New repositories: tu-darmstadt-ros-pkg, scene_labeller_rgbd (Cornell)

David Kotfis from the Personal Robotics group at Cornell University writes

Hello ROS Users!

The Personal Robotics group at Cornell University would like to add its repository to the ROS.org list. Our package, called semantic_label_3d, is used in research applications using the Kinect sensor to "label" objects in a scene. Our repository is located at http://pr.cs.cornell.edu/sceneunderstanding/data/data.php.

Sincerely,
David Kotfis

Stefan Kohlbrecher & Johannes Meyer from team HECTOR Darmstadt write:

Hi ROS community,

we'd like to announce tu-darmstadt-ros-pkg, a repository providing ROS compatible software developed at TU Darmstadt. From the start, we provide packages developed in the scope of team HECTOR Darmstadt related to SLAM and object tracking in harsh environments such as those encountered in the simulated Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) environments of the RoboCup Rescue League. This is the SLAM system we used to score top places at various competitions (1st place overall RoboCup German 2011, close 2nd best in class autonomy RoboCup 2011, 3rd place SICK robot day 2010 etc.). Example videos of hectormapping from the hectorslam stack used in a handheld mapping system can be seen here:

We provide the following stacks:

hector_slam stack:

• hector_mapping is a fast SLAM system that does not require any odometry information and is able to learn accurate grid maps of small and medium scale scenarios. It can be used interchangeably with gmapping. The system provides 2D pose estimates at 40Hz (with a Hokuyo UTM-30LX) but does not perform explicit loop closure like gmapping does.
• hector_trajectory_server saves tf based trajectories given a source and target frame. They are made available as a nav_msgs/Path using both a service and topic. The travelled path of a robot can thus easily be visualized in rviz as well as plotted into the Geotiff generated by the hector_geotiff node.
• hector_geotiff generates RoboCup Rescue League rules compliant GeoTiff maps with georeference information, showing both the map and the robot path. It uses nav_msgs/OccupancyGrid and nav_msgs/Path messages retrieved via services, so it can also be used with gmapping and other mapping systems.
• hector_map_tools provides some tools related to extracting information from nav_msgs/OccupancyGrid data, like retrieving the rectangular of the map that actually contains non-unknown data.

hector_worldmodel stack:

• object_tracker provides a probabilistic (gaussian representation) system for tracking and mapping the pose of objects of interest in the world (used for victim mapping in RoboCup Rescue).
• world_model_msgs provides a ROS message based interface for updating the object_tracker.

hector_common stack:

• bfl_eigen is a patched version of BFL that uses Eigen.
• hector_marker_drawing is a class for helping with publishing marker messages.

vrmagic_camera stack: Driver for vrmagic four sensor cameras, unstable development code.

Documentation and Tutorials will be added in the coming days once the repository is indexed on ros.org.

on behalf of all members of team HECTOR Darmstadt,
Stefan Kohlbrecher & Johannes Meyer