Official RTAB-Map Forum - Re: rtabmap for kinect v2 on ROS Indigo

Re: rtabmap for kinect v2 on ROS Indigo

Posted by tejaswi on
URL: http://official-rtab-map-forum.206.s1.nabble.com/rtabmap-for-kinect-v2-on-ROS-Indigo-tp61p64.html

Hi,
I got the Kinect2 to work with the ROS version of rtabmap. Here is what I did.

I installed the ROS version of rtabmap as specified in the installation page.

I am using libfreenect2 and the iai_kinect2 package to integrate the sensor with ROS (indigo).

The rtabmap node expects the topics

/camera/rgb/image_rect_color
/camera/depth_registered/image_raw
/camera/depth_registered/camera_info

as inputs. The equivalent topics published by the kinect2_bridge node of the kinect2_bridge package that is part of iai_kinect2 are the following.

/kinect2_head/rgb_rect/image
/kinect2_head/depth_highres/image
/kinect2_head/depth_highres/camera_info

So, I wrote a launch file for launching the kinect2_bridge node that would remap the iai_kinect2 topics to the required rtabmap topics as follows.

<launch>
  <arg name="publish_frame" default="false" />

  <include file="$(find kinect2_bridge)/launch/include/kinect2_frames.launch">
    <arg name="publish_frame" value="$(arg publish_frame)" />
  </include>
  <node name="kinect2_bridge" pkg="kinect2_bridge" type="kinect2_bridge" respawn="true" output="screen">
      <remap from="/kinect2_head/rgb_rect/image" to="/camera/rgb/image_rect_color"/>
      <remap from="/kinect2_head/depth_highres/image" to="/camera/depth_registered/image_raw"/>
      <remap from="/kinect2_head/depth_highres/camera_info" to="/camera/depth_registered/camera_info"/>
  </node>
</launch>

The other thing that needs to be changed is the "frame_id" of the headers of the kinect2_bridge images.
Rtabmap expects the frame_id s of the input images to be base_link, while the kinect2_bridge outputs them as "head_mount_kinect2_rgb_optical_frame".
For lack of a simpler (lazier) way to implement this modification, I just changed the entry for K2_TF_RGB_FRAME in kinect2_definitions.h file in the kinect2_bridge folder.

Now you can run

 $ roscore

 $ roslaunch kinect2_bridge <my_new_launch>.launch

 $ roslaunch rtabmap rgbd_mapping.launch

 $ roslaunch rtabmap rgbd_mapping_rviz.launch

and everything should work.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.