Tritech Micron ROS Package

This ROS package configures and communicates with the Tritech Micron sonar. This has only been tested on ROS Indigo, Jade, and Kinetic over RS232.

Setting up

You must clone this repository as tritech_micron into your catkin workspace's src directory:

roscd
cd src
git clone https://github.com/mcgill-robotics/ros-tritech-micron.git tritech_micron

Dependencies

Before proceeding, make sure to install all the dependencies by running:

rosdep update
rosdep install tritech_micron

Compiling

You must compile this package before being able to run it. You can do so by running:

catkin_make

from the root of your workspace.

Running

To run, simply connect the Tritech Micron sonar over RS232 and launch the package with:

roslaunch tritech_micron tritech_micron.launch port:=</path/to/sonar> frame:=<frame_id>

port and frame are run-time ROS launch arguments:

• port: Serial port to read from, default: /dev/sonar.
• frame: tf frame to stamp the messages with, default: sonar.

The package will keep trying to connect to the sonar until it is successful.

The tritech_micron node will output to the following ROS topics:

• ~scan: PointCloud message. Scan data of the current heading only.
• ~heading: PoseStamped message. Current heading of the sonar.
• ~config: TritechMicronConfig message. Sonar config published on change.

Configuring

To configure the Tritech Micron sonar, take a look at the parameters defined in Scan.cfg.

These paramaters can also be updated on the fly with ROS dynamic_reconfigure as such:

rosrun rqt_reconfigure rqt_reconfigure

Visualizing

The scan data can be conveniently visualized with rviz. Simply, add the tritech_micron/scan topic as a PointCloud message to the view and make sure to set the Decay Time parameter to the number of seconds it takes to run a full scan in order to see the full scan at once instead of only one slice.

If done properly, you should be able to see something like this: