toposens_markers Documentation

Overview

ROS packages for working with Toposens 3D Ultrasound sensors: http://toposens.com/

Developed and tested for ROS Melodic on Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic) and ROS Kinetic on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) using Toposens TS3 ultrasonic sensor.

1. Setup

For Ubuntu 18.04

Follow these guides to install and set up ROS Melodic on your system:

• http://wiki.ros.org/melodic/Installation/Ubuntu
• http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/InstallingandConfiguringROSEnvironment

Install catkin tools:

$ sudo apt install python-catkin-tools

For Ubuntu 16.04

Follow these guides to install and set up ROS Kinetic on your system:

• http://wiki.ros.org/kinetic/Installation/Ubuntu
• http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/InstallingandConfiguringROSEnvironment

Install catkin tools:

$ sudo apt install python-catkin-tools

2. Build Driver

Clone the toposens metapackage into your catkin workspace:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/toposens/public/ros-packages.git

Use rosdep to install missing dependencies:

$ rosdep update

$ rosdep install --from-paths ~/catkin_ws/src/ros-packages/ --ignore-src --rosdistro <distro> -y

Build the package by using catkin build:

$ catkin build toposens

3. Enable Serial Port Permissions

Add yourself to the “dialout” group:

$ sudo adduser $USER dialout

Trigger updated group permissions to take effect:

$ newgrp dialout

Re-login or reboot for the updated group permissions to take effect permanently.

4. Connect TS3 Sensor

Connect your Toposens TS3 sensor via the provided FTDI cable to any available USB port on your computer.

Obtain the connected terminal ID for the device:

$ dmesg | grep "FTDI USB Serial Device"

In this case the terminal ID would be ttyUSB0.

5. Visualize Data

/ts_markers broadcasts messages of type visualization_msgs/MarkerArray for simple visualization with RViz

Visualize Data as Markers

The ts_markers_node translates the messages of type toposens_msgs/TsScan into messages of type visualization_msgs/MarkerArray, which can be visualized in RViz.

Source your ROS setup

$ source devel/setup.bash

The driver node as well as the markers node are launched from within one launch-file:

$ roslaunch toposens_markers toposens_markers.launch port:=/dev/ttyUSB0

6. Manipulate Parameters

To manipulate sensor parameters as well as visualization parameters live in realtime, run in an additional terminal window:

$ rosrun rqt_reconfigure rqt_reconfigure

The ts_driver_node respectively ts_markers_node need to be running for this to work.

Marker Parameters

There are 2 parameters that can be changed in the ts_markers_node.

Variable Name	Effect
lifetime	Duration for which a marker should remain visible
scale	Magnitude for resizing markers equally and simultaneously