A ROS package to get data from the Optitrack motion capture system

Installation

This installation assumes you have ROS installed and created a catkin workspace on your computer

1. In the command terminal, move to your catkin workspace's src directory (cd catkin_ws/src)

2. Once inside the catkin src directory type: git clone {this url repo} and enter in your GitLab credentials when prompted

3. Either move back out of your catkin src directory to use catkin_make or run catkin_build (ignore the warnings)

4. Once done you can begin to use vrpn node with motive and optitrack

Important notes before running

• Make sure that you got the right IP address of the computer that is running motive (in our case its 192.168.1.104)

-Make sure your computer is on the pathfinder or pathfinder5 network i.e same network as the optitrack system

-Have your robot's rigid body created and tracked in the motive/optitrack system

-By default the measurements come in the camera frame (ENU frame), this node automatically converts the messages to the North East Down (NED) and North West Up (NWU) frames

-Location messages are in the form of:

geometry_msg/TransformedStamped (robotrigidbody/ned or nwu/pose)

and

geometry_msg/PoseStampted (robotrigidbody/ned or nwu/pose_stamped)

where robotrigidbody is the name of the robot's rigid body set in motive or optitrack.

To see them when the vrpn client is active type: rostopic list

Running the code

geometry_msg/TransformedStamped (/robotrigidbody/ned or nwu/pose)

-To run vrpn from the command line type: roslaunch ros_vrpn_client test.launch name:=robotrigidbody where robotrigidbody is the name of the robot's rigid body set in motive or optitrack.

-To run vrpn from within a launch file add:

<include file = "$(find ros_vrpn_client)/launch/test.launch">
<arg name = "name" value="$(robotrigidbody)"/>
</include>

Please take a look at the example launch file