cartographer-noetic.md

Installing Cartographer ROS with ROS Noetic

On Ubuntu Focal with ROS Noetic use these commands to install the above tools:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y python3-wstool python3-rosdep ninja-build stow

After the tools are installed, create a new cartographer_ros workspace in 'catkin_ws'.

mkdir catkin_ws
cd catkin_ws
wstool init src
wstool merge -t src https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cartographer-project/cartographer_ros/master/cartographer_ros.rosinstall

Add Ceres Solver to ./src/.rosinstall as:

- git:
    local-name: cartographer
    uri: https://github.com/cartographer-project/cartographer.git
    version: master
- git:
    local-name: cartographer_ros
    uri: https://github.com/cartographer-project/cartographer_ros.git
    version: master
- git:
    local-name: ceres-solver
    uri: https://github.com/ceres-solver/ceres-solver.git

Install the packages by running:

wstool update -t src

Remove the dependency libabsl-dev in src/cartographer/package.xml by removing the line depend>libabsl-dev</depend>.

Now you need to install cartographer_ros dependencies. First, we use rosdep to install the required packages.

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro=${ROS_DISTRO} -y

Cartographer uses the abseil-cpp library that needs to be manually installed using this script:

src/cartographer/scripts/install_abseil.sh

Jinja may throw errors due to a version mismatch. So install the right version by

pip3 uninstall jinja2 && pip3 install jinja2==3.0.3

Finally build and install.

catkin_make_isolated --install --use-ninja

To test the installation first source the setup file:

source install_isolated/setup.bash

Run Cartographer SLAM on a 2D demo bag

wget -P ~/Downloads https://storage.googleapis.com/cartographer-public-data/bags/backpack_2d/cartographer_paper_deutsches_museum.bag

roslaunch cartographer_ros demo_backpack_2d.launch bag_filename:=${HOME}/Downloads/cartographer_paper_deutsches_museum.bag