Connecting a Velodyne VLP16

[MithunKinarullathil]

hexarotor
Leader

2
May 2
How can a VLP16 LIDAR be setup in order to connect to the internal network of Docker Spawner container? What nodes do I need?

[MithunKinarullathil]

hexarotor
Leader

2
May 19
First step is to open a UDP port 2368 (default) of the spawner-robot1 container (check Docker Customization 1 to know how).

You need to build the three ROS Nodelets, exactly like you do when you call roslaunch velodyne_pointcloud VLP16_points.launch: namely:

/velodyne_nodelet_manager_driver (driver node)
/velodyne_nodelet_manager_laserscan (laserscan node)
/velodyne_nodelet_manager_transform (pointcloud node)

Below you can see the three newly created nodelets in Flow.

At each one of the nodes you should add ports for the documented topics (inputs and outputs), as well as Parameters. check Importing a ROS Node for more details.

Since we are creating ROS Nodelets (instead of normal ROS Nodes), you should add an OPort of the type NodeletClient at each one of the nodes.

To create the Manager Nodelet , add a new node with an IPort of the type NodeletServer.
Link them properly and set the right parameters at each node.

You are now ready to use your VLP16, as demo’ed in this video realtraffic_velodyne_aloam.mp4 - Google Drive 3