Blickfeld ROS package¶

This package provides an ROS node and a nodelet for publishing PointCloud2 messages from Blickfeld LiDAR devices.

Supported devices¶

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

Dependencies¶

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

blickfeld-scanner-library (BSL) with system-wide protobuf installation.

Build¶

To build the ROS driver, clone this package into your ROS catkin workspace.

Run

$ catkin build

or respectively

$ catkin build blickfeld_driver

You may use catkin_make instead of catkin build as well.

Running the Blickfeld ROS node¶

You can start the Blickfeld driver as either a node or a nodelet. For the node, you can use the launch file

$ live_scanner.launch

and for the nodelet, the

$ live_scanner_nodelet.launch

is provided.

The typical way to launch the ROS driver is the following (Make sure you have sourced your workspace):

$ roslaunch blickfeld_driver live_scanner.launch host:=cube-0028

or respectively

$ roslaunch blickfeld_driver live_scanner_nodelet.launch host:=cube-0028

You should now be able to see a PointCloud2 in Rviz on the /bf_lidar/points_raw topic.

Parameters¶

Both launch files have arguments you can use:

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.	`$(arg node_name)/points_raw`
remap	Remap this node’s input/output topics to commonly used ones. If `false`, canonical names in the form of `$(arg node_name)/foo_(in/out)` are used, depending on whether a topic is an input or and 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`

License¶

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