Gazebo11 camera images to ROS 2

Question

Hello Robotics Community!

I'm trying to implement a ROS 2 topic to view the images from a camera I have added to the iRobot Create 3 simulation for classic Gazebo.

OS: ubuntu-desktop 22.04

ROS 2: Humble

Gazebo: classic 11 installed with apt

AWS small house world

I have the camera working in Gazebo, and in the Gazebo GUI I can see the projected image from the camera in the small house Gazebo world as the robot undocks and turns around. The projected image in Gazebo does look like what the camera should see.

Using libgazebo_ros_camera.so, I cannot see a ROS 2 topic (or images). I have followed this guide: https://github.com/ros-simulation/gazebo_ros_pkgs/wiki/ROS-2-Migration:-Camera

I cannot see any errors in the logs.

Here is the code I am using:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<robot xmlns:xacro="http://www.ros.org/wiki/xacro" >

    <joint name="camera_joint" type="fixed">
        <parent link="base_link"/>
        <child link="camera_link"/>
        <origin xyz="0 0 0.2" rpy="0 0 0"/>
    </joint>

    <link name="camera_link">
        <visual>
            <geometry>
                <box size="0.010 0.03 0.03"/>
            </geometry>
            <material name="red"/>
        </visual>
   </link>
    <material name="red">
        <color rgba="1 0 0 1"/>
    </material>
    <joint name="camera_optical_joint" type="fixed">
        <parent link="camera_link"/>
        <child link="camera_link_optical"/>
        <origin xyz="0 0 0" rpy="${-pi/2} 0 ${-pi/2}"/>
    </joint>

    <link name="camera_link_optical"></link>

    <gazebo reference="camera_link">
        <sensor type="camera" name="camera1">
            <pose> 0 0 0 0 0 0 </pose>
            <always_on>1</always_on>
            <visualize>1</visualize>
            <update_rate>10</update_rate>
            <camera name="head">
                <horizontal_fov>1.089</horizontal_fov>
                <image>
                    <format>R8G8B8</format>
                    <width>640</width>
                   <height>480</height>
                </image>
                <clip>
                    <near>0.05</near>
                    <far>8.0</far>
                </clip>
            </camera>
            <plugin name="camera_controller" filename="libgazebo_ros_camera.so">
                <ros>
                    <namespace>custom_ns</namespace>
                    <remapping>image_raw:=custom_img</remapping>
                    <remapping>camera_info:=custom_info</remapping>
                </ros>
                <camera_name>camera1</camera_name>
                <frame_name>camera_link_optical</frame_name>
                <hack_baseline>0.7</hack_baseline>
            </plugin>
        </sensor>
    </gazebo>
</robot>

When I do a ros2 topic list I do not see the custom_ns namespace, or the camera-related topics.

I'd appreciate any help. Cheers!

Answer 1

Resolution: It seems that libgazebo_ros_camera.so could not find libCameraPlugin.so When I tried with GazeboSim(Fortress) there was an error message to that effect. With classic Gazebo, I didn't see the error, but it still didn't work. This fixed it for me: source /usr/share/gazebo-11/setup.sh