Blickfeld ROS2 package¶

This package provides a ROS2 node for publishing PointCloud2 messages from Blickfeld LiDAR devices.

It also works with RTI Connext.

A launch with yaml parameterization also works in principle. However, for this package, the use of ros2 launch is still experimental with ROS2 Eloquent and therefore may not work, or only partially.

Supported devices¶

The Blickfeld ROS2 driver supports all currently available Blickfeld LiDARs such as Cube 1 and Cube Range 1.

Dependencies¶

To install the Blickfeld ROS2 driver, please make sure the following dependencies are installed on your system.

blickfeld-scanner-library (BSL) with system-wide protobuf installation.
diagnostic_updater can be acquired via your distribution’s package manager, or via
```
$ rosdep update
$ rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
```

Build¶

$ colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-clean-first

If compiling with RTI Connext yields a CMake warning, please recompile without cleaning the build space beforehand.

Running the Blickfeld ROS node¶

The typical way to start the Blickfeld driver is as following:

$ ros2 run blickfeld_driver blickfeld_node --ros-args -p host:=cube-0056 --remap __node:=bf_lidar

You can also start it with more parameters, e.g.:

$ ros2 run blickfeld_driver blickfeld_node --ros-args -p host:=cube-0056 -p publish_ambient_light:=true -p publish_intensities:=false

If you prefer a similar way to launch, like you would in ROS(1) (beware of the new “.xml”), you can start the driver like this:

$ ros2 launch -a blickfeld_driver live_scanner.launch.xml host:=cube-0056

Or if you prefer to put the parameters into a yaml:

$ ros2 launch blickfeld_driver live_scanner_yaml.launch.py

This then uses a parameter yaml in the config directory.

Parameters¶

All the following parameters are available in launch and run:

Argument	Note	Default
host (required)	The host name or the IP of the device you want to publish the point clouds from, e.g., `cube-0028`.
node_name	Name of this ROS node.	`bf_lidar`
point_cloud_out	Topic to publish the PointCloud2 message to.	`$(var node_name)/points_raw`
remap	Remap this node’s input/output topics to commonly used ones. If `false`, canonical names in the form of `$(var node_name)/foo_(in/out)` are used, depending on whether a topic is an input or an output topic.	`true`
lidar_frame_id	The ROS TF where the point cloud should be in.	`lidar`
rviz	Start rviz if this argument is true.	`false`
use_lidar_timestamp	Set to true if the timestamp in the ROS point cloud message should be generated from the device timestamp; otherwise the timestamp will be the ROS time when the frame was received on ROS.	`true`
publish_intensities	Set to true if the PointCloud2 message should contain intensities.	`true`
publish_ambient_light	Set to true if the PointCloud2 message should contain the ambient light level.	`false`
publish_explicit_range	Set to true if the PointCloud2 message should contain the `range` field.	`false`
publish_no_return_points	Set to true if the PointCloud2 message should contain points in a given range for pulses without a return.	`false`
no_return_point_range	Dummy range for points of pulses without a return.	`1.0`
publish_all_returns	Set to true to publish all the returns for every point. Adds the field `return_id` (ID for each returned point) to the point cloud.	`false`
publish_time_delta	If `true`, the PointCloud2 message will contain the timestamp field per point to represent the time offset from the start of the frame.	`false`
publish_point_id	Add the `scanline_id` field, the `scanline_point_index` field (= the point’s number in the scan line), and the `point_id` (= frame-global point ID) to PointCloud2 message. If the device is configured to return multiple return points (multiple reflections), all these three IDs will be identical; only the `return_id` will differ.	`false`

Debugging¶

Add ‘__log_level:=debug’ to see details:

$ ros2 run blickfeld_driver blickfeld_node --ros-args --remap __node:=bf_lidar -p host:=cube-0056 -p publish_ambient_light:=true -p publish_no_return_points:=true __log_level:=debug

ROS2 message content¶

To look at the ROS message sent by this ROS node, you can use

$ debugging_tools/ros2-topic-echoparsed.py

It shows all the fields present in the message.

License¶

This package is released under a BSD 3-Clause License (see also https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause)