rviz_surface_trajectory 🔄

This code projects arbitrary trajectory patterns onto a triangular mesh in 3D space.

There are two main modes available: Either the resulting trajectory on the mesh (called "surface-trajectory") is following exactly the contour also in hidden areas (called "surface-loyal"), or just in the visible region (called "projection-loyal"). As the projected trajectories are intended for robot movements on object surfaces for surface treatment activities, there is a further post-processing step applied for the readyily use of the calculated surface-trajectories (called "offset-trajectory").

The implementation is done as a tool-plugin (called "Surface Trajectory") for RViz, which is the visualization tool of the Robot Operating System (ROS), to allow for interactive visualization and testing. However, the calculation part of the code may be detached from the tool-plugin and used in different applications.

RViz Screenshot

UML Class Diagram

Getting Started

To use the tool-plugin in RViz follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository to your catkin workspace path catkin_ws/src/.
2. Compile the repository, which is a catkin package, using catkin_make in your top level workspace folder. The plugin will then be automatically loaded with RViz.
3. Run RViz with rosrun rviz rviz (be sure to first start ROS Master with roscore).
4. Use the following commands in RViz for the tool-plugin:

Key	Function
T	Activate tool-plugin (must be active for the following commands)
Left mouse button	Place mesh or trajectory pattern points, respectively
Right mouse button	Toggle placement mode for mesh and trajectory pattern points
Q	Run the calculation and visualization of the projection-loyal surface-trajectory
W	Run the calculation and visualization of the surface-loyal surface-trajectory with cycle detection
E	Run the calculation and visualization of the surface-loyal surface-trajectory without cycle detection (Note: If there is a cutting point cycle this will induce an infinity loop.)
Y	Run the calculation and visualization of the projection-loyal offset-trajectory
X	Run the calculation and visualization of the surface-loyal offset-trajectory with cycle detection
C	Run the calculation and visualization of the surface-loyal offset-trajectory without cycle detection (Note: If there is a cutting point cycle this will induce an infinity loop.)
U	Start of the time measurement test (part of the thesis evaluation)
L	Toggle display of yellow connection lines
N	Toggle display of red normal vectors
D	Delete the placed blue trajectory pattern points

To load another mesh change mesh_resource_ in SurfaceTrajectoryTool.cpp to a new path and recompile.

Prerequisites

The code was developed using C++03 and the Ogre3D graphics engine (which is used by RViz). To compile the code with catkin and run it with RViz you need:

• Robot Operating System (ROS) - version Groovy Galapagos
  • RViz v1.9.36 (Ogre3D v1.7.4 (Cthugha), OpenGL v2.1 (GLSL v1.2))

Author

This was developed in the context of my Bachelor Thesis at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany.

License

Licensed under the MIT license (see LICENSE file for more details).