How to add SICK TiM Lidar to TurtleBot?

Question

Hi,

I'm new to ROS. I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 and ROS Hydro. I got a TurtleBot 2 and want to use a laser scanner for mapping and navigation instead of the Kinect. I have a SICK TiM551 (Ethernet). I have already installed the sick_tim driver and the sick_tim551_2050001 node seems to be working fine. I can ping the sensor...

I am looking for a tutorial on how add a SICK TiM lidar to a TurtleBot.

I have already created a map using the Kinect by following the steps in "Build a map with SLAM" Tutorial:

http://wiki.ros.org/turtlebot_navigation/Tutorials/Build%20a%20map%20with%20SLAM

But I want to create and save a map with my SICK Lidar and not with the Kinect.

Thanks,

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Originally posted by iraheta28 on ROS Answers with karma: 11 on 2015-01-21

Post score: 1

Answer 1

I don't think there is any tutorial, but this is quite straight-forward.

1. Mount the laser on the robot. Just below the Kinect is a good place to not restrict any FOV
2. Put the laser in the URDF with the mounted position
3. When starting gmapping use the laser's topic instead of the scan produced by the Kinect.

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Originally posted by dornhege with karma: 31395 on 2015-01-21

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by iraheta28 on 2015-01-21:
Thank you for your answer. I am glad to hear this is possible. However, please remember I am quite new to ROS. Could you please explain in more details how to "put the laser in the URDF with the mounted position " ? I noticed there's an URDF folder (directory) in the turtlebot_description package

Comment by dornhege on 2015-01-22:
There might be a proper way, but we just cloned that package and edited the URDF (basically needs 1 link and a fixed joint). The URDF docs should be simple to understand for that. https://github.com/GKIFreiburg/gki_robots/tree/master/gki_turtlebot/gki_turtlebot_description