[ros-users] Datalink Toolkit for Remote Operation with High-Latency and Low-Bandwidth Connections

[William Woodall]

Wow that seems really useful! Thanks for sharing it with everyone!


On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 1:35 PM, Karthik Desingh <desinghkar at gmail.com>wrote:

> Awesome! +1
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 4:03 PM, Dmitry Berenson <dberenson at cs.wpi.edu>wrote:
>
>> The ARC Lab at WPI is releasing the Datalink Toolkit ROS package,
>> designed to for remote operation of a robot over a high-latency and
>> low-bandwidth datalink. The package was developed and extensively tested as
>> part of the DARPA robotics challenge, though it is not specific to a type
>> of robot.
>>
>> The package allows the user to easily set up relays and compression
>> methods for a single-master system. These relays avoid duplicating data
>> sent over the datalink while compressing common datatypes (i.e.
>> point-clouds and images) to minimize bandwidth usage.
>> The toolkit includes both message-based and service-based relays so that
>> data can be sent on-demand or at a specified frequency. The service-based
>> relays are more robust in low-bandwidth conditions, guaranteeing the
>> synchronization of camera images and camera info messages, and allow more
>> reconfiguration while running.
>>
>> The key features of the package are:
>> - Generic relays with integrated rate throttling for all message types
>> - Dedicated relays with rate throttling for images and pointclouds
>> - Generic service-based relays with integrated rate throttling for all
>> message types
>> - Dedicated service-based relays with integrated rate throttling for
>> images and pointclouds
>> - Image resizing and compression using methods from OpenCV and
>> image_transport
>> - Pointcloud voxel filtering and compression using methods from PCL,
>> Zlib, and other algorithms. (Note: pointcloud compression is provided in a
>> separate library that can be easily integrated with other projects)
>> - Launch files for easy use of the datalink software with RGBD cameras
>> - Works with ROS Hydro
>>
>> Overall performance:
>> - Reliable data transfer for a wide range of bandwidths and latencies
>> (e.g. at DRC Trials: 1Mb/s - 100 Kb/s bandwidth, 100ms - 1000ms latency)
>> - Pointcloud compression >8x depending on compression algorithm (without
>> voxel filtering)
>> - Pointcloud compression >20x depending on compression algorithm (with
>> voxel filtering)
>> - Image compression equivalent to image_transport (without image
>> resizing) or better (with resizing)
>>
>> Performance comparison with ROS for image transfer:
>> - 1.5x more images/second at 1Mb/s (grayscale image size 320x240)
>> - 2x more images/second at 100Kb/s (grayscale image size 320x240)
>> - 3x more images/second at 50Kb/s (grayscale image size 320x240)
>>
>>
>> For more information, please see the wiki here:
>> https://github.com/WPI-ARC/datalink_toolkit/wiki
>>
>> Get the package from our git repository here:
>> https://github.com/WPI-ARC/datalink_toolkit
>>
>>
>>
>> Dmitry Berenson
>> Assistant Professor
>> Robotics Engineering Program
>> Computer Science Department
>> Worcester Polytechnic Institute
>> http://users.wpi.edu/~dberenson/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ros-users mailing list
>> ros-users at lists.ros.org
>> http://lists.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Thanks,
> Karthik
>
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>


-- 
William Woodall
ROS Development Team
william at osrfoundation.org
http://williamjwoodall.com/
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