[ros-users] tu-darmstadt-ros-pkg announcement

[Stefan Kohlbrecher]

Hi ROS community,

we'd like to announce
http://tu-darmstadt-ros-pkg.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ , a repository
providing ROS compatible software developed at TU Darmstadt. From the
start, we provide packages developed in the scope of team HECTOR
Darmstadt (http://www.gkmm.tu-darmstadt.de/rescue/) related to SLAM
and object tracking in harsh environments such as those encountered in
the simulated Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) environments of the
RoboCup Rescue League. This is the SLAM system we used to score top
places at various competitions (1st place overall RoboCup German 2011,
close 2nd best in class autonomy RoboCup 2011, 3rd place SICK robot
day 2010 etc.). Example videos of hector_mapping from the hector_slam
stack used in a handheld mapping system can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8pdObV_df4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfq3s4-H2S4


We provide the following stacks:

hector_slam stack:
-hector_mapping is a fast SLAM system that does not require any
odometry information and is able to learn accurate grid maps of small
and medium scale scenarios. It can be used interchangeably with
gmapping. The system provides 2D pose estimates at 40Hz (with a Hokuyo
UTM-30LX) but does not perform explicit loop closure like gmapping
does.
-hector_trajectoy_server saves tf based trajectories given a source
and target frame. They are made available as a nav_msgs/Path using
both a service and topic. The travelled path of a robot can thus
easily be visualized in rviz as well as plotted into the Geotiff
generated by the hector_geotiff node.
-hector_geotiff generates RoboCup Rescue League rules compliant
GeoTiff maps with georeference information, showing both the map and
the robot path. It uses nav_msgs/OccupancyGrid and nav_msgs/Path
messages retrieved via services, so it can also be used with gmapping
and other mapping systems.
-hector_map_tools provides some tools related to extracting
information from nav_msgs/OccupancyGrid data, like retrieving the
rectangular of the map that actually contains non-unknown data.

hector_worldmodel stack:
-object_tracker provides a probabilistic (gaussian representation)
system for tracking and mapping the pose of objects of interest in the
world (used for victim mapping in RoboCup Rescue).
-world_model_msgs provides a ROS message based interface for updating
the object_tracker.

hector_common stack:
-bfl_eigen is a patched version of BFL that uses Eigen.
-hector_marker_drawing is a class for helping with publishing marker messages.

vrmagic_camera stack:
Driver for vrmagic four sensor cameras, unstable development code.

Documentation and Tutorials will be added in the coming days once the
repository is indexed on ros.org.

on behalf of all members of team HECTOR Darmstadt,
Stefan Kohlbrecher & Johannes Meyer