ROS wrapper for ORB-SLAM3

A ROS wrapper for ORB-SLAM3. Based on this package. This is a modified version of ORB SLAM3, which includes a method in the API that returns all the map points in the active map.

Tested with ORB-SLAM3 V1.0, primarily on Ubuntu 20.04.

Installation

General guide: first, install all of ORB SLAM3 dependencies. Then, install this package in a catkin build environment.

1. ORB-SLAM3

• Install the prerequisites. Make sure to download Pangolin release (0.8), opencv 4.4.

• Make sure that libORB_SLAM3.so is created in the ORB_SLAM3/lib folder. If not, check the issue list from the original repo and retry.

2. ORB_SLAM3_ROS

• Clone the package. Note that it should be a catkin build workspace.

cd ~/catkin_ws/src/
git clone https://github.com/emanuelenencioni/ORB_SLAM3_ROS.git

• Build ORB_SLAM3:

cd /ORB_SLAM3_ROS/ORB_SLAM3
chmod +x build.sh
./build.sh

• Build the package normally.

cd ~/catkin_ws/
catkin build

• (Optional) Install hector-trajectory-server to visualize the trajectory.

sudo apt install ros-[DISTRO]-hector-trajectory-server

• If everything works fine, you can now try the different launch files in the launch folder.

3. How to run

EuRoC dataset:

• In one terminal, launch the node:

roslaunch orb_slam3_ros_wrapper euroc_monoimu.launch

• In another terminal, playback the bag:

rosbag play MH_01_easy.bag

Similarly for other sensor types.

Topics

The following topics are published by each node:

• /orb_slam3/map (PointCloud2): all point of the map.
• /orb_slam3/camera_pose (PoseStamped): current left camera pose in world frame, as returned by ORB-SLAM3.
• tf: transformation from camera frame to world frame.

P.S. There is also Italian documentation available that explains the code and includes evaluations of the system.