Build a ROS robot with SLAM without laser

Question

I've build a simple wheeled robot based on two continuous servos, controlled by Raspberry Pi running ROS-groovy, with a smart phone mounted on top to provide additional sensors. I'd like to situate the bot in a room and have it move to various points on command. I don't have laser ranger finder but do have a good ultrasonic ranger finder and kinect sensors.

What are the typical ROS setup for this?

The idea I'm thinking is to personally (e.g. manually) map my room using kinect and use this map using only the ultrasonic range finder sensors and IMU in the lightweight robot. Would this be possible?

Answer 1

A kinect mounted on your robot is enough for mapping and localization. There are a few different packages that will work:

• rgbdslam can create a 3d map using a kinect
• You can use depthimage_to_laserscan to take in a depth image from the kinect and output a laser scan message which you can then use with gmapping for mapping, and the nav stack to navigate your robot.

If you have a ring of ultrasonic rangers on your robot, you can use those for gmapping and navigation, though the kinect will certainly work better.