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rviz_satellite

Plugin for rviz for displaying satellite maps loaded from the internet.

Alt text

In order to use rviz_satellite, add this package to your catkin workspace.

Demo

The package contains a launch file for demonstration purposes. Use it to verify your installation and to get started:

roslaunch rviz_satellite demo.launch

The launch file will fake a GPS position in Philadelphia, USA and display Wikimedia Maps nearby. You can edit the longitude and latitude values in launch/demo.gps to change the position.

Check the Usage section below to learn how to use the position of your robot and a satellite map.

Usage

Add an instance of AerialMapDisplay to your rviz config.

The Topic field must point to a publisher of sensor_msgs/NavSatFix. Note that rviz_satellite will not reload tiles until the robot moves outside of the centre tile (if dynamic reloading is enabled).

You must provide an Object URI (or URL) from which the satellite images are loaded. rviz_satellite presently only supports the OpenStreetMap convention for tile names.

The URI should have the form:

http://server.tld/{z}/{x}/{y}.jpg

Where the tokens {z}, {x}, {y} represent the zoom level, x coordinate, and y coordinate respectively. These will automatically be substituted by rviz_satellite when making HTTP requests.

Update (July 12, 2016): MapQuest has discontinued their free distribution of map tiles. You can, however, continue to get tiles from MapBox. The URI for satellite imagery is:

https://api.mapbox.com/styles/v1/mapbox/satellite-v9/tiles/256/{z}/{x}/{y}?access_token=<TOKEN>

Where <TOKEN> is your public access token, accessible from the API Access Tokens section of the MapBox account page. The unpaid 'starter plan' can access up to level 18.

Map tiles will be cached to the mapscache directory in the rviz_satellite package directory. At present the cache does not expire automatically - you should delete the files in the folder if you want the images to be reloaded.

Options

  • Topic is the topic of the GPS measurements.
  • Robot frame should be a TF from the robot position to the fixed frame.
  • Dynamically reload will cause imagery to reload as the robot moves out of the center tile. This will only work if the robot frame is specified correctly by TF.
  • Alpha is simply the display transparency.
  • Draw Under will cause the map to be displayed below all other geometry.
  • Zoom is the zoom level of the map. Recommended values are 16-19, as anything smaller is very low resolution. 22 is the current max.
  • Blocks number of adjacent blocks to load. rviz_satellite will load the central block, and this many blocks around the center. 8 is the current max.
  • Frame Convention is the convention for X/Y axes of the map. The default is maps XYZ to ENU, which is the default convention for libGeographic and ROS.

Questions, Bugs

Contact the author (gareth-cross on github), or open an issue.