Perception Packages¶

The perception module is responsible for state estimation and environment understanding. It processes sensor data to provide the robot's best estimate of its pose, velocity, and surrounding environment.

Overview¶

Perception forms the foundation of the autonomy stack by:

State Estimation: Fusing sensor data (IMU, cameras, GPS) to estimate robot position, orientation, and velocity
Sensor Processing: Converting raw sensor data into usable formats for downstream modules
Environment Understanding: Detecting and tracking objects, obstacles, and features in the environment

Launch¶

Launch files are located under robot/ros_ws/src/perception/perception_bringup/launch/.

The main launch command is:

ros2 launch perception_bringup perception.launch.xml

Key Topics¶

Outputs¶

/{robot_name}/odometry - Best estimate of robot state (position, orientation, velocities)
/{robot_name}/pose - Current robot pose
/{robot_name}/imu/data - Processed IMU data

Inputs¶

Raw sensor data from sensors layer (cameras, IMU, GPS, depth sensors)

Modules¶

State estimation and related perception packages live under robot/ros_ws/src/perception/. Only external motion capture is documented below today; other approaches (onboard sensor fusion, visual-inertial odometry, etc.) will be added here in future releases.

External pose (motion capture)¶

NatNet (OptiTrack) — Receives rigid-body poses from an external Motive PC over NatNet UDP and publishes /{robot_name}/perception/optitrack/... topics. Optional MAVROS bridge for PX4 vision pose. Enabled with LAUNCH_NATNET=true in .env (off by default).

Configuration¶

Perception parameters are configured in perception_bringup/config/ directory. Common parameters include:

Sensor topics to subscribe to
Fusion algorithm parameters
Output frame IDs
Publishing rates