use Hokuyo LIDAR with ethernet in ROS

Question

Hi! I got a Hokuyo UTM-30LX-EW which I would like to use with my Turtlebot. The sensor has a power and an ethernet connector. I connected the power to the turtlebot, it seems to be working. I connected the ethernet cable to the wifi router. I can ping the sensors IP from the turtlebot, it seems to be up and running.

I then installed the ros_groovy_laser_drivers package. Then I wanted to try:

roslaunch hokuyo_node hokuyo_test.launch

I get the following warning and error:

[ WARN] [1363863375.680619490]: The use_rep_117 parameter has not been specified and has been automatically set to true.  This parameter will be removed in Hydromedusa.  Please see: http://ros.org/wiki/rep_117/migration
[ERROR] [1363863375.690137879]: Exception thrown while opening Hokuyo. Failed to open port: /dev/ttyACM0. No such file or directory (errno = 2). The requested port does not exist. Is the hokuyo connected? Was the port name misspelled? (in hokuyo::laser::open) You may find further details at http://www.ros.org/wiki/hokuyo_node/Troubleshooting

I wasn't very surprised, since I haven't set the ip of the sensor neither in ROS nor in Ubuntu, so probably that's why I don't have the missing port. I don't know how to set this up. The pages regarding the ros hokuyo node don't mention any IP or ethernet related topics. However, I found a page with the iri_hokuyo driver (http://mediabox.grasp.upenn.edu/roswiki/doc/api/iri_hokuyo_laser/html/), which referst to ethernet and USB ports. Unfortunately, I can't find the iri_hokuyo driver in the ubuntu/ros repositories.

Could someone tell me how should I set up the Hokuyo sensor?

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Originally posted by ZoltanS on ROS Answers with karma: 248 on 2013-03-21

Post score: 2

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Original comments

Comment by anonymous8676 on 2014-07-31:
Are you aware of any differences (pros/conns) of using an ethernet interface over the usb interface? I am currently evaluating Hokuyo sensors for my application and would like to know if there is any advantage in either interface. Apologies for commenting on an old topic. Regards, Chris.

Answer 1

There's an actively maintained wrapper for urgwidget here: https://github.com/ros-drivers/urg_node

Eventually, this may replace hokuyo_node as the recommended hokuyo driver - even for PR2.

To install:

sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-urg-node

To run (for ethernet):

rosrun urg_node urg_node _ip_address:="192.168.0.10"

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Originally posted by Chad Rockey with karma: 4541 on 2013-03-26

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 6

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Original comments

Comment by ZoltanS on 2013-03-28:
Thanks Chad! It is working!

Comment by Airuno2L on 2013-04-23:
Are there any options for Fuerte? I need to use an ethernet UTM-30LX-EW and it would be convient if it worked with Fuerte.

Comment by Chad Rockey on 2013-04-23:
I'm not aware of any options for Fuerte. You could make a fork and convert it back to rosbuild. :P

Comment by Airuno2L on 2013-04-23:
Thanks for the reply. I ended up using this http://devel.iri.upc.edu/docs/labrobotica/hokuyo_laser_2d/index.html But it was quite involved

Answer 2

As of 3/21/2013 there is no support for the Multiecho/Ethernet version of the Hokuyo in the hokuyo_node. It is expected to be added in the next version of ROS, which would be Hydro. Here is the issue tracker in GIT: https://github.com/ros-drivers/hokuyo_node/issues/2

They would probably be able to give you a better answer of their status, if you contact them directly.

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Originally posted by Raptor with karma: 377 on 2013-03-21

This answer was NOT ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by ZoltanS on 2013-03-21:
Thank you Raptor!

Comment by Raptor on 2013-03-26:
This was just posted also: http://ros-users.122217.n3.nabble.com/Hokuyo-UTM-30LX-EW-td4019843.html