argus-ros

argus-ros is a wrapper around the pmd Argus SDK enabling the usage of pmd-based ToF cameras from within ROS software systems.

Software Compatibility Matrix

argus-ros version	Argus SDK version	Linux/ROS distribution pair(s)	Supported Hardware
0.1.0	3.5	Ubuntu 16.04/Kinetic, Ubuntu 14.04/Indigo	Pico Flexx
0.2.0	3.16.0.51	Ubuntu 16.04/Kinetic	Pico Flexx, Pico Monstar

NOTE: Theoretically, any camera supported by Argus will be compatible with this library. However, the above listed hardware is what we have available to us for testing. We welcome your feedback related to other Argus-based cameras and their compatibility with this ROS interface.

Building and Installing the Software

Building and installing the software has two primary steps:

ROS Interface

camera nodelet

The core argus-ros sensor interface is implemented as a ROS nodelet. This allows for lower-latency data processing vs. the traditional out-of-process node-based ROS interface for applications that require it. However, we ship a launch file with this package that allows for using the core argus-ros driver as a standard node. To launch the node the following command can be used:

$ roslaunch argus_ros camera.launch

This launch file encapsulates several features:

It exposes some of the camera_nodelet parameters as command-line arguments for ease of runtime configuration.
It instantiates a nodelet manager which the camera_nodelet will be loaded into.
It launches the camera_nodelet itself.
It publishes the static transform from the camera's optical frame to a traditional ROS sensor frame as a tf2 static_transform_publisher.

You can either use this launch file directly, or, use it as a basis for integrating argus-ros into your own robot software system.

Parameters

Name	Data Type	Default Value	Description
~access_code	string	-	The Argus access code used to unlock level 2+ access to the Argus SDK functions. If no access code is supplied (the default), Level 1 access will be granted by Argus.
~on_at_startup	bool	true	The pmd cameras use an active illumination unit as part of its ToF measurement principle to compute the distance to objects in the scene. Continuously pulsing the illumination unit both consumes power and generates heat. To that end, for some applications, it is desireable to have the ability to turn on/off the illumination unit in software. argus-ros provides that capability through a ROS service call (see below). This parameter controls whether or not the camera will start pulsing its illumination unit (and by extension, streaming image data) at node startup time.
~serial_number	string	-	Each pmd camera has a unique serial number. Each instance of the argus-ros camera nodelet manages the data from a specific camera instance. This parameter controls which specific camera serial number this instance of the nodelet should manage. The special string "-" (a minus sign, no quotes) communicates to the nodelet that the first camera found on the USB bus should be used. This is convenient for cases where you will only ever be using a single camera but may be using many different cameras with different serial numbers. At the same time, having this serial number mapping allows for robust robot configurations whereby you can map camera serial numbers to semantically meaningful node names (e.g., serial number XXX = front_left_camera).
~initial_use_case	string	-	pmd-based Argus cameras encapsulate a set of camera and imager settings into the notion of a "use case". These use cases give a name to a set of prepackaged parameter settings. This parameter allows for setting a particular use case on the camera at nodelet startup time. The use case can be changed at any point in time via the Config service, however, this simplifies setting the use case at startup. The special (and default) value of "-" (a minus sign, no quotes) communicates to the nodelet that no particular use case should be set at startup time.
~poll_bus_secs	float	1.	Integral to the camera nodelet is a running watchdog timer. This parameter controls the frequency at which the watchdog will run a health check loop. This is also the mechanism by which this nodelet provides robustness to a camera cable being unplugged and re-plugged back in (something that could very likely happen in an industrial setting due to pinched cables, etc.). Every poll_bus_secs this node will try to reinitialize the camera should it become unplugged for whatever reason.
~timeout_secs	float	1.	This is a threshold value used by the nodelet to determine that a running camera has timed-out or otherwise become unavailable. On every iteration of the watchdog (i.e., every poll_bus_secs), if the camera is currently "on", a check is made to see if frame data have been received within this timeout threshold. If this timeout threshold has been exceeded, the camera will be reinitialized.
~optical_frame	string	camera_optical_link	The name of the optical frame in the tf tree
~sensor_frame	string	camera_link	The name of the sensor frame in the tf tree

Published Topics

NOTE: pmd cameras can produce data with different imager settings simulataneously. This is the so-called mixed mode feature. For a particular use case there will be one or more data streams that it offers. So for each image topic published by argus-ros, we namespace it into a stream. While Argus gives each camera stream a unique stream id encoded as a uint16, for the purpose of topic names, argus-ros streams are simply positive integers. So, for example, the point cloud topic for a single stream use case will be published on stream/1/cloud. For a mixed-mode use case (lets assume two data streams), the point clouds will be published on stream/1/cloud and stream/2/cloud. In the table below, we use the variable X as a placeholder for the stream number.

Name	Data Type	Description
stream/X/camera_info	sensor_msgs/CameraInfo	The intrinsic calibration parameters for the camera
stream/X/cloud	sensor_msgs/PointCloud2	The point cloud data
stream/X/conf	sensor_msgs/Image	The pixel confidence image
stream/X/gray	sensor_msgs/Image	The amplitude image
stream/X/noise	sensor_msgs/Image	The noise image
stream/X/xyz	sensor_msgs/Image	The point cloud data (Cartesian data only, no amplitude) encoded as a three channel (the x, y, z spatial planes respectively) OpenCV image.
stream/X/exposure_times	argus_ros/ExposureTimes	The exposure times used to acquire the pixel data.

Subscribed Topics

Name	Data Type	Description
SetExposureTime	argus_ros/SetExposureTime	Allows for a lightweight/fast means to change the exposure time for the current use case on-the-fly (assuming the camera is in a manual exposure mode).
SetExposureTimes	argus_ros/SetExposureTimes	Allows for a lightweight/fast means to change the exposure times for the current use case on-the-fly (assuming the camera is in a manual exposure mode). This feature is only available if the camera_nodelet is running with Level 2 access. It allows for finer-grained access to all exposures.

Advertised Services

Name	Service Definition	Description
Dump	argus_ros/Dump	Dumps the state of the camera parameters to JSON
Config	argus_ros/Config	Provides a means to configure the camera and imager settings, declaratively from a JSON encoding of the desired settings.
Start	argus_ros/Start	Starts the camera data stream
Stop	argus_ros/Stop	Stops the camera data stream and, by extension, turns off the active illumination unit.

Additional Documentation

LICENSE

Please see the file called LICENSE.

ATTRIBUTION

The initial development of argus-ros has been sponsored by Locus Robotics. The authors thank them for their contribution to the open-source robotics community.

AUTHORS

Tom Panzarella

venkat-ganesh/royale-ros