How to calculate distance between two GPS values?

Question

Hi,

I am using the jackal in simulation. I have C++ code which has a subscriber to the "navsat/fix" topic. My program has the jackal travelling to a distance of 10m in the "x direction" before it stops. I am trying to collect data from different sensors one of them being the gps. I have latitude, longitude and altitude values. How do I use the values to calculate the distance travelled between two points?

the first value is : lat = 49.9; long = 8.9; alt = 0.0634842; The value at the end of 10m is: lat = 49.9001; long = 8.9; alt = 0.0634803;

Please help.

Regards, rsmitha.

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Originally posted by rsmitha on ROS Answers with karma: 43 on 2017-05-28

Post score: 0

Answer 1

Have a look at the robot_localization package, and its documentation here. It sounds like you could be trying to perform the job that it does already. It includes a node called navsat_transform_node which performs accurate GPS -> map conversions, to fuse with imu and odometry data to position your robot more accurately.

If you don't want to use the node itself, have a look at the navsat_conversions.h file in its include directory. This provides a lat/long -> UTM conversion. UTM is measured in meters, so you can easily find the positions in the UTM grid and use this to get your distance travelled in meters.

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Originally posted by ufr3c_tjc with karma: 885 on 2017-05-28

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by rsmitha on 2017-05-28:
Thanks for the help and the documentation, @ufr3c_tjc. If the navsat_transform_node is already present, when we do "rostopic list" shouldn't the odometry/gps topic be listed?

Comment by ufr3c_tjc on 2017-05-28:
Have you set up navsat_transform_node correctly? Please read through the documentation fully. It's not a trivial exercise and may take you a while to make sure the node is working correctly. Once it is all working, yes, it will publish the data on the odometry/gps topic.