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ROS packages for SICK laser scaners. This driver provides the measurement data as PointCloud2 and LaserScan data. The use of PointCloud2 data is recommended.

The LaserScan data should only be used for debugging purposes. They provide the raw data for each scan plane in a different coordinate frame. Due to the geometry of the scanning planes of the MRS1104 there is no coordinate transformation between the scan planes that can be described by tf messages, therefore no tf messages are published. That is why the PointCloud2 data should be used.

Devices Supported

The driver supports at least the scanners listed below and has also been tested with these devices:

For scanners of the series Tim3xx this driver should work but has not been tested yet.

Installation from sources

Major revisons of the software are released as binary packages. And can therefore be installed via the package manager. The driver is constantly being developed further, so we recommend that you check out and compile the software from the devel branch of the repository. The following actions are necessary for this:

source /opt/ros/<rosdistro>/setup.bash
mkdir -p ~/ros_catkin_ws/src/
cd ~/ros_catkin_ws/src/
git clone -b devel --single-branch git://github.com/SICKAG/sick_scan.git
cd ..
catkin_make
source ~/ros_catkin_ws/install/setup.bash

First steps

1. Use the SICK SOPAS ET Software to determine or set the IP address of the laser scanner.

2. Change Ip address is in the launch-file associated with your scanner type.
3. Launch the node e.g.

    roslaunch sick_scan sick_mrs_1xxx.launch

4. Launch rviz

    rviz rviz

5. Select laser as fixed frame. And add a new PointCloud decoder subscribed at topic cloud.

6. Enjoy.

Troubleshooting

1. Check Scanner IP in the launch file.

2. Check Ethernet connection to scanner with netcat e.g. nc -z -v -w5 $SCANNERIPADDRESS 2112.

   • For further details about setting up the correct ip settings see IP configuration

3. View node startup output wether the IP connection could be established
4. Check the scanner status using the LEDs on the device. The LED codes are described in the above mentioned operation manuals.
5. Further testing and troubleshooting informations can found in the file test/readme_testplan.txt
6. If you stop the scanner in your debugging IDE or by other hard interruption (like Ctrl-C), you must wait until 60 sec. before the scanner is up and running again. During this time the MRS6124 reconnects twice.
   • If you do not wait this waiting time you could see one of the following messages:
   • TCP connection error
   • Error-Message 0x0d
7. Amplitude values in rviz: If you see only one color in rviz try the following:
   • Set the min/max-Range of intensity display in the range [0...200] and switch on the intensity flag in the lauch file
8. In case of network problems check your own ip address and the ip address of your laser scanner (by using SOPAS ET).
   • List of own IP-addresses: ifconfig|grep "inet addr"
   • Try to ping scanner ip address (used in launch file)
9. If the driver stops during init phase please stop the driver with ctrl-c and restart (could be caused due to protocol ASCII/Binary cola-dialect).

Support

• In case of technical support please open a new issue. Under https://github.com/SICKAG/sick_scan/issues. For optimal support, add the following information to your request:

  1. Scanner model name,
  2. Ros node startup log,
  3. Sopas file of your scanner configuration.

     The instructions at http://sickusablog.com/create-and-download-a-sopas-file/ show how to create the Sopas file.

• In case of application support please use https://supportportal.sick.com.