Vision for Autonomous Robotics: Labbook 2025

January 28, 2025

This paper describes iMarkers, which allow to make unvisible ArucoTags. Yet, one need a polarizer sheet in front of one of the stereo-cameras.

A student from Canada tested my VisualSfM - Ubuntu installation technical report.
This student go an error of a missing siftgpu library when clicking "Compute Missing Matches" toolbar-icon.
Looked at the SiftGPU/bin executables. I could start TestWinGlut “-i ~/src/vsfm/data/small_maze/frame99.jpg
I downloaded the examples images from github, which are the two files processed when typing SimpleSIFT.
The program MultiTreadSIFT started two threads on 100Hz, but than crashed after some time with a Killed signal.
For me the "Compute Missing Matches" toolbar-icon (step 2 in manual) worked fine.

Read the place recognition tutorial in RAM, which is accompanied with github page.
Order the UGV Rover.

Couldn't find reviews of the UGV beast.
The software for the driver base for the UGV can also be found at ugv_base_ros github. (4 months old) - 2 discussions.
The software on the Orin can be found on ugv_jetson github. Important issue (not answered yet): are there plans to support JetPack 6.
The ugv_ws github doesn't have issues, only a pull request.
An alternative could be WeCAR A.
WeGo has several repositories. Yet, could only find three minimal udev_rules , odom and examples WeCAR repositories (3 years old).
Much more expensive is Mecabot Plus TS - Orin Nano
And the AgiLex Limo ROS - NUC.
Or the RoboWorks RoboWorks RosBot 2 - Orin Nano.
The TurtleBot-4 is less expensive.
An Dutch alternative is the Avular Origin, although more a research platform. Examples github.
There is a new book Ultimate Robotics Programming with ROS 2 and Pythonincluding github code. Based on Ubuntu 22.04 and ROS 2 Humble.
Chapter 10 covers the Navigation stack, Chapter 13 covers Computer Vision (no code!).

Looking for an anouncement of the next version of RAE, but according to this post, most of the developers are gone. We can ask for a refund.
Last August there were still plans to make a RCV4 version. The release was planned for Q3-Q4 2025.
According to this post the project was already deprecated in 2023. We could already ask for refunds in October 2024.
Alternative could be UGV Rover, Nvidia Jetson Orin based. Twice the price. But including Lidar and depth cameras. ROS2 Humble based. I also see that it is Docker based?! The depth sensor is OAK-D-Lite, the Lidar is D500 DTOF.
The UGV Beast documentation wiki.
Assembly instructions: "Continues improvement"
The three 18650 lithium batteries are not included.
Most of the details are about the Jupyter notebooks.
Starts to get interesting at ROS2 preparation. Again, ROS Humble is part of Docker container.
The code of the Docker container is on github. Last update 3 weeks ago.

Trying the foxglove startup. Without other processes running in the background, I only see have 4 topics.
Did ros2 launch rae_bringup robot.launch.py, which gave the /cmd_vel.
Yet, the docker crashed before I could drive around.

Tested VisualSFM installation on Karlijn's old laptop. Found only one small typo.
Note that the space-key no longer works on this laptop.