[ros-users] Kinect and Navigation Stack

[Johannes Mayr]

Hi everybody,

I try to run your navigation Stack with a Microsoft Kinect.
Exactly I just want to create a 2D costmap (Node: costmap_2d) which I
want to use to generate a route through space for my biped robot.
        
First I start the kinect_camera node to bring up the driver. This is
done by:
	roslaunch kinect_camera kinect_with_tf.launch
Now 3 nodes are started:
	/kinect_driver --> publishes the PointCloude
	/kinect_rgb_to_kinect_depth --> publishes transformation between the 2
cameras of the kinect (/kinect_rgb --> /kinect_depth)
	/world_to_kinect_rgb --> publishes transformation from the world to the
camera (/world --> /kinect_rgb) (I know this transfomation is a static
one and has to be adopted to the camera position if the camera moves)
        
Then I created a costmap_params.yaml file to config the costmap_2d node
(I think here is my fault)
        
global_costmap:
         obstacle_range: 2.5
         raytrace_range: 3.0
         #footprint: [[x0, y0], [x1, y1], ... [xn, yn]]
         robot_radius: 1
         inflation_radius: 0.55
         observation_sources: point_cloud_sensor
         point_cloud_sensor: {sensor_frame: /kinect_rgb, data_type:
        PointCloud, topic: /kinect/rgb/points, marking: true, clearing:
        true}
         global_frame: /world
         robot_base_frame: /kinect_rgb
         update_frequency: 5.0
         static_map: false
         rolling_window: true
         width: 6.0
         height: 6.0
         resolution: 0.05
        
This config file is used in the launchfile for the global costmap which
looks like this:
        
<launch>
         <!-- Publishes the voxel grid to rviz for display -->
         <node pkg="costmap_2d" type="costmap_2d_markers"
        name="voxel_visualizer">
           <remap from="voxel_grid" to="costmap/voxel_grid"/>
         </node>
        
         <!-- Run the costmap node -->
         <node name="costmap_node" pkg="costmap_2d"
        type="costmap_2d_node" >
           <rosparam file="$(find
        costmap_2d)/launch/global_costmap_params.yaml" command="load" />
         </node>
        </launch>
        
If I do so the hole thing is not working. I don't know exactly why, but 
maybe someone can give me a hint.
Hopefully somebody can reproduce my troubles even without a Kinect.

        
Best Regards
        
Johannes