Conversion of point cloud data to laser scan data
We are using Astra in this robot to replicate the function of an expensive laser range scanner. The depth image is processed and converted to the data equivalent of a laser scanner using ROS's depthimage_to_laserscan
package (see http://wiki.ros.org/depthimage_to_laserscan for more information).
You can either install this package from the source code or use the Ubuntu package manager. Here is the command to install this package from the Ubuntu package manager
$ sudo apt-get install ros-<version>-depthimage-to-laserscan
The main function of this package is to slice a section of the depth image and convert it to an equivalent laser scan data type. The ROS sensor_msgs/LaserScan
message type is used for publishing the laser scan data. This depthimage_to_laserscan
package will perform this conversion and fake the laser scanner data. The laser scanner output can be viewed using RViz. In order to run the conversion, we have to start the convertor...