Visualize Delphi ESR Radar with ROS Rviz and AutonomousStuff driver

Motivation: to understand and visualize radar information using available ROS driver.

Pre-Requisites

• ROS (full desktop version or with Rviz ready)
• Delphi ESR 2.5 ROS driver by AutonomousStuff
• ROS socketcan_bridge package
• CAN device + Radar or CAN logs.

Log CAN data (skip this if you are already familiar with CAN logging using can-utils)

On Linux system, I use can-utils a lot as CAN tools that are easily run through terminal.

1. Install can-ultils (socketcan): sudo apt-get install can-utils
2. Connect Linux supported CAN device to PC. You can use something like a Kvaser USB. If you have an Nvidia Jetson TX2 or Xavier, you can enable CAN bus and run ROS directly with these modules.
3. Setup CAN device to 500K bitrate to connect to Delphi ESR 2.5
   sudo modprobe can
sudo modprobe can_raw
sudo ip link set can0 type can bitrate 5000000
sudo ip link set up can0
   
   To check CAN is properly set up, check:
   ifconfig
4. When all devices are connected and running, raw CAN frames can be seen from terminal with: candump can0
5. To log data:
   candump -l can0
6. Playback data with a can0 interface available on the network
   canplayer -I your_saved_data.log
7. Playback data which previously logged with can0 with a virtual can:
   First, bring up a virtual can interface: https://elinux.org/Bringing_CAN_interface_up
   Then canplayer vcan0=can0 -v -I your_saved_data.log

Install AutonomousStuff Delphi ESR Driver

Assume ROS is already installed on working machine. The ROS driver can be installed using the steps here

Here are the steps I took on my Ubuntu 18.04 running ROS Melodic

sudo apt update && sudo apt install apt-transport-https
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [trusted=yes] https://s3.amazonaws.com/autonomoustuff-repo/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/autonomoustuff-public.list'
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-delphi-esr

After installation, you can the launch sample file provided in this driver and checkout their list of topics roslaunch delphi_esr delphi_esr.launch

Then rostopic list on another terminal. Info of the topics are also documented here.

To see more detail of the sample launch files, they are located here:

cd /opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/share/delphi_esr/

Install ROS socketcan_bridge

For the convenience of reading raw logged CAN frames, I find the socketcan_bridge is a good option because user can assign the CAN interface at launch file.

To install:

sudo apt get ros-$ROS_DISTRO-socketcan-bridge

Visualize data with Rviz

With all the pre-requisites complete, we are ready to read and visualize the parsed output of the Delphi ESR by AS ROS driver. I modified the sample launch file and created a rviz config for this in this repo.

Try out the visualization with the sample CAN frames.

git clone https://github.com/ancabilloni/ros-delphi-esr-visualization.git
cd ros-delphi-esr-visualization
# Bring up virtual can interface
sudo ./setup_vcan.sh
# Launch driver and rviz
roslaunch master.launch use_socketcan:="true" socketcan_device:="vcan0"

Playback sample CAN data on a different terminal

cd ros-delphi-esr-visualization
canplayer vcan0=can0 -v -I sample/sample1.log