vicon_udp

This ROS package consumes the UDP stream from Vicon Tracker and exposes it to ROS topics.

The UDP stream is limited compared to the TCP interface, but has the advantage of running over UDP, which in some cases can reduce the latency of tracking information.

There are two main ways that the information can be exposed to ROS:

• as /tf transforms from vicon2tf, or
• as a set of /vicon/${NAME} pose topics from vicon2pose

There is also a third executable, vicon_object_pose which publishes the information from a single Vicon object. In some scenarios, this can reduce network traffic, as ROS traffic is not broadcast alongside the original Vicon stream.

Usage

All poses to /tf

vicon2tf listens to the UDP stream and publishes to the /tf topic with a tf2_msgs/TFMessage containing the transforms of all objects contained in that packet. Each transform has a frame of "vicon" and has the object name from the Vicon stream as the child_frame_id. It can be run using:

ros2 run vicon_udp vicon2tf

TODO: Invalid Vicon names

All poses from single node

vicon2pose listens to the UDP stream and publishes a topic for each name it sees in the Vicon stream. The poses for each object are published as geometry_msgs/PoseStamped messages on individual topics with named of the form: vicon/${OBJECT_NAME}. It can be run using:

ros2 run vicon_udp vicon2pose

TODO: Handle invalid ROS topic names in Vicon stream

There is a launch file available:

ros2 launch vicon_udp vicon2pose.launch.xml

Publish pose of a single object

vicon_object_pose listens to the UDP stream and publishes the poses of a single object on the ~/pose topic. The target object is configured with a parameter.

ros2 run vicon_udp vicon_object_pose --ros-args -p target_object:=drone1

Common parameters

All of the executables files take two parameters to setup the connection to Vicon Tracker. Details in the table:

Parameter	Default	Description
bind_address	0.0.0.0	Address to listen on
bind_port	51001	Port to listen on
buffer_size	1024	Default receive buffer size
frame_name	vicon	Default frame name for Poses or TFs

Common launch file arguments

All of the launch files take two arguments that pass values through to the executable parameters. Details in the table:

Argument	Default	Description
bind_address	0.0.0.0	Address to listen on
bind_port	51001	Port to listen on
frame_name	vicon	Default frame name for Poses or TFs