Only released in EOL distros:   electric fuerte hydro

The applanix_driver stack provides a comprehensive ROS interface to Applanix POS-LV products, which integrate GPS, IMU, and DMI data into a high accuracy position and orientation fix.

Installation

sudo apt-get install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-applanix-driver

These packages have not (yet) been released for Indigo or newer versions, but can be build from source in your catkin workspace. Refer to the catkin tutorials for more information on building catkin workspaces.

If you'd like to contribute or hack on it (especially to add more parameter support), feel free to check it out from github, and send pull requests!

Getting Started

An example launch file is located in the applanix_launch package. If the Applanix hardware still has its factory default IP (192.168.53.100), then give your computer a static IP on the same subnet, and try launching:

roslaunch applanix_launch example.launch

You should see a slew of topics and services come up. Each topic corresponds to one of the Applanix data groups, and each service corresponds to an Applanix command message. When you subscribe to one of the topics, it may take a moment to begin producing data—to save bandwidth and processing, the bridge node avoids enabling a data group until there is a subscriber for it.

If you're looking for the topic for a particular Applanix group, please consult the file applanix_msgs/src/mapping.py.

If the device IP has been changed from the default, you will need to change it in the launch file.

Structure

The applanix_bridge package provides a direct translation of the Applanix binary format into ROS messages and services. The remaining packages provide helper nodes which further convert those messages into familiar ROS messages (Diagnostics, Imu, SatNavFix, etc), and offer some support for configuration via ROS parameters.

The applanix_msgs package contains a ROS msg for each Applanix data group and command message, as well as mapping.py, which controls the naming of the resultant ROS topics and service. The applanix_generated_msgs package contains a script which creates a wrapper srv for each command message, and also assembles a mega AllMsgs.msg file. This structure allows a natural service-oriented interface to configuring and commanding the Applanix hardware, while still allowing the user to subscribe to a single topic to receive a snapshot of the device's configuration at a given time.

Todo

This stack is considered usable and stable. Future work could include:

• Porting applanix_bridge to roscpp.
• Adding additional support for configuration by ROS parameters.
• Autodetecting the device on the local subnet.

• A terminal-based viewer (like gpsmon) to assist in visualizing the status and configuration of the device.

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