Sick S300 and HectorSlam

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Dear Felix,

We are trying to implement Hector SLAM (without odom) usign SICK LMS 200 laser range finder and we desperately need your help. We did the steps you have mentioned above making changes for LMS 200 in both the launch file and the config file but the map still doesn't update. We have tried numerous approaches but in vain.

One error that we are persistently getting is "lookupTransform base_footprint to /camera_link timed out. Could not transform laser scan into base_frame."

Here is the launch file we are using:

mapping2.launch

<launch>

 <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="map_to_scanmatcher" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /map/hector_mapping 100"/>
  <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="map_to_base_footprint" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /map /base_footprint 100"/>
   <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="base_footprint_to_base_link" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /base_footprint /base_link 100"/>
    <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="base_link_to_base_stabilized" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /base_link /base_stabilized 100"/>
   <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="base_stablized_to_base_frame" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /base_stabilized /base_frame 100"/>
   <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="base_frame_to_laser_link" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /base_frame /camera_link 100"/>
    <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="base_to_nav_link" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /base_frame /nav 100"/>

     <arg name="tf_map_scanmatch_transform_frame_name" default="scanmatcher_frame"/>
     <arg name="base_frame" default="base_footprint"/>
      <param name="pub_map_odom_transform" value="true"/>
      <param name="map_frame" value="map" />
      <param name="base_frame" value="base_frame" />
      <param name="odom_frame" value="base_frame" />

     <arg name="odom_frame" default="nav"/>
     <arg name="pub_map_odom_transform" default="true"/>
     <arg name="scan_subscriber_queue_size" default="5"/>
     <arg name="scan_topic" default="laser/scan"/>
     <arg name="map_size" default="2048"/>

 <node
     pkg="sicktoolbox_wrapper"
    type="sicklms"
    name="sicklms"
>
     <rosparam command="load" file="./Packages/hectorslam/launch/lms200_config.yaml" />
</node>

         <node pkg="hector_mapping" type="hector_mapping" name="hector_mapping" output="screen">

    <!-- Frame names -->
<param name="map_frame" value="map" />
<param name="base_frame" value="$(arg base_frame)" />
<param name="odom_frame" value="$(arg odom_frame)" />

<!-- Tf use -->
<param name="use_tf_scan_transformation" value="true"/>
<param name="use_tf_pose_start_estimate" value="false"/>
<param name="pub_map_odom_transform" value="$(arg pub_map_odom_transform)"/>

<!-- Map size / start point -->
<param name="map_resolution" value="0.050"/>
<param name="map_size" value="$(arg map_size)"/>
<param name="map_start_x" value="0.5"/>
<param name="map_start_y" value="0.5" />
<param name="map_multi_res_levels" value="2" />

<!-- Map update parameters -->
<param name="update_factor_free" value="0.4"/>
<param name="update_factor_occupied" value="0.9" />    
<param name="map_update_distance_thresh" value="0.4"/>
<param name="map_update_angle_thresh" value="0.06" />
<param name="laser_z_min_value" value = "-1.0" />
<param name="laser_z_max_value" value = "1.0" />

 <!-- Advertising config --> 
 <param name="advertise_map_service" value="true"/>

  <param name="scan_subscriber_queue_size" value="$(arg scan_subscriber_queue_size)"/>
  <param name="scan_topic" value="/scan"/>
 <param name="tf_map_scanmatch_transform_frame_name"   value="$(argtf_map_scanmatch_transform_frame_name)" />
   </node>
   <include file="$(find hector_geotiff)/launch/geotiff_mapper.launch"/>
 </launch>

Here is the configuration file for SICK LMS200 laser range finder

lms200_config.yaml

port: /dev/ttyS2 baud: 38400 connect_delay: 35 scan_duration: 0.025 #no info about that in SICK-docu, but 0.025 is believable and looks good in rviz scan_cycle_time: 0.040 #SICK-docu says S300 scans every 40ms inverted: false scan_id: 7 frame_id: /camera_link scan_intervals: [[-1.5708, 1.5708]] #[rad] these intervals are included to ... (more)