To achieve full autonomy, navigation stack requires a robot to have at least one source of laser information to perceive the robot’s environment and avoid obstacles along its way. Linorobot uses a XV-11 lidar that can measure distance up to 5.5 m in 360 degrees. The data received from the lidar is handled by xv_11_laser_driver ROS driver and published to ‘/scan’ topic.

4.1. Checking Sensor Information

4.1.1 Run the launch files and rviz

On the robot’s computer, open 2 new terminal windows.

Run bringup.launch:

roslaunch linorobot bringup.launch

Run laser.launch:

roslaunch linorobot laser.launch

On your development computer, run rviz:

rosrun rviz rviz

Once rviz is open, import laser.rviz by clicking File > Config and choose~/catkin_ws/src/lino_visualize/rviz/laser.rviz. 

If you’re using a different lidar sensor, change the lidar’s launch file to run the right ROS driver during run time.

Here are some good tips from Clearpath Robotics how to select the right lidar sensor for your applicaton.

4.1.2 Visualizing the Laser Data

Check if rviz can receive the laser data. 

5. TF

Next, please proceed to TF to define the location of your sensor.