Problems with turtlebot and face tracking

[jason d]

I'm trying to run the facetracking tutorial from the Ros by Example book and I'm running into some trouble.  I need to run three different launch files to get it working.  For anyone that has the book those three launch files are Openni node, face_tracker2, and object_tracker. 

Everything works fine, although with a ton of lag, if I run all the launch files on the turtlebot.  To try and get rid of the lag I tried only running openni on the turtlebot and the image processing nodes on the workstation.  Running the those two on the workstation has been the trouble.  It seems like neither of the two can get the camera image.  The object tracker just says "Waiting for camera_info topic...".  But at the same time I can see the camera image just fine by using (rosrun image_view image_view image:=/camera/rgb/image_color). 

[James Ronald]

Jason,

Do you have ROS_MASTER_URI set to point to the computer that is running roscore?  

- Jim 

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 6:36 PM, jason d <jddor...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm trying to run the facetracking tutorial from the Ros by Example book and I'm running into some trouble.  I need to run three different launch files to get it working.  For anyone that has the book those three launch files are Openni node, face_tracker2, and object_tracker. 

Everything works fine, although with a ton of lag, if I run all the launch files on the turtlebot.  To try and get rid of the lag I tried only running openni on the turtlebot and the image processing nodes on the workstation.  Running the those two on the workstation has been the trouble.  It seems like neither of the two can get the camera image.  The object tracker just says "Waiting for camera_info topic...".  But at the same time I can see the camera image just fine by using (rosrun image_view image_view image:=/camera/rgb/image_color). 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HomeBrew Robotics Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hbrobotics+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to hbrob...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hbrobotics?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[jason d]

Thanks, Jim.

Yes that all set up correctly.  I actually got it working now.  I can see the face tracking image on the workstation.  The new problem now is that I lose the network connection shortly after that.  I'm going to try different camera frame rates and see if that helps.

[Patrick Goebel]

Hi Jason,

If you haven't done so already, try running all the nodes and the camera
on one machine at a time (first the Turtlebot laptop, then your
workstation) and make sure you get good frame rates and no hang-ups. If
that works, then try running some nodes on the Turtlebot and some on the
workstation.

--patrick

[jason d]

Hi Patrick,

I've ran everything on the Turtlebot which works okay.  There was a lot of lag with the face detection.  It will find a face and turn to center the face in the camera image but the lag causes it to overshoot a little.  It sees the face again but now it's off to the other side so it over corrects going the other way.  It will oscillate a few times like this until it just looses tracking on the face.  I'm also using the Kinect camera to do this.  Maybe I should try it with a USB camera?

Should I be able to run the camera/kinect node from the workstation?  I've tried that and it gives me some message saying that no camera is connected. 

Thanks for the help!

Jason

[Patrick Goebel]

Hi Jason,

It occurred to me that since you are asking about a tutorial in my book, it might be more appropriate to post this question on:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ros-by-example

If you wouldn't mind re-posting your question there, I have some ideas of what to try next.

--patrick

[jason d]

Hi Patrick,

I got it working pretty well today.  I ran the face tracker on the robot and the object tracker on the workstation.  This seems to have distributed to processing load enough to get it to work.  I think the trouble is that my workstation is too slow.  There's still a bit of lag but not nearly as bad.  I'll post it up on book's page. 

Jason

[Patrick Goebel]

Hi Jason,

That's good news.  Yeah, I suspected it was a basic CPU load problem since low fps rates on the video will definitely cause a delay in tracking response.  No need to re-post to the ros-by-example group now that you have it figured out.  I just didn't want to take up too much bandwidth on the club's forum.  (Of course, if you have any followups, feel free to post on the ros-by-example forum.)

--patrick

On 02/07/2013 07:40 PM, jason d wrote:

Hi Patrick,