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Astra Pro Callibration

My depth and image topics are not aligning very well. I am using the astra_camera package. I attempted to solve the issue by callibrating the RGB image with camera_callibration. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to help. Is there some other callibration or something I need to do to improve the alignment?

roslaunch astra_camera astrapro.launch

depth topic: /camera/depth/image_rect

rgb topic: /camera/rgbd/imagerectcolor

image description

Asked by fruitbot on 2021-06-02 17:29:32 UTC

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Doesn't camera_calibration only calibrate camera intrinsics? Your RGB and IR cameras are essentially two different sensors. That would be an extrinsic calibration.

I'd suggest to first make sure the camera OEM doesn't have any tools for this. They typically do.

Asked by gvdhoorn on 2021-06-03 01:52:07 UTC

"Doesn't camera_calibration only calibrate camera intrinsics." Yes, but thought it may still be the source of the error.

From what I understand, extrinsic calibration accounts for the relative position of the two sensors, right? I am using a launch file specific to the Astra Pro, so I assumed that would be accounted for within the ROS package.

Orbbec (the OEM) does offer an SDK, I will look into it and update here if I find a solution.

Asked by fruitbot on 2021-06-03 11:23:04 UTC

"Doesn't camera_calibration only calibrate camera intrinsics." Yes, but thought it may still be the source of the error.

could indeed be the case.

I am using a launch file specific to the Astra Pro, so I assumed that would be accounted for within the ROS package.

That would be something to check. It depends on which entity is responsible for publishing the relevant TF frames. The driver would be one good candidate.

Orbbec (the OEM) does offer an SDK, I will look into it and update here if I find a solution.

you could also ask them whether what you see is abnormal. Some disparity between the RGB and depth images is not uncommon.

Asked by gvdhoorn on 2021-06-03 11:25:11 UTC

Answers

So I tried 3 things that significantly improved the depth/rgb alignment.

  1. I just got another Orbbec Astra Pro and noticed the model name is "Astra Pro NL" while the one I have been using is just "Astra Pro." It turns out Orbbec's astra_camera package is meant to be compatible with the NL version (I didn't find this documented anywhere. Determined by device ID). I am now using the NL hardware.

  2. I tried Orbbec's astra_launch package. It includes launch files that just call the astra_camera nodes. roslaunch astra_launch astrapro.launch

  3. I changed my depth topic to /camera/depth/image_raw. Interestingly, this one seems to work much better than the "rectified" depth image (maybe my depth callibration parameters aren't valid).

image description

Asked by fruitbot on 2021-06-03 14:11:29 UTC

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