[Discourse.ros.org] [TurtleBot] New depth sensor, Orbbec Astra, call for testing

[tfoote]

tfoote June 1

Background As many of you are aware the Microsoft Kinect, and Asus Xtion are now out of production and are getting harder to obtain. As such we need to find a new depth sensor to use for the TurtleBot. Thanks to the work of several of the TurtleBot distributors as well as support from Orbbec I'm happy to announce that we have initial versions of ROS drivers for the Astra available as debian packages. Call for testing If you have an astra please take some time to try out the new packages. They are definitely still under development but should be a drop in replacement for the openni_camera. There are packages currently in ros-shadow-fixed for both indigo and kinetic. The package name is astra_camera, and there's an astra_launch package as well. To get things working you may need to install udev rules I made the latest release from my fork, but I've submitted it back upstream to orbbec at: https://github.com/orbbec/ros_astra_camera If you have issues please file tickets there. If you'd like to try out the TurtleBot with an Astra there's an astra_support branch of the turtlebot repository which has added astra as a possible TURTLEBOT_3D_SENSOR

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[Martin Günther]

Martin_Guenther June 2

Does anyone have a short rosbag from the Astra, just to get an impression of the quality? Sorry for the slightly off-topic comment. We might buy an Astra though, which would give you one more beta tester!

[Víctor Mayoral Vilches]

vmayoral June 2

Martin_Guenther:

Does anyone have a short rosbag from the Astra, just to get an impression of the quality?

+1, would love to get feedback from actual users. We're also purchasing one so hopefully we can contribute as well. Thanks for the driver @tfoote!

[Procópio Stein]

Procopio_Stein June 2

hey, Thanks for the driver @tfoote http://discourse.ros.org/users/tfoote! I gave it a try but there is a lot of noise on the depth measurement, compared to the openni2_camera driver. comparison videos: with astra_camera: https://youtu.be/p2L59TLhsg4 with openni2_camera: https://youtu.be/UQp65j1x0RE what is the best way of sharing the bag files with you? cheers

[Procópio Stein]

Procopio_Stein June 2

here are the bag files taken with the openni2_camera and astra_camera drivers.... enjoy. https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjzfovvidkivsyi/orbbec_astra_s_astra_camera_filtered.bag?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/m5l9al19w8aoo2t/orbbec_astra_s_openni2_camera_filtered.bag?dl=0 note: we are using the model ASTRA S cheers

[Chris L8]

chrisl8 June 2

I see three versions, the "Astra", "Astra S" and the "Astra Pro". They are even all the same price. Can you be specific about which version you are targetting or will work best with the TurtleBot?

[Marcus Liebhardt]

bit-pirate June 3

We are looking at the Astra for the TurtleBot. It's spec is closest to the current default sensor - the Asus Xtion Pro Live. Right now the Pro's high-res image stream is not available through OpenNI and hence not available for ROS with the current wrapper. The S could be used as well. Personally, I don't see the few centimetres you get extra at close range worth for what you lose in range.

[Alex Reimann]

AlexReimann June 3

+1 Same problem as Procopio here. Heavy noise is around the borders.

[Jonathan Binney]

jon June 8

I tried the ROS driver with the Astra S (the short range model) and it was unusably noisy. The best way I can describe the point cloud is "blizzard in a glass pyramid". As a sanity check, I tried using the standard SDK on my mac, and it was fine (although the data was definitely not nearly as good as a short range carmine). Has anyone had success with the Astra S and the ROS driver?

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[Jonathan Binney]

jon June 8

I wasn't able to test their SDK on linux because the link to download that from their developer page goes to a 404 for a Dropbox file. Sketchy...

[Marcus Liebhardt]

bit-pirate June 9

I believe you can get their modified OpenNI2 version from Github: https://github.com/orbbec/OpenNI2/tree/orbbec-dev

[Jonathan Binney]

jon June 9

Thanks @bit-pirate, I'll try that out.

[Alex Reimann]

AlexReimann June 13

I made an issue for the weird noise ad the edges of objects: github.com/orbbec/ros_astra_camera Issue: Faulty depth measurements near the border opened by AlexReimann on 2016-06-13 When using the driver there is a huge noise in the point cloud at corners of objects. Pointing at a flat surface: A...

[Procópio Stein]

Procopio_Stein June 15

For anyone interested, here are the openni drivers provided by orbbec: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p2uowlt3swdrfno/AACfEbv7ejIU-4FHy4Fyi0ZWa?dl=0

[tfoote]

tfoote June 15

There's apparently an unreleased filter applied to the prebuilt binaries: 3dclub.orbbec3d.com Astra & OpenNI2 under Arm Platform (Raspberry Pi 2 ubuntu 14.04) If you want to compile OpenNI2 from github.com/orbbec/OpenNI2.git, you need to use the orbbec_dev branch, which adds the orbbec driver. You also need to use the orbbec.ini provided. The pre-compiled OpenNI2 binaries include an additional filter (not found in the github source) that is necessary for correct depth data results. If OpenNI2 compiled from source (of the correct branch) works fine for you, you can use it too. For compiling Astra SDK, update the .gitmodules per https://github.com/orb... I've opened a ticket at: github.com/orbbec/OpenNI2 Issue: Release the depth filter for better performance opened by tfoote on 2016-06-15 From this thread: https://3dclub.orbbec3d.com/t/astra-openni2-under-arm-platform-raspberry-pi-2-ubuntu-14-04/282/2 there's an unreleased filter that's not in the github sources. Without that the open source driver does...

[Procópio Stein]

Procopio_Stein July 29

Hi folks, sorry if this is not the proper place to post. I am having some disturbing issues with the Astra sensor. It seems that after a couple of hours of usage, the pointcloud published starts to get distorted, as if the camera is changing its roll. You can find more details here: https://3dclub.orbbec3d.com/t/distortion-due-to-temperature/536 Did you have any similar issues when testing it with turtlebot?? Any ideas on how to address this issue? Thank you, Best

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[tfoote]

tfoote July 29

Your question on the Orbbec forums is likely the right place to ask. I have not observed it but our demos are not especially sensitive to small roll angles to we might not have noticed.

[Yuchen]

ycx424 December 6

Hi everyone, I am a new user of turtlebot2. I got a problem on setting up the Astra sensor. First, I failed to set up the video stream in this tutorials . The error is "uvc_get_stream_ctrl_format_size: Invalid mode (-51)". Is there anyone got this problem, and could you please let me know how to solve it? Second, when I cakin_make astra_camera, there is a error "/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lOpenNI2Orbbec". Can you please let me know how to fix it? Thank you very much! Best, Yuchen

[Tully Foote]

tfoote December 6

HI @ycx424, Please ask debugging questions on http://answers.ros.org I'll note that the tutorial you're following looks to be for the TurtleBot2 with the Kinect and thus would not be expected to work with the Astra for anything specific to the camera such as setting up video streaming. And your compile issue looks like it warrants a separate question. Please provide enough information to reproduce your problem when you ask your question, otherwise we will just be guessing what your problem is.

[Yuchen]

ycx424 December 6

Hi tfoote, Thank you very much for your quick reply. Regarding my second problem, I firstly download your released package from here. I successfully finished the first two steps. When I did "roslaunch astra_launch astra.launch", there was a warning in the terminal. Then, in rviz I cannot receive any data from the following topics: /camera/rgb/camera/depth_registered/sw_registered/image_rect /camera/rgb/camera/depth_registered/sw_registered/image_rect_raw /camera/rgb/camera/rgb/image_raw /camera/rgb/camera/rgb/image_rect_color Sometimes, there will be an error shown in the terminal that "Camera calibration file /home/turtlebot/.ros/camera_info/depth_Astra_Orbbec.yaml not found." Regarding the PointClound2, I can receive the data from /camera/rgb/camera/depth/points, but something is not working well, like this: the status error And, I cannot receive data from topic: /camera/rgb/camera/depth_registered/points There will be two warnings in terminal: Thank you very much!

[Tully Foote]

tfoote December 7

Please ask this question on http://answers.ros.org following our Support guidelines: http://wiki.ros.org/Support