srrg2_qgl_viewport_ros

Package srrg2_qgl_viewport_ros

QGLViewer-based implementation of a generic viewport that works via ROS messages (in a separate process). The major features provided are:

• clear separation between processing executable (e.g. SLAM thread) and viewing executable - that can run at different framerates
• rendering multiple viewports at the same time without writing any code
• benchmark mode triggered when all viewports are closed (no read/writes on the shared memory in this case)

How to build

All our software is tested both with Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04 (GCC 5 and 7), still the remaining of this guide refers to Ubuntu 18.04.

1. initialize the srrg2 Catkin workspace following the guide here. As indicated in the aforementioned guide, we suggest to have a directory in which you clone all the srrg2 repositories (referred here as SRRG2_SOURCE_ROOT) and a directory that contains the Catkin workspace (referred here as SRRG2_WS_ROOT)

2. clone all the required packages

cd <SRRG2_SOURCE_ROOT>
git clone https://github.com/srrg-sapienza/srrg2_cmake_modules.git
git clone https://github.com/srrg-sapienza/srrg2_core.git
git clone https://github.com/srrg-sapienza/srrg2_qgl_viewport.git # this package :)

3. link all the packages in your Catkin workspace

cd <SRRG2_WS_ROOT>/src
ln -s <SRRG2_SOURCE_ROOT>/srrg2_cmake_modules .
ln -s <SRRG2_SOURCE_ROOT>/srrg2_core/srrg2_core .
ln -s <SRRG2_SOURCE_ROOT>/srrg2_core/srrg2_core_ros .
ln -s <SRRG2_SOURCE_ROOT>/srrg2_cmake_modules .
ln -s <SRRG2_SOURCE_ROOT>/srrg2_qgl_viewport/srrg2_qgl_viewport .
ln -s <SRRG2_SOURCE_ROOT>/srrg2_qgl_viewport/srrg2_qgl_viewport_ros . # this package

4. build using Catkin

cd <your_catkin_ws>
catkin build srrg2_qgl_viewport_ros

How to use

In this design there are 2 different processes that should work together: a server - which streams data over the network via ROS messages - and a client - that receives the messages and renders them on a viewport. The server represents the SLAM process, that could run on a cheap system (e.g. on the robot); the client process instead should run on a powerful machine that supports OpenGL rendering.

Therefore as example of usage we refer to:

• test_viewer_core_server for the server process
• srrg_viewer_ros_client for the client process.

Note that no other client process should be coded, since our srrg_viewer_ros_client app can be used with every server process. If you want to spawn multiple rendering viewport, just run another instance of the srrg_viewer_ros_client app :).