ROS Programming: Building Powerful Robots

Interfacing Velodyne sensors with ROS

We have seen how to simulate a Velodyne sensor; now let's have a look at how we can interface a real Velodyne sensor with ROS.

The following commands are to install the velodyne ROS driver package to convert Velodyne data to point cloud data.

ROS Kinetic:

    $ sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-velodyne

ROS Indigo:

    $ sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-velodyne

These commands will install the ROS Velodyne driver and point cloud converter packages.

This driver supports models such as the HDL-64E, HDL-32E, and VLP-16.

Here are the commands to start the driver nodelets:

    $ roslaunch velodyne_driver nodelet_manager.launch model:=32E

Here, you need to mention the model name along with the launch file to start the ...