VISIOSCAN Driver for ROS2

The document describes the usage of the driver for BEA VISIOSCAN laser scanner.

The driver is based upon the Boost Asio library

Supported LIDAR

Lidar Model
Visioscan RD

Visit following website for more details about Visioscan laser scanner: https://asia.beasensors.com/en/product/lzr-visioscan-rd/

Tested environment

The driver is only tested within a VirtualBox VM installing environment below:

OS: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)

ROS2: Humble Hawksbill

Usage with ROS2

Create a ROS2 workspace

1. For example, choose the directory name ros2_ws, for "development workspace" :

   mkdir -p ~/ros2_ws/src
   cd ~/ros2_ws/src
   mkdir visioscan

2. Copy & Paste project files into /ros2_ws/src/visioscan directory

Parameters

The parameters for configuring laser scanner are listed as below. You need to change the parameters in the file /config/params.yaml corresponding to the configuration in the laser scanner.

Parameter	Description
frame_id	Frame ID for LaserScan msg
topic_id	Topic ID for the publisher
laser_ip	IP address of laser scanner
laser_port	Ethernet port number of laser scannner
scan_frequency	Frequency of laser scanner
laser_direction	Indicate if laser scanner is normal mounted or upside down

Compile & install visioscan package

1. Build visioscan package From the root of your workspace ros2_ws, you can now build visioscan package using the command:

   cd ~/ros2_ws/
   colcon build --packages-select visioscan

2. Package environment setup

   source ./install/setup.bash

   Note: Add permanent workspace environment variables. It's convenient if the ROS2 environment variables are automatically added to your bash session every time a new terminal is launched:

   echo "source ros2_ws/install/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
   source ~/.bashrc

Run visioscan

You can run visioscan node with following steps, or make a Quick start

Run visioscan node

ros2 run visioscan visioscan_node --ros-args --params-file ~/ros2_ws/src/visioscan/config/params.yaml -- __ns:=/bea_power

Note: the -- __ns:=/bea_power is required so the node's namespace matches the nested layout of config/params.yaml (bea_power/visioscan_node/ros__parameters). Without it the node falls back to its hardcoded default IP (192.168.1.2) and ignores the laser_ip you set in the YAML. (ros2 launch visioscan visioscan_launch.py already sets this namespace via namespace='bea_power', which is why ros2 launch worked but ros2 run did not.)

Run RViz

You can run RViz package in ROS2 to visualize the point cloud. Open a new terminal and run the following command:

ros2 run rviz2 rviz2

Note: Please make sure that the frame ID and scan topic ID are corresponding to that you set in the code or the config file.

Quick start

After compiled and installed the package, run the following command to make a quick start:

```bash
ros2 launch visioscan visioscan_launch.py
```

This starts the RViz and the visioscan driver and you should see the cloud point output of the laser scanner.