Point cloud recording and labelling for terrain data from Gazebo simulation

This repo is for automatically labelling point cloud data from Gazebo simulation, specifically to test rover perception systems

Environment and Dependencies:

Everything runs on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• Install ROS Melodic: http://wiki.ros.org/melodic/Installation/Ubuntu
• Install catkin: $ sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-catkin
• Create a catkin workspace: http://wiki.ros.org/catkin/Tutorials/create_a_workspace
• Clone this repo to src folder of your catkin workspace.
• If the ROS installation didn't install gazebo then follow: http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=install_ubuntu&cat=install
• Install Gazebo_ros_pkgs:
  • $ sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-gazebo-ros-pkgs ros-melodic-gazebo-ros-control
  • $ sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-hector-gazebo-plugins
  • $ sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-rqt-robot-steering - pkg for steering rover via a gui
• Depends on messages defined in common repo https://github.com/novarover/common, please clone into same workspace.
• Depends on the Gazebo simulation at https://github.com/novarover/gazebo, please clone into same workspace and change to the feature/ground_label branch

Git Usage:

• Clone this repository into a subdirectory of the catkin workspace src folder.
• To develop a feature: branch from develop and make a pull request into develop when finished with changes.

Compiling:

• Use $ catkin build anywhere within workspace to build your packages. If you've previously used catkin_make then you may need to delete build and devel folders from your workspace.
• For ROS to see your packages you must use command $ source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash where catkin_ws is the path of your workspace folder. This can be done automatically with each new terminal by adding to .bashrc: $ echo "source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
• Gazebo searches for models using env variable GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH. Therefore, you need to add the full path of the models folder to the variable. $ echo "export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=/path/to/models/:$GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH" >> ~/.bashrc

Use:

• Go to the workspace directory and start the Gazebo simulation $ roslaunch autonomous_sim rough_terrain.launch
• Start the Skid Steer Drive Controller graphical tool $ rosrun rqt_robot_steering rqt_robot_steering
• Can visualize the point cloud output by using $ rviz and adding a PointCloud2 visualization on the /camera/depth/points topic. May need to change the Global Fixed Frame setting to one of the drop down options as well
• Start recording the point cloud stream $ rosrun record_pointcloud record.py
• Quit the node to stop recording. The raw point cloud data will be stored under ./data/gazebo_pointcloud.npy and the labelled dataset will be stored under ./data/gazebo_pc_dataset.pickle