Unified Mocap Router

This commandline program establishes connection to a motion capture system, processes the rigid-body pose information and publishes them for use with different robotics systems.

┌─────────┐             ┌────────────────────────┐
│ Motion  │────────────►│                        │  various    ┌──────────┐
│ Capture │  TCP / UDP  │  Unified Mocap Router  ┼───────────► | Agent(s) |
│ System  │◄────────────┤                        │ protocols   └──────────┘ 
└─────────┘             └────────────────────────┘

Support

Currently implemented motion capture systems:

• NaturalPoint, Inc. "OptiTrack" via its NatNet SDK (stable)
• Qualisys, vis its Qualisys CPP SDK (experimental)

Currently implemented agents:

Agent	Means of Publishing	Launch Command (Example)
ROS2	On two ros2 topics /mocap/pose and /mocap/twist	./mocap-router optitrack ros2 -f 100 -c enu -r far -s 1 -n far
ROS2PX4	As above + the published on the required PX4 topic /fmu/in/vehicle_visual_odometry	./mocap-router optitrack ros2px4 -f 100 -c enu -r far -s 1 -n far
udp	Data as a UDP stream (see agents/udp_agent.hpp for the structs)	./mocap-router optitrack udp -f 100 -c enu -r far -s 1 -n far -i 192.168.209.100 -p 1234
ivy	Publish to an IVY bus	./mocap-router optitrack ivy -f 100 -c enu -r far -s 1 -n far
mavlink (experimental)	Publish mavlink messages to a UDP endpoint (use mavlink-router to uplink to vehicle!)	./mocap-router optitrack mavlink -f 100 -c enu -r far -s 1 -n far --autopilot px4
console	Only to the terminal (if activated)	./mocap-router test console --test_freq 100 -f 10 -c enu -r far -s 1 -n far
log	Log to a file (csv only so far)	./mocap-router test log --test_freq 100 -f 10 -c enu -r far -s 1 -n far -o ./output.csv

Currently supported platforms:

Ubuntu >= 22.04 on x86

Building and Running

Natively

Prerequisites vary per agent. Currently, these are known:

Agent	Known Prerequisites
all	libboost-all-dev installed with apt
ivy	ivy-c-dev installed from ppa:paparazzi-uav/ppa
ros2	ros-$ROS_DISTRO-base, needs to be sourced for compilation (execute . scripts/source_ros_and_msgs.sh)
ros2px4	As above + px4_msgs must be sourced to run (execute . scripts/source_ros_and_msgs.sh)

Build for all agents with:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. && make

Build only for some agents with (for example):

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -D'MOCAPS=test;optitrack' -D'AGENTS=console;ivy;ros2;ros2px4' .. && make

Run with (see table at beginning on this readme)

./mocap-router --help

How to write your own agent?

To add support for your own agent it has to inheret from the base class Agent defined in agent.hpp and needs to implement the

void publish_data()

function. It can also implement

void add_extra_po(boost::program_options::options_description &desc)
void parse_extra_po(const boost::program_options::variables_map &vm)

Afterward, the agent needs to be added to the CMakeList.txt file. A simple example of how to do this is the ConsoleAgent defined in agents/console_agent.hpp.

How to add support for a different Motion Capture System?

Please open an Issue and we'll support you!

• 2025-02-28 -- 1.1.0 -- Second Release

Authors

• Anton Bredenbeck (@antbre, Delft University of Technology, a.bredenbeck - @ - tudelft.nl)
• Till Blaha (@tblaha, Delft University of Technology, t.m.blaha - @ - tudelft.nl)

Structure

.
├── agents           # contains the agent definitions
├── include          # headers
├── scripts          # utility scripts
├── src              # implementation of data receiving and pose calculations
├── CMakeLists.txt
└── README.md

License

The contents of this repository are licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0 (see LICENSE file).

Technische Universiteit Delft hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program “Unified Mocap Router" (one line description of the content or function) written by the Author(s).

Henri Werij, Dean of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering

© 2024,2025 Anton Bredenbeck, Till Blaha