Synchronizing visual odometry with RTK GPS

Posted by vasimv on
URL: http://official-rtab-map-forum.206.s1.nabble.com/Synchronizing-visual-odometry-with-RTK-GPS-tp5448.html

I'm trying to use visual odometry on lawnmower robot. Problem is the robot often drives over quite open field without close obstacles to navigate with only visual. There are some very far objects that visual odometry uses but quality is very poor and sometimes loses it completely.

I have RTK GPS on the robot with 2 cm accuracy, so i could use it to feed really good coordinates to the odometry but the RTK loses its fix when robot drives under trees and close to walls (right where visual odometry could be used).

So, my question - it is possible to "reset" visual odometry with coordinates from RTK and IMU while it is possible and use only visual when there aren't? robot_localization seems doing some strange stuff, not exactly what i want. I just need to work with RTK GPS as priority source of navigation with visual as backup.

As i see, visual odometry do listen for "guess_frame_id", "ground_truth_frame_id" and "ground_truth_base_frame_id" transformations and it looks like i could use these. But sending transformations with coordinates from RTK (translated to utm of course) to them seems doing wrong stuff and i see no good explanation on these in documentation. Could someone help me with understanding these parameters?