Few questions regarding stereo mapping with RTAB ROS

Posted by stevemartinov on
URL: http://official-rtab-map-forum.206.s1.nabble.com/Few-questions-regarding-stereo-mapping-with-RTAB-ROS-tp5589.html

I want to perform SLAM, localization afterward and collision avoidance using RTAB + Stereo Camera. I hope you don't mind to answer a few questions:

1. I plan to use this Intel camera: LINK.
Do you think this is a good choice as it has such a wide FoV with global shutters?

2. From my understanding, I need to provide "odom" topic. From your launch example here, I can see that I can set "visual_odometry" param to True. So am I correct saying that just below, the parameter "odom_topic" is directly related to visual_odometry? And am I correct saying that I can set the topic to "visual_odom" and fuse it together with my wheel odometry and provide altogether as "odom"?

3. I can see that RTAB map requires stereo camera input to be approximated to depth images. How accurate is this algorithm? Can I use it as a collision avoidance?

4. I plan to place the camera 5 cm above ground so there will be a ground (floor) covering around 30-40% of horizontal FoV of the camera. Is that desirable?

Thank you.