ROS Driver for TI's mmWave Radars

This package provides a ROS package for TI's mmWave radars.

It is forked from Leo Zhang's work, which itself is based on TI's ROS driver. This fork aims to update and simplify the code, porting it to ROS 2, and make it more accessible for robotic applications with short to medium-range sensing requirements. We believe that this small form-factor antenna on package (AOP) chip design features some unique capabilities thanks to its little weight and low power consumption. The driver for the DCA1000 is based on a package by moodoki

Devices and Software

The package has been tested with the following setups:

• Devices
  • AWR 1843AOP evaluation module
  • DCA1000
• Software (Ubuntu / ROS)
  • 20.04 / Galactic
• SDK version: 3.5

The devices typically come with the out-of-box demo preinstalled, so most likely, you don't need to flash the evaluation module. If your sensors don't match with the SDK version (3.5), consider re-flashing them according to this guide.

Getting Started

Preliminary steps:

1. Connect the micro-USB (the one closer to the antenna) of the AOP sensor to the host machine running ROS.
2. On Linux, make sure you have the right permissions to access the serial port:

sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER

3. Test your sensor with the Demo Visualizer to check the connectivity and basic functionality. You can also create your own configuration file for your use-case (fps, range, velocity, etc.) with the visualizer.
4. Connect the DCA1000 EVM ethernet port to an ethernet port on the host machine. (This also works with ethernet to USB converters)

Clone, build and launch:

5. Clone this repo and ROS serial onto your <workspace dir>/src:

git clone https://github.com/Plaba/ti_mmwave_ros2.git
git clone https://github.com/Plaba/serial-ros2.git

6. Go back to <workspace dir>, then build and source:

colcon build --symlink-install
source install/setup.bash

7. Fire up the launch file:

ros2 launch ti_mmwave ti_radar.launch.py

~~Note: If you set visualize to True, then rviz should start and you should see something like the following: ~~ TODO update

8. ROS topics can be accessed as follows:

ros2 topic list
ros2 topic echo /ti_mmwave/radar_scan_pcl
ros2 topic echo /ti_mmwave/raw_data

Message format

The radar_scan_pcl is a customized point cloud topic, consisting of:

• location (x, y, z) in [m]
• radial range in [m]
• radial velocity in [m/s]
• intensity in [dB]
• noise [dB] // todo: add to driver

Troubleshooting

1. Insufficient rights on ports:

mmWaveCommSrv: Failed to open User serial port with error: IO Exception (13): Permission denied
mmWaveCommSrv: Waiting 20 seconds before trying again...

This happens when the serial port is called without superuser permission. Do the following steps:

sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER

restart your shell and try again.

2. Sensor hiccup:

mmWaveQuickConfig: Command failed (mmWave sensor did not respond with 'Done')
mmWaveQuickConfig: Response: 'sensorStop
'�?`???�?`???�?`???~' is not recognized as a CLI command
mmwDemo:/>'

When this happens, re-run the command you send to the sensor. If it continues, shut down and restart the sensor. 3. DCA1000 configures correctly but no data is sent:

Make sure the xWR1xxx is in debug mode, and switch 2.5 on the DCA1000 is set to SW_CONFIG. Source

Multiple devices support (todo: update this!)

Preparation:

• If you use multiple sensors, enable the additional ports, e.g. /dev/ttyUSB2 and /dev/ttyUSB3, etc. accordingly.
• A better way to deal with multiple sensors is setting up your own udev-rule. Something along the following lines:

  • Gather the required information:

    • for idVendor:idProduct: lsusb => 10c4:ea70
    • for serial: udevadm info -a /dev/ttyUSB0 | grep serial => 00DEEBD8
    • for DEVPATH: udevadm info /dev/ttyUSB0 => /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/ttyUSB0/tty/ttyUSB0

  • Then, go to /etc/udev/rules.d and create the udev-rule: sudo gedit 99-usb-serial.rules with the data from above:

    SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="10c4", ATTRS{idProduct}=="ea70", ATTRS{serial}=="00DEEDA3", DEVPATH=="/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-*/1-*:1.0/ttyUSB*/tty/ttyUSB*" SYMLINK+="ttyUSB.6843cli"
    SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="10c4", ATTRS{idProduct}=="ea70", ATTRS{serial}=="00DEEDA3", DEVPATH=="/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-*/1-*:1.1/ttyUSB*/tty/ttyUSB*" SYMLINK+="ttyUSB.6843data"
    
    SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="10c4", ATTRS{idProduct}=="ea70", ATTRS{serial}=="00DEEBD8", DEVPATH=="/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-*/1-*:1.0/ttyUSB*/tty/ttyUSB*" SYMLINK+="ttyUSB.1843cli"
    SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="10c4", ATTRS{idProduct}=="ea70", ATTRS{serial}=="00DEEBD8", DEVPATH=="/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-*/1-*:1.1/ttyUSB*/tty/ttyUSB*" SYMLINK+="ttyUSB.1843data"

Old:

1. Connect two devices and try ll /dev/serial/by-id or ls /dev. In this case, /dev/ttyACM0 to /dev/ttyACM3 should shown.
2. To avoid serial port conflict, you need to launch devices separately. So for the first device (it will open rviz):

roslaunch xwr_data multi_1642_0.launch 

3. Change radars' location in first three arguments <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="radar_baselink_0" args="0 -1 0 0 0 0 ti_mmwave_pcl ti_mmwave_0 100"/> (stands for x,y,z for positions) in launch file multi_1642_1.launch. And launch second device:

roslaunch xwr_data multi_1642_1.launch 

Note: As serial connection and the original code, you need to launch devices separately using different launch files.

Camera overlay support (working with USB camera or CV camera) (todo: update this!)

1. Download and build USB camera repo here. And set parameters of camera in <usb_webcam dir>/launch/usb_webcam.launch.
2. To test the device image working, try:

roslaunch usb_webcam usb_webcam.launch
rosrun rqt_image_view rqt_image_view  

3. Make sure you have done ROS camera calibration and create a *.yaml configuration file accordingly.
4. Launch radar-camera system using:

roslaunch xwr_data camera_overlay.launch

Changelog

v3.5.0
Gerneral overhaul
Focussing on 1843AOP and 6843AOP

v3.3.0
Add support for XWR18XX devices. SDK version: 3.2.0.4.

v3.2.2
Fix bugs and update README.

v3.2.1
Support camera overlay over 3D 1443s.

v3.2.0
Added camera overlay support.

v3.1.0
Strengthened code.

v3.0.0
Added README.
Improved rviz looking for point cloud data.
Added support for multiple radars working together. 
Improved radar's all around working conditions.

v2.0.0
Added support for ES2.0 EVM devices.

v1.0.0
Added Doppler from TI's mmWave radars.