Running Voxblox

The easiest way to test out voxblox is to try it out on a dataset. We have launch files for our own dataset, the Euroc Vicon Room datasets, and the KITTI raw datasets processed through kitti_to_rosbag.

For each of these datasets, there’s a launch file associated under voxblox_ros/launch.

The easiest way to start is to download the cow and lady dataset, edit the path to the bagfile in cow_and_lady_dataset.launch, and then simply:

roslaunch voxblox_ros cow_and_lady_dataset.launch

An alternative dataset the basement dataset is also available. While this dataset lacks ground truth it demonstrates the capabilities of Voxblox running on Velodyne lidar data and uses ICP corrections to compensate for a drifting pose estimate. To run the dataset edit the path to the bagfile in basement_dataset.launch, and then simply:

roslaunch voxblox_ros basement_dataset.launch

If you open rviz, you should be able to see the the mesh visualized on the /voxblox_node/mesh MarkerArray topic, in the world static frame, as shown below. The mesh only updates once per second (this is a setting in the launch file).

The rest of the commonly-used settings are parameters in the launch file.