Prophesee ROS Wrapper

This is a metapackage containing ROS wrapper and messages for Prophesee event-based sensors.

The aim of this metapackage is wrapping data access from event-based sensors using OpenEB software and publishing the event-based data to ROS.

The following packages and nodes are included:

• prophesee_ros_driver - ROS wrapper, including
  • prophesee_ros_publisher - publishing data from Prophesee sensor to ROS topics
  • prophesee_ros_viewer - listening data from ROS topics and visualizing them on a screen
• prophesee_event_msgs - Prophesee messages, including
  • Event - containing an event from a Prophesee camera (uint16 x, uint16 y, ros::Time ts, bool polarity)
  • EventArray - containing a buffer of events (Event[] events)

Supported Prophesee Evaluation Kit Cameras :

• EVKV1 Gen3.0, Gen3.1, Gen4.0, Gen4.1
• EVKV2 Gen4.0, Gen4.1
• EVKV3 Gen3.1, Gen4.1
• EVKV4 IMX636ES

Requirements

• Ubuntu 20.04 or 18.04
• ROS Noetic or ROS Melodic
• OpenEB - starting from v2.2.0

Installation

First of all, retrieve and compile OpenEB.

If you want to use the ROS wrapper with live Prophesee cameras, then install Prophesee plugins as described in Prophesee documentation.

Then, compile the wrapper code:

• Clone the source code to your catkin workspace (create a workspace, if needed)

      cd catkin_ws/src
      git clone https://github.com/prophesee-ai/prophesee_ros_wrapper.git
      cd ..
  

• Compile

      catkin_make
  

• Source the workspace

      source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
  

Getting Started

Publishing data from a live camera and listening them

To publish data from Prophesee camera to ROS topics, run:

      roslaunch prophesee_ros_driver prophesee_publisher.launch

The following topics will be published:

• /prophesee/camera/cd_events_buffer - buffer of CD (Change Detection) events
• /prophesee/camera/camera_info - information about the camera

To listen data from ROS topics and visualize them:

      roslaunch prophesee_ros_driver prophesee_viewer.launch

Recording data from a live camera to rosbag

To record data from live camera to rosbag:

• Start the publisher:

      roslaunch prophesee_ros_driver prophesee_publisher.launch

• Start rosbag recording (choose the topics to record or record all available topics):

      rosbag record -a

Publishing data from a RAW file

To publish data from RAW file to ROS topics and view the data:

• Update the prophesee_publisher.launch file to set the path to your RAW file (i.e. raw_file_to_read parameter)

      rosed prophesee_ros_driver prophesee_publisher.launch

• Start the ROS core

      roscore

• Start the viewer, at first to be sure to not miss any data:

      roslaunch prophesee_ros_driver prophesee_viewer.launch

• Start the publisher:

      roslaunch prophesee_ros_driver prophesee_publisher.launch

At the end of the RAW file, the publisher will stop on its own, but the viewer won't stop, so it's up to you to quit the viewer.

Recording data from a RAW file to rosbag

To record data from RAW file to rosbag:

• Update the prophesee_publisher.launch file to set the path to your RAW file (in raw_file_to_read parameter)

      rosed prophesee_ros_driver prophesee_publisher.launch

• Start the ROS core

      roscore

• Start rosbag recording (choose the topics to record or record all available topics):

      rosbag record -a

• Start the publisher:

      roslaunch prophesee_ros_driver prophesee_publisher.launch

Contact

The code is open to contributions, thus do not hesitate to propose pull requests or create/fix bug reports. In case of any issue, please add it here on GitHub. For any other information contact us.