Can an IRDAR (IR Range Finder) be used with SLAM and gmapping to make a map of the surrounding?

Hello, I am just a noob in ROS and I need your help. LIDARS are very costly in India and they are mostly not available so is the case for a Microsoft Kinect, it is available but costly, so can the IR range finder from SHARP (SHARP IR RANGE FINDER GP2YOA21YKOF) with my RPI 2 be used? Heres the link...http://robokits.co.in/sensors/sharp-ir-rangefinder-gp2y0a21yk0f-10cm-80cm

Thanks for ur help in advance, im very sorry to disturb u asking such stupid questions but it be great if u could help me.

Best Regards, Mukut

Asked by mukut_noob on 2016-03-06 01:33:41 UTC

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Answers

Yes, it appears to be possible (although rather slow) to use an IR sensor for mapping and navigation, as described in this blog post: http://www.pirobot.org/blog/0014/

Asked by ahendrix on 2016-03-06 02:18:04 UTC

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okk...thnx....and can u suggest me a ros distro that i shall use on my pi? and run raspbian or ubuntu 14.04 on my pi....can u help?

Asked by mukut_noob on 2016-03-06 06:34:54 UTC

ROS is supported on ARM on Ubuntu 14.04, so I strongly recommend running Ubuntu 14.04

Asked by ahendrix on 2016-03-06 16:22:22 UTC

Thanks very much ahendrix....can u tell me a way to know the odometry? shall i use a wheel encoder? can u help me?

Asked by mukut_noob on 2016-03-08 08:25:41 UTC

Yes; you can use wheel encoders for odometry. The specifics are fairly detailed, and warrant a new question. (There are also LOTS of good resources online)

Asked by ahendrix on 2016-03-08 13:59:21 UTC

Ahendrix....can u give me a link for downloading an image with ROS indigo for rpi2? Coz it's quite a difficult job to get it done from source....and u know how slow is the internet over here in India and hence takes a hell lot of time....

Asked by mukut_noob on 2016-03-17 09:36:34 UTC

I don't own a raspberry Pi 2 and don't have an image for you. I STRONGLY recommend that you use Ubuntu 14.04 and the UbuntuARM instructions instead of building from source: http://wiki.ros.org/indigo/Installation/UbuntuARM

Asked by ahendrix on 2016-03-17 12:48:30 UTC

This has gotten pretty off-topic. If you have more questions that are not about IRDAR, please ask a new question.

Asked by ahendrix on 2016-03-17 12:49:17 UTC