ROS Resources: Documentation | Support | Discussion Forum | Index | Service Status | ros @ Robotics Stack Exchange
Ask Your Question
0

Integrate 1D-Odometry into EKF

asked 2016-01-19 14:57:42 -0600

lalten gravatar image

Hi,

I have an Ackermann-steering style robot whose tri-phase motor encoder I read. I would like to use this information as odometry with an robot_localization EKF node. The EKF fuses IMU yaw successfully already.

I build an PoseWithCovarianceStamped (which is expected by the EKF node) in my custom node. But I'm confused about how I should integrate my position, since the encoder tells only distance driven in base_link / X-direction (forward). I tried two approaches:

  1. On every encoder tick, add a certain length vector oriented like the IMU orientation quaternion axis. The message header's frame_id is odom.

  2. On each encoder tick, add a certain length along the X-axis. The message header's frame_id is base_link.

Also, I'm not sure how to configure the pose0 in the EKF. In the first case, I tried:

<param name="pose0_relative" value="true"/>    
<rosparam param="pose0_config">
  [true, true,  false,  # x, y, z, - we want x and y
  false, false, false,  # roll, pitch, yaw,
  false, false, false,  # vx, vy, vz,
  false, false, false,  # vroll, vpitch, vyaw,
  false, false, false]  # ax, ay, az
</rosparam>

And in the second case:

<param name="pose0_differential" value="true"/>    
<rosparam param="pose0_config">
  [true, false, false,  # x, y, z, - we want x from motor encoder
  false, false, false,  # roll, pitch, yaw,
  false, false, false,  # vx, vy, vz,
  false, false, false,  # vroll, vpitch, vyaw,
  false, false, false]  # ax, ay, az
</rosparam>

The first case doesn't work at all (nothing moves in rviz). The second case works really well -- In the direction the car faces when the odometry stack is launched; but not at all perpendicular to that.

How can I use my encoder information with the EKF?

Cheers
Laurenz

edit retag flag offensive close merge delete

1 Answer

Sort by ยป oldest newest most voted
1

answered 2016-01-20 01:06:54 -0600

If you look at Coordinate Frames and Transforming Sensor Data you'll notice that pose data is interpreted relative to the world frame, while twist data is interpreted relative to the base_link frame.

One proper way of providing the data would thus be to compute the velocity from the encoder ticks and time between encoder reads and then provide a nav_msgs/Odometry message with the correct velocity set in the twist/twist/linear/x field. This can then be fed into robot_localization (the correct field has to be set to "true" for the config of course).

edit flag offensive delete link more

Comments

Thanks a lot, that solved it!

lalten gravatar image lalten  ( 2016-01-20 05:42:07 -0600 )edit

Question Tools

1 follower

Stats

Asked: 2016-01-19 14:57:42 -0600

Seen: 328 times

Last updated: Jan 20 '16