z1_pro_driver

ROS2 driver for the XF Z-1 Pro 3-axis gimbal camera.

This repo contains two packages: z1_pro_driver, where all the source code for controlling the camera and it's gimbal live, and z1_pro_msgs where we have defined a couple of messages for smooth operation of the system.

To run: ros2 launch z1_pro_driver z1_pro_launch.py namespace:=YOUR_VEHICLES_NAMESPACE tf_frame_prefix:=SOME_NICE_PREFIX camera_ip:=GUESSWHAT camera_port:=IWONDER use_vehicle_altitude:=true/false

The command above launches 4 different nodes:

• The read_and_publish script that serves as the low-level driver for control and feedback of the camera and gimbal.
• The gimbal_interface_node, which is reponsible of providing a high-level interface for the user. It subscribes to the gimbal_cam_cmd topic, reads CamCmd messages, and does the necessary calculations to track the user-specified angles and/or point of interest (POI).
• The gimbal_joint_publisher and a robot_state_publisher: these are responsible of reading the orientation feedback from the gimbal and bulding its corresponding TF tree using the camera's robot_description defined in its urdf.

The CamCmd message contains more information regarding the angle convention, but in brief:

• If frame = BODY -> roll, pitch, and yaw angles are defined as RPY angles in a conventional right-handed manner, with X (roll) pointing forwards, Y (pitch) pointing left, and Z (yaw) pointing up. See the image below.
• (NOTE: hasn't been tested much) If frame = GLOBAL -> the interface will use the odometry information to orient the camera with respect to the World frame in NED. A raw yaw angle corresponds to compass heading! That is, 0-360 degrees with 0 poiting north and increasing towards East.

You can play with the gimbal from the terminal:

ros2 topic pub /M350/gimbal_camera/gimbal_cam_cmd z1_pro_msgs/msg/CamCmd "{
  frame: 0,
  roll: 0.0,
  pitch: -10.0,
  yaw: 90.0,
  poi: {},
  channel: 0,
  resolution: 0
}"

The dimensions for the urdf are shown in the drawings under the fig directory.