Octomap with ubuntu 11.10

Question

I'm using ROS electric and I am following the tutorial here and I got a problem when I run

rosdep install octomap_mapping

I guess it's because I didn't rightly "add the source directory to your ROS_PACKAGE_PATH (e.g. in ~/.bashrc), source that file" but I am new to ubuntu and ROS so I don't know what's the right way doing it. Can anybody give me detailed instructions? Thanks a lot !

By the way, the error message I got after I run

rosdep install octomap_mapping

is

chong@ubuntu:~/rospkg$ rosdep install octomap_mapping
Failed to find rosdep octomap for package octomap on OS:ubuntu version:oneiric
rosdep install ERROR:
failed to install octomap

and my .bashrc has the following related lines:

source /opt/ros/electric/setup.bash
export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=~/rospkg:$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH

---

Originally posted by Chong on ROS Answers with karma: 76 on 2012-05-28

Post score: 1

Answer 1

Apparently you are using ROS electric, with the trunk of octomap_mapping from SVN. I just recently changed the trunk to build against fuerte, and that requires an "octomap" system package as rosdep (ros-fuerte-octomap).

Just use the electric branch of octomap:

svn co http://alufr-ros-pkg.googlecode.com/svn/branches/octomap_mapping-electric/ octomap_mapping

or the bre-built binary packages as joq suggested. Alternatively, you can also upgrade to the latest ROS fuerte.

---

Originally posted by AHornung with karma: 5904 on 2012-05-28

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

---

Original comments

Comment by Chong on 2012-06-03:
Thanks.It seems to work.But how about octovis?Is it automatically installed with ocotomap_mapping or I have to separately install it somewhere? And could you please give specific instructions on how to install ocotomap_mapping under electric? I'm new to ubuntu so I am worried if I mess up something.

Comment by AHornung on 2012-06-03:
See @joq's answer on how to install the package pre-compiled, you don't need to check something out and compile then.

Comment by AHornung on 2012-06-03:
octovis as GUI is not installed by default with the library. If you upgrade to ROS fuerte, you can install the octovis package with "sudo apt-get install ros-fuerte-octovis". For electric, you need to download the complete octomap package (non-ros) from octomap.sf.net and compile yourself.

Comment by Chong on 2012-06-04:
I see. Thanks. One more question: if I use the non-ros version of octovis, is it still possible to view the colored map? Cuz when i use that to open the filename.bt, i can only see the depth map with no colors

Comment by AHornung on 2012-06-04:
Yes, any recent version of octovis can display colored maps. But they have to be in a .ot file, .bt files do not contain color information. See http://ais.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/projects/datasets/octomap/ for details and example files.

Comment by Chong on 2012-06-07:
Thanks. I'm trying to use rgbdslam package to work with octomap. it seems rgbdslam package cannot save as .ot file. it can only save as pcd file.

Comment by Sudhan on 2012-07-29:
I downloaded the non-ros package and compiled the whole package myself. But, I don't know how to open the octovis GUI to view the built map. I tried $ octovis in terminal. But it says command not found.