A SET OF DEPTH SENSOR PROCESSING ROS TOOLS FOR WHEELED MOBILE ROBOT NAVIGATION.

The paper presents a set of software tools dedicated to support mobile robot navigation. The tools are used to process an image from a depth sensor. They are implemented in ROS framework and they are compatible with standard ROS navigation packages. The software is released with an open source licence. First of the tools converts a 3D depth image to a 2D scan in polar coordinates. It provides projection of the obstacles, removes the ground plane from the image and compensates sensor tilt angle. The node is faster than the standard node within ROS and it has additional functions increasing range of possible applications. The second tool allows detection of negative obstacles i.e. located below the ground plane level. The third tool estimates height and orientation of the sensor with RANSAC algorithm applied to the depth image. The paper presents also the results of usage of the tools with mobile platforms equipped with Microsoft Kinect sensors. The platforms are elements of the ReMeDi project within which the software was developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]