March 4, 2025

• Interesting new SLAM paper with on LiDAR Situational Graphs (Feb, 2025), including code.

  February 20, 2025

  • Looking for nice images for the paper. Fig. 4 of Group 1 could be usefull to illustrate the first assignment.
  • Also Fig. 6 would be a nice illustration.
  • Yet, Group 1 chose the most centered line.
  • Group 9 shows in Fig. 9 the benefit of using RANSAC compared to Canny edge.

  February 18, 2025

  • The RAE has a Robotics Vision Core 3, which is based on the Intel Movidius accelerator with code name (a href=https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/movidius-accelerator-on-edge-software-hub.html>Keem Bay.

  February 12, 2025

  • An interesting arXiv paper on a Wheeled lab on the University of Washington.
  • More details on their Project Website, including github code.
  • They point to F1Tenth as educational platform, which is a website with both a learn and course section.
  • Looked at Module E: Vision. System is also Nvidia Jetson based.
  • The course is UPenn: ESE6150: RoboRacer Autonomous Racing Cars (Spring 2024).

  February 6, 2025

  • The ugv-rover has 4GB Jetson Orin Nano Kit. Documentation for the Orin can be found here. The documentation of the Rover can be found here.
  • The rover comes without batteries. The instructions to load the batteries are not there yet.
  • The battery compartment is actually below the rover. The screw-driver provided nicely fits. Placed three of the 18650 lithium batteries from the DART robot into the compartment and start charging (connector next to the on-off button).
    
  • Connected the Display-port to my display and the USB-C to a mouse and keyboard. The ethernet-ip is displayed on the small black screen below the on-off button.
  • Could login via the screen/keyboard. The Jetson is running Ubuntu 22.04.04.
  • Switched off the hotspot (right top corner) and connected to LAB42.
  • Tried to switch of the python programming started during setup. The kills seem to fail, but after a while no 10% python script popped up anymore. Looked at /home/jetson/uvg.log. Last line is Terminated.
  • The docker scripts are actually in /home/jetson/uvg_ws. Didn't make two scripts mentioned in ROS2 Preparation executable. The ros2_humble script starts fine, and indicated a shell-server is started. Yet, I couldn't connect to the shell server, nor externally, nor via the docker-ip. Yet, doing a docker ps followed by docker exec -it CONTAINER_ID bash worked (no zsh in SPATH). Could find /opt/ros/humble/bin/ros2.
  • Next tried RVIZ, but that failed because no connection to display localhost:12.0 could be made.
  • The docker is a restart of container of a existing docker-image, not a fresh run.
  • Tried to make a script that run from the image, with reuse of the host. Yet, out of battery before finished(charging is before USB-B connector). Switched to USB-C connector after the reboot.
  • Starting the docker failed. Could be the background process. Tried docker run nvidia/cuda:11.8.0-cudnn8-devel-ubuntu22.04. That works, but returns directly. docker run nvidia/cuda:11.8.0-cudnn8-devel-ubuntu22.04. That works, but returns directly and gives a warning that no NVIDIA drivers are detected.
  • Tried sudo docker run -it --runtime=nvidia --gpus all /usr/bin/bash. That works, entered the image. Only, no /opt/ros to be found, only /opt/nvidia. Strange, because I don't see any other image with docker image ls
  • Looked if I could natively install the required ros-humble packages. sudo apt ugrade wants to downgrade 4 packages (nvidia-container-toolkit), so didn't continue.
  • Installed apt install python3-pip. Next are the ros-packages, but I have to install the ros-repository first. Trying to install firefox, but that is snap-based. Used firefox for the ROS Humble Install instructions.
  • Installed python3-colcon-argcomplete (11 packages)
  • Installed ros-humble-base first (258 packages), followed by ros-humble-cartographer-* (360 new, 7 upgraded).
  • Next ros-humble-joint-state-publisher-* (17 packages), followed by ros-humble-nav2-* (119 packages, 5 upgraded)
  • Next ros-humble-rosbridge-* (22 packages), followed by ros-humble-rqt-* (61 packages)
  • Next ros-humble-rtabmap-* (51 new, 1 upgraded), followed by ros-humble-usb-cam-* (11 packages).
  • Last one is ros-humble-depthai-* (28 packages). Left the gazebo part for the moment.
  • The code needed is available on github. Unfortunatelly, colcon build --packages-select doesn't work, so have do these three commands in each sub-dir of src/ugv_else: cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
    cmake --build build --target install
    sudo cmake --build build --target install
    
  • There is not only /home/jetson/git/ugv_ws/install/setup.bash, but also the preinstalled /home/jetson/ugv_ws/install/setup.bash. Yet, running this script gave missing local_setup.bash for ugv_description, ugv_gazebo, ugv_nav and ugv_slam. Those local_setup.bash were logical links to /home/ws. Changing the link to /home/jetson (with sudo!) solved this. Now ~/.bashrc works.
  • Yet, nor ros2 launch ugv_description display.launch.py use_rviz:=true nor ros2 run ugv_bringup ugv_driver works (package not found). Maybe a ros-dep init first, even better in a humble_ws/src/, with the different packages in that src-directory.
  • At least ros2 run usb_cam usb_cam_node_exe worked. Could view the image with ros2 run image_view image_view --ros-args --remap image:=/image_raw. Only no permission to save image:
    

  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.

  January 27, 2025

  • 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.

  January 24, 2025

  • Should check pyslam.

  January 22, 2025

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

  January 21, 2025

  • 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!).

  January 20, 2025

  • 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.

  January 17, 2025

  • 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.

  January 16, 2025

  • Comparison of 4 RGB-D cameras. Overall the ZED 2 was the winner.

  January 2, 2025

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

  Previous Labbooks

  • 2024
  • 2023