How to get hector SLAM to work with a velodyne?
Subject says it all. I "roslaunch hector_slam_launch tutorial.launch" and then I "roslaunch velodyne_pointcloud 32e.launch pcap:="a pcap file.pcap" and then I "rosrun velodyne_laserscan velodyne_laserscan_node". This doesn't work. If I launch the velodyne_pointcloud and velodyne_laserscan from tutorial.launch and comment out "use_sim_time", I see the following pop up in the console: "lookupTransform base_footprint to velodyne timed out. Could not transform laser scan into base frame. Not sure how to handle this. Any insight appreciated. Thanks
Sounds like you're having TF issues - I would look into this. Additionally, that's a 3D lidar, you'll need to take only 1 channel for planar slam
The velodyne_laserscan package automatically extracts the channel closest to zero degrees and publishes as a 2D LaserScan, and it's part of the standard launch files.