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Motion Capture Systems

In hardware experiments, external motion capture systems can be used to provide high quality pose and twist estimates for tracks, environment objects and agents. Three motion capture systems are directly supported by CRS:

  • Vicon Tracker System
  • Qualisys Motion Capture System
  • Lighthouse System

Qualisys and Vicon Motion Capture Systems

The motion capture systems require software running on a dedicated Windows PC to run and analyze what the infrared cameras see. This PC hosts a service that one can connect to via the local network.

CRS connects to the service by a bridge node running within ROS, either vicon_bridge or mocap_qualisys. They register with the PC and subscribe to receive updates at ~200Hz over the local network.

The bridge node then parses the data from the motion capture system's data structure to the TransformedStamped message, which is subsequently published for other ROS nodes to subscribe to.

Lighthouse

The Lighthouse system does not rely on passive markers, but instead actively captures infrared sweeps on the car. Separate pages outline how it works and how to calibrate the setup.