Vicon Applications

Object Tracking

Before do tracking, you need to calibrate the Vicon Vero 2.2 system. The calibration process is described in the Calibration page.

To do tracking,

  1. first of all you need to creat a Create a non-symmetrical pattern using vicon markers, that will eventually be attached to the robot that we intend to track. See the Fig. 115 as an example.

Vicon non-symmetrical pattern

Fig. 115 Vicon non-symmetrical pattern

  1. In the software, Vicon tracker -> Objects -> select using Alt + click (or Ctrl + click) to crop using mouse the ensemble of markers. See the Fig. 116.

Vicon crop

Fig. 116 Vicon crop

  1. Give it a name by filling in the white box next to Create object, and hit Create button. Say we give this object the name stefan_1 as an example in the Fig. 117.

Vicon create object

Fig. 117 Vicon create object

  1. By selecting the object alone that we are interested in, then clk Track button, only that specific object will be visible on the scene.

Recording Locally

To record the tracking data locally, you can use the Vicon Tracker software. The steps are as follows:

  1. Select Recording -> Trial name give it a name, e.g. test1001, then click Start, move the object (run intended the experiment), then click Stop. See the Fig. 118.

Vicon recording

Fig. 118 Vicon recording

  1. click on Open Folder button to locate the files saved (e.g. test1001.system, test1001.x2d, test1001.xcp), as shown in the Fig. 119.

Vicon recording folder

Fig. 119 Vicon recording folder

Playback

To playback the recorded data, you can use the Vicon Tracker software. The steps are as follows:

  1. Recording -> Playback -> Load trial. indicate a file name (e.g. trial1001.system). Immediately we see Go Offline changes to Go Live. Click the Play button located on the lower part of the screen. See the Fig. 120.

Vicon playback

Fig. 120 Vicon playback

Note

To go back (and exit Playback mode), clk on Go Live again making it change to Go Offline.

ROS Bridge

THe ROS repo presented in Vicon Vero 2.2 page. However, you can use vicon_bridge to bridge the Vicon data to ROS. The steps are as follows:

$ cd ~/vicon_ws/src
$ git clone https://github.com/ethz-asl/vicon_bridge.git
$ cd ~/vicon_ws
$ catkin_make
$ source devel/setup.bash
$ rospack profile

Now in the terminal, you can run the following command to set the Vicon IP:

$ nm-connection-editor

Then, click on Ethernet -> click Add -> select Ethernet, then set config as shown in the Fig. 121.

Vicon ethernet config

Fig. 121 Vicon ethernet config

Note

If the connection is not stable you can change the method into Manual.

Now, Plug one cable into [laptop] and another one in the PoE switch, next to any of the cables going to the Vicon cameras. Then test the Network connection by running the following command:

$ ping 192.168.10.1

To check the IP details, run the following command:

$ vi ~/vicon_ws1/src/vicon_bridge/launch/vicon.launch

and make sure this line appears:

<arg name="datastream_hostport" default="192.168.10.1:801"/>

Now, you can run the following command to start the Vicon bridge:

$ roslaunch vicon_bridge vicon.launch

To check the data, run the following command:

$ rostopic list
$ rostopic echo /vicon/stefan/stefan

Note

stefan is the name of the object as selected on vicon-PC, Vicon Tracker -> Objects. You can change it to the name of the object you are interested in. See the Fig. 122.

Vicon object name

Fig. 122 Vicon object name