SensorData. The difficulty is to get camera and lidar synchronized. For example here, we could pass lidar scan matrix and a LaserScanInfo (see refereed SensorData constructor). The transform between the base_link frame and the lidar would be hard-coded.

For the IMU, you may add the ekf at the output of visual odometry, doing the fusion yourself (similar to robot_localization on ROS).

cheers,
Mathieu