Drivers

SIG Coordinator: Jack O'Quin

Topics: driver packaging, sensor_msgs, dynamic_reconfigure

Members:

• Jack O'Quin
• Chad Rockey
• Eric Perko
• Ken Tossell
• Ze'ev Klapow

Mailing List:

https://groups.google.com/group/ros-sig-drivers

Old Mailing list:

• discussion archives.

Proposed new features

• Eliminate packaging impediments to writing drivers with minimal dependencies. It should be possible to release driver stacks that can run on headless systems without installing heavy dependencies like X11.

  • Separate GUI dependencies from geometry stack (<<Ticket(ros-pkg 5439)>>).\

    • Requires tf2?

  • Separate GUI dependencies from dynamic_reconfigure (Kforge ticket #3).

    • Ze'ev finished this!

  • Enable basic sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 generation using only minimal PCL components.

• dynamic_reconfigure

  • Possible enhancements, including the Parameter Groups Proposal, and <<Ticket(ros-pkg 3617)>>

    • There are some changes by Ben Ballard to support <<Ticket(ros-pkg 3617)>> in the dynamic_reconfigure master, but we'll obviously need to test them and have the dynamic_reconfigure maintainer get them in an updated release for Groovy

  • C++ Client API (To resolve having to call command line from code.)

  • separate GUI from driver service components Kforge ticket #3

• camera_drivers

  • Camera namespace changes, REP approval needed. (Jack): No REP draft is currently available. Unless someone volunteers to move it forward, I doubt this will go into Groovy.

• sensor_msgs

  • Add an informational GPS message that contains Satellite Counts, etc?

    • This should just be informational diagnostics. Not done.

  • Submit patches to consumers of gps_common/GPSFix to convert to sensor_msgs/NavSatFix if possible.

• laser_drivers

  • Unary stack packaging, see REP-0109

    • Holding off until Catkin settles. Mostly done for Hydro.
  • Need a new REP or interface for multi-echo lasers.

    • In progress.

  • Need to support ethernet hokuyos. Either through new package or updating hokuyo_node.

    • Depends on multi-echo.
    • No test hardware (maybe for Hydro).

  • Need a new package for the SICK 100 and 500 series.\

    • Depends on multi-echo.
    • No test hardware (maybe for Hydro).

• imu_drivers

  • Unary stack packaging, see REP-0109

    • Holding off until Catkin settles. Done for hydro.

• diagnostics

  • Standard diagnostics API (key names, hardware ids, parameter names, etc)

    • laser_drivers

    • gps_drivers

    • imu_drivers?

    • camera_drivers?

    • joystick_drivers?

  • Is this more than just basic diagnostic support? Camera drivers already have that.

    • This is trying to standardize key names, hardware ids, parameter names, maybe even topic names. We should try to write a REP for each driver specifying best usage: this answer starts that process for Imu: http://answers.ros.org/question/50870/what-frame-is-sensor_msgsimuorientation-relative-to/

• gps_drivers (Eric: Delayed until H-Turtle... not going to be able to get to this before the feature freeze)

  • Update nmea_gps_driver to read from a string topic for more compatibility (see gpsdrivers ticket #3)

  • Update nmea_gps_driver to support synchronization of multiple sentences in order to pull the best data available for constructing the output messages

  • Migrate to Github
  • gpsd_client isn't on Github. Need to ask Ken to move it.
  • Catkinize.

Deadlines

Release date (2012-12-31)

• Actual release date