Zivid ROS driver

This is the official ROS driver for Zivid 3D cameras.

This driver provides support for ROS2. If you are looking for ROS1 support, please see the ros1-master branch.

Installation

Support

This driver supports Ubuntu 20.04 / 22.04 / 24.04 with ROS2. Follow the official ROS installation instructions for your OS. If you are looking for the ROS1 driver, please see the ros1-master branch.

Zivid SDK

To use the ROS driver you need to download and install the "Zivid Core" package. Zivid SDK version 2.9.0 to 2.13.1 is supported. See releases for older ROS driver releases that supports older SDK versions.

Follow this guide to install "Zivid Core" for your version of Ubuntu. The "Zivid Studio" and "Zivid Tools" packages can be useful to test your system setup and camera, but are not required by the driver.

An OpenCL 1.2 compatible GPU with driver installed is required by the SDK. Follow this guide to install OpenCL drivers for your system.

C++ compiler

A C++17 compiler is required.

sudo apt-get install -y g++

Downloading and building Zivid ROS driver

First, source the setup.bash script for your ROS distribution in your terminal:

source /opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/setup.bash

Then create the workspace and src directory:

mkdir -p ~/ros2_ws/src

Clone the Zivid ROS project into the src directory:

cd ~/ros2_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/zivid/zivid-ros.git

Initialize rosdep:

cd ~/ros2_ws/src
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

Install dependencies:

cd ~/ros2_ws/src
rosdep install -i --from-path ./ -y

Finally, build the driver:

cd ~/ros2_ws
colcon build --symlink-install

Getting started

Connect the Zivid camera to your PC. You can use the ZividListCameras command-line tool available in the "Zivid Tools" package to confirm that your system has been configured correctly, and that the camera is discovered by your PC. You can also open Zivid Studio and connect to the camera. Close Zivid Studio before continuing with the rest of this guide.

Run the sample_capture_cpp via the launch script to check that everything is working.

cd ~/ros2_ws && source install/setup.bash
ros2 launch zivid_samples sample_with_rviz.launch sample:=sample_capture_cpp

This will start the zivid_camera driver node, the sample_capture_cpp node, and rviz. The zivid_camera driver will connect to the first available Zivid camera, and then sample_capture_cpp will trigger captures repeatedly. The resulting point cloud and color image should be visible in rviz.

A more detailed description of the zivid_camera driver follows below.

For sample code, see the Samples section.

Launching the driver

To launch the driver, use ros2 run:

cd ~/ros2_ws && source install/setup.bash
ros2 run zivid_camera zivid_camera

The driver will by default connect to the first available Zivid camera. This behavior can be overridden by setting the serial_number launch parameter, see below.

Launch Parameters (advanced)

The following parameters can be specified when starting the driver. Note that all the parameters are optional.

For example, to run the zivid_camera driver with a specific serial_number specified:

ros2 run zivid_camera zivid_camera --ros-args -p serial_number:=ABCD1234

Or you can use a launch file and invoke it as:

ros2 launch zivid_samples zivid_camera_with_serial_number.launch serial_number:=ABCD1234

file_camera_path (string, default: "")

Specify the path to a file camera to use instead of a real Zivid camera. This can be used to develop without access to hardware. The file camera returns the same point cloud for every capture. Visit our knowledgebase to download file camera.

frame_id (string, default: "zivid_optical_frame")

Specify the frame_id used for all published images and point clouds.

serial_number (string, default: "")

Specify the serial number of the Zivid camera to use. This parameter is optional. By default, the driver will connect to the first available camera.

update_firmware_automatically (bool, default: true)

Specify if the firmware of the connected camera should be automatically updated to the correct version when the Zivid ROS driver starts. If set to false, if the firmware version is out of date then camera must be manually updated, for example using Zivid Studio or ZividFirmwareUpdater. Read more about firmware update in our knowledgebase. This parameter is optional, and by default it is true.

Configuration

The capture settings used by the zivid_camera ROS driver must be configured using YAML, which can be exported from Zivid Studio or the API, or downloaded as .yml files from our knowledge base.

For convenience, the Zivid ROS driver supports configuring capture settings in two ways: Using file path to a .yml file, or as a YAML string.

The following ROS parameters control which settings are used when capturing with the driver. Note that you must set either the _file_path or the _yaml parameter. If both _file_path and _yaml parameters are set to a non-empty string at the same time, then the driver will return an error when capturing. By default, all settings parameters are empty.

3D capture

settings_file_path (string, default: "")

Specify the path to a .yml file that contains the settings you want to use.

settings_yaml (string, default: "")

Specify a YAML string that contains the settings you want to use. For example, you can copy the contents of a .yml file saved from Zivid Studio.

The service capture_assistant/suggest_settings will modify the settings parameters automatically.

2D capture

settings_2d_file_path (string, default: "")

Specify the path to a .yml file that contains the settings you want to use.

settings_2d_yaml (string, default: "")

Specify a YAML string that contains the 2D settings you want to use. For example, you can copy the contents of a .yml file saved from Zivid Studio.

Services

capture

std_srvs/srv/Trigger

Invoke this service to trigger a 3D capture. See section Configuration for how to configure the 3D capture settings. The resulting point cloud is published on topics points/xyz and points/xyzrgba, color image is published on topic color/image_color, and depth image is published on topic depth/image. Camera calibration is published on topics color/camera_info and depth/camera_info.

See Sample Capture for code example.

capture_2d

std_srvs/srv/Trigger

Invoke this service to trigger a 2D capture. See section Configuration for how to configure the 2D capture settings. The resulting 2D image is published to topic color/image_color. Note: 2D RGB image is also published as a part of 3D capture, see capture.

See Sample Capture 2D for code example.

capture_and_save

zivid_interfaces/srv/CaptureAndSave.srv

It does exactly the same as the capture service, in addition it will save the frame to a file. This service takes a path as an argument. The chosen format is detected via the file extension. See knowledge base for a list of available output formats.

See Sample Capture and Save for code example.

capture_assistant/suggest_settings

zivid_interfaces/srv/CaptureAssistantSuggestSettings.srv

Invoke this service to analyze your scene and find suggested settings for your particular scene, camera distance, ambient lighting conditions, etc. This service will automatically update the node parameter settings_yaml with the suggested settings, see section Configuration. When this service has returned, you can invoke the capture service to trigger a 3D capture using these suggested settings.

This service has two parameters:

max_capture_time (duration):

Specify the maximum capture time for the settings suggested by the Capture Assistant. A longer capture time may be required to get good data for more challenging scenes. Minimum value is 0.2 sec and maximum value is 10.0 sec.

ambient_light_frequency (uint8):

Possible values are: AMBIENT_LIGHT_FREQUENCY_NONE, AMBIENT_LIGHT_FREQUENCY_50HZ, AMBIENT_LIGHT_FREQUENCY_60HZ. Can be used to ensure that the suggested settings are compatible with the frequency of the ambient light in the scene. If ambient light is unproblematic, use AMBIENT_LIGHT_FREQUENCY_NONE for optimal performance. Default is AMBIENT_LIGHT_FREQUENCY_NONE.

See Sample Capture Assistant for code example.

camera_info/model_name

zivid_interfaces/srv/CameraInfoModelName.srv

Returns the camera's model name.

camera_info/serial_number

zivid_interfaces/srv/CameraInfoSerialNumber.srv

Returns the camera's serial number.

is_connected

zivid_interfaces/srv/IsConnected.srv

Returns if the camera is currently in Connected state (from the perspective of the ROS driver). The connection status is updated by the driver every 10 seconds and before each capture service call. If the camera is not in Connected state the driver will attempt to re-connect to the camera when it detects that the camera is available. This can happen if the camera is power-cycled or the USB/Ethernet cable is unplugged and then replugged.

Topics

The Zivid ROS driver provides several topics providing 3D, color, SNR and camera calibration data as a result of calling capture/capture_2d services. The different output topics provides flexibility for different use cases. Note that for performance reasons no messages are generated or sent on topics with zero active subscribers.

color/camera_info

sensor_msgs/msg/CameraInfo

Camera calibration and metadata.

color/image_color

sensor_msgs/msg/Image

Color/RGBA image. RGBA image is published as a result of invoking the capture or capture_2d service. Images are encoded as "rgba8", where the alpha channel is always 255.

depth/camera_info

sensor_msgs/msg/CameraInfo

Camera calibration and metadata.

depth/image

sensor_msgs/msg/Image

Depth image. Each pixel contains the z-value (along the camera Z axis) in meters. The image is encoded as 32-bit float. Pixels where z-value is missing are NaN.

points/xyzrgba

sensor_msgs/msg/PointCloud2

Point cloud data. Sent as a result of the capture service. The output is in the camera's optical frame, where x is right, y is down and z is forward. The included point fields are x, y, z (in meters) and rgba (color).

points/xyz

sensor_msgs/msg/PointCloud2

Point cloud data. This topic is similar to topic points/xyzrgba, except that only the XYZ 3D coordinates are included. This topic is recommended if you don't need the RGBA values.

snr/camera_info

sensor_msgs/msg/CameraInfo

Camera calibration and metadata.

snr/image

sensor_msgs/msg/Image

Each pixel contains the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) value. The image is encoded as 32-bit float. Published as a part of the capture service.

normals/xyz

sensor_msgs/msg/PointCloud2

Normals for the point cloud. The included fields are normal x, y and z coordinates. Each coordinate is a float value. There are no additional padding floats, so point-step is 12 bytes (3*4 bytes). The normals are unit vectors. Note that subscribing to this topic will cause some additional processing time for calculating the normals.

Samples

In the zivid_samples package we have added samples that demonstrate how to use the Zivid ROS driver. These samples can be used as a starting point for your project.

To launch the Python samples using ros2 launch, you need python to be available as a command. For example, the python-is-python3 package can be installed to achieve this, by running the following command:

sudo apt install python-is-python3

On Windows, the Python samples cannot be launched using ros2 launch. Instead, please launch the samples using ros2 run zivid_samples <sample_name>.py together with ros2 run zivid_camera zivid_camera in another terminal window.

Sample Capture

This sample performs single-acquisition 3D captures in a loop. This sample shows how to configure the capture settings, how to subscribe to the points/xyzrgba topic, and how to invoke the capture service.

Source code: C++ Python

ros2 launch zivid_samples sample.launch sample:=sample_capture_cpp
ros2 launch zivid_samples sample.launch sample:=sample_capture.py