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You can indeed use ar_track_alvar to detect ar_markers.

If you are using openni_launch or freenect_launch packages to get the images from your kinect, you should have a bunch of topics published.
Camera image topic stands for the topic where your kinect image is published, should look like: /camera/rgb/image_raw
Camera info topic stands for the topic where the information of your camera are published, shoud look like: /camera/rgb/camera_info
The output frame parameter means the link relative to which you want the position of the detected ar marjers will be published (for example base_link) or whatever link suits your application. This must be a link known by tf, otherwise ROS won't be able to compute a transformation.
Documentation can be found here
Examples can be found here

The detected markers will be published on /ar_pose_marker (ar_track_alvar/AlvarMarkers) as an array of AlvarMarkers You can also visualize them in rviz, you just have to add a marker plugin and select the correspondig topic (/visualization_marker).

Hope this helps,