The ifm3d_ros_driver package

ROS Interface

The core ifm3d-ros sensor interface is implemented as a ROS nodelet. This allows for lower-latency data processing vs. the traditional out-of-process node-based ROS interface for applications that require it. However, we ship a launch file with this package that allows for using the core ifm3d-ros driver as a standard node. To launch the node, the following command can be used:

$ roslaunch ifm3d_ros_examples camera.launch

Note: Please notice the use of the subpackage ifm3d_ros_examples.

For further information about the internal ROS nodelet infrastructure and how to apply this to your application, please see our exemplary launch files and a short run down on the nodelet structure in the ifm3d_ros_examples/README.

Nodelet - parameters

Name	Data Type	Default Value	Description
~assume_sw_triggered	bool	false	This provides a hint to the driver that the camera is configured for software triggering (as opposed to free running). In this mode, certain default values are applied to lessen the noise in terms of timeouts from the frame grabber.
~frame_id_base	string	ifm3d/camera	This string provides a prefix into the tf tree for ifm3d_ros coordinate frames.
~frame_latency_thresh	float	60.0	Time (seconds) used to determine that timestamps from the camera cannot be trusted. When this threshold is exceeded, when compared to system time, we use the reception time of the frame and not the capture time of the frame.
~ip	string	192.168.0.69	The IP address of the VPU.
~password	string	“”	The password required to establish an edit session on the VPU
~schema_mask	uint16	0xf	The pcic schema mask to apply to the active session with the frame grabber. This determines which images are available for publication from the camera. More about pcic schemas can be gleaned from the ifm3d projects documentation.
~timeout_millis	int	500	The number of milliseconds to wait for the framegrabber to return new frame data before declaring a “timeout” and to stop blocking on new data.
~timeout_tolerance_secs	float	5.0	The wall time to wait with no new data from the camera before trying to establish a new connection to the camera. This helps to providerobustness against camera cables becoming unplugged or other in-field pathologies which would cause the connection between the ROS node and the camera to be broken.
~sync_clocks DEPRECATED	bool	false	Attempt to sync the camera clock to the system clock at start-up. The side-effect is that timestamps on the image should reflect the capture time as opposed to the receipt time.
~xmlrpc_port	unint16	80	The TCP port the camera’s xmlrpc server is listening on for requests.
~pcic_port	unint16	50010	The TCP (data) port the camera’s pcic server is listening on for requests.

Nodelet - published Topics

Name	Data Type	Description
amplitude	sensor_msgs/Image	The normalized amplitude image.
confidence	sensor_msgs/Image	The confidence image.
cloud	sensor_msgs/PointCloud2	The point cloud data, i.e. X-, Y-, Z-coordinates.
distance	sensor_msgs/Image	The radial distance image.
raw_amplitude	sensor_msgs/Image	The raw (non normalized) amplitude image.
unit_vectors	sensor_msgs/Image	The rotated unit vectors.
extrinsics	ifm3d/Extrinsics	The extrinsic calibration of the camera with respect to the camera optical frame. This 3D pose is encoded in mm and rad.
rgb_image/compressed	sensor_msgs::CompressedImage	The RGB image in compressed format.

Note: Some topics may have empty data fields. We are working on publishing data on all available topics, but have kept all previous topics active for the moment for legacy reasons.

Nodelet - subscribed Topics

None.

Nodelet - advertised Services

Note: the services are provided by the ifm3d_ros_msgs package.

Name	Service Definition	Description
Dump	ifm3d/Dump	Dumps the state of the camera system as a JSON (formatted as a string)
Config	ifm3d/Config	Provides a means to configure the VPU and Heads (imager settings), declaratively from a JSON (string) encoding of the desired settings.
SoftOff	ifm3d/SoftOff	Sets the active application of the camera into software triggered mode which will turn off the active illumination reducing both power and heat.
SoftOn	ifm3d/SoftOn	Sets the active application of the camera into free-running mode. Its intention is to act as the inverse of SoftOff.
Trigger	ifm3d/Trigger	Requests the driver to software trigger the imager for data acquisition.

Known limitations

Additional Documentation

• Inspecting and configuring the camera / imager settings

• Troubleshooting

• Building the ROS node for distributed systems

• Configuring logging for embedded devices

• Camera device specific error codes

LICENSE

Please see the file called LICENSE.