AIRLab PhotonFocus ROS 2 Driver

Logo Description
The AIRLab ROS 2 Driver is designed to read the image stream from PhotonFocus ® cameras using the eBUS SDK ®. As indicated by the logo, this library’s primary objective is to facilitate communication with hyper-spectral cameras (both NIR and VIS) manufactured by PhotonFocus ®, specifically for agricultural purposes.

Requirements

  1. NVIDIA Jetson Xavier ® with Jetpack SDK 5.1 on Ubuntu 20.04 [link]
  2. ROS 2 Foxy [link]
  3. OpenCV [link]
  4. eBUS SDK 6.3.1 ® for ARM-based architectures [link]
  5. PhotonFocus ® hyper-spectral cameras:
    • PhotonFocus VIS MV1-D2048x1088-HS03-96-G2-10; Max resolution: 2048 x 1088; [link]
    • PhotonFocus NIR MV1-D2048x1088-HS02-96-G2-10; Max resolution: 2048 x 1088; [link]

Usage

Building

Open a terminal and follow the standard procedure for ROS 2 packages:

source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash
cd ros2_ws/src && git clone https://github.com/AIRLab-POLIMI/airlab-photonfocus-ros2-driver.git
cd .. && colcon build
source install/setup.bash
ros2 launch airlab-photonfocus-ros2-driver nir_launch.py

VIS Camera launch

ros2 launch airlab-photonfocus-ros2-driver vis.launch.py

NIR Camera launch

ros2 launch airlab-photonfocus-ros2-driver nir.launch.py

VIS and NIR Camera launch

ros2 launch airlab-photonfocus-ros2-driver nir_vis.launch.py

Automatic Exposure Time ROS 2 service

Take the Calibration Board, named "Diffuse Reflectance Standard Calibration Target Package (V2)", and place it exactly in front-center of the camera:

Then, call the service to set the exposure time automatically:

ros2 service call /auto_exposure std_srvs/srv/Empty {}

The ros2 service will return and set the optimized exposure time, based on the declared reflectance standard target package:

  • White: 87% reflectance (220 in RGB scale)
  • Light Grey: 27% reflectance (69 in RGB scale)
  • Dark Grey: 22% reflectance (56 in RGB scale)
  • Black: 3% reflectance (8 in RGB scale)

Highly recommended to use the reflectance standard target package for the best results. Thus this reference spiky target package is used to set the exposure time automatically by taking the minimum cost as described by the following pseudo-code:

# Compute the correlation and chi-square distance
hist_correl = cv2.compareHist(hist_ref, hist, cv2.HISTCMP_CORREL)
hist_chi_square = cv2.compareHist(hist_ref, hist, cv2.HISTCMP_CHISQR)

# Sum the two distances inner-normalized
tot_cost_to_minimize = hist_correl.normalized() + hist_chi_square.normalized()

# Find the minimum cost, thus return the corresponding exposure time
best_cost = argmnin(tot_cost_to_minimize)

Prisma Post-Processing launch

ros2 launch airlab-photonfocus-ros2-driver prisma.launch.py

Prisma working mechanism based on CMOSIS CMV2000 sensor

  • VIS camera MV1-D2048x1088-HS03-96-G2: it implements a multi-spectral area sensor with a 4x4 pixel pattern in the visible range. The spectral range from 470nm to 620nm is covered in 10 nm steps.
  • NIR camera MV1-D2048x1088-HS02-96-G2: it implements a multi-spectral area sensor with a 5x5 pixel pattern in the NIR range. The spectral range from 600nm to 975nm is covered in 15.6 nm steps.

In order to capture in real-time the spectral information, the Prisma post-processing algorithm is implemented. The Prisma algorithm is based on the encoding mosaic-pattern mechanism as declared:

The encoding pattern mechanism is based on the CMOSIS CMV2000 sensor, which is a 2.2 MPixel CMOS image sensor with a global shutter. The sensor has a 2048 x 1088 pixel array and is capable of operating at up to 340 frames per second. The sensor has 12-bit pixel depth and can be programmed to output data in either raw RGB or YUV format. The sensor has a 2-wire serial interface for programming the registers and a 4-wire interface for data output. The sensor has a 10-bit LVDS interface for high-speed data output:

  • CMV2K-SM5x5-NIR: exhibits a mosaic configuration of the same format array of Fabry-Perot filters. In this configuration, a block of 5 x 5 detector pixels is integrated with 5x5 different Fabry-Perot filters on.
  • CMV2K-SM4x4-VIS: exhibits a mosaic configuration of the same format array of Fabry-Perot filters. In this configuration, a block of 4 x 4 detector pixels is integrated with 4x4 different Fabry-Perot filters on.

An example of the first encoding is depicted in the following image:

The following bands in nm are decomposed:

  • VIS: 470, 480, 490, 500, 510, 520, 530, 540, 550, 560, 570, 580, 590, 600, 610, 620
  • NIR: 600, 615, 630, 645, 660, 675, 700, 715, 730, 745, 760, 775, 790, 805, 820, 835, 850, 865, 880, 895, 910, 925, 940, 955, 970, 975

Notes

  • Requirements can be easily re-adapted also to NVIDIA Jetson Orin ® with Jetpack SDK 6.0 on Ubuntu 22.04, although never tested.
  • Requirements can be easily re-adapted also for other PhotonFocus cameras based on the eBUS SDK standard GigE (or even US3).

Acknowledgements

The Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory (AIRLab) @ Politecnico di Milano, provided support for this work. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Alberto Invernizzi and the team at IRA Lab, Bicocca University of Milan, for their contribution in making their driver in ROS 1 open source. [ROS 1 Driver]

Authors

  • Mirko Usuelli, PhD Candidate @ AIRLab, Politecnico di Milano [LinkedIn][GitHub]

Laboratory