Airflow/Wind sensor

[henrykotze]

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🎉 New feature

Summary

This adds an airflow sensor. These sensors are generally used to measure wind and are ultrasonic devices, measuring the airflow speed and direction using the Doppler effect.

Here is some use cases of such sensors from a manufacturer sensor which we have used.
https://fttechnologies.com/case-studies.

This is part of a larger plan to support an airflow sensor in PX4. @dagar

Test it

Test are added to ensure correct use.

Some things to consider

There exist airflow/wind sensors which provides a 3D vector of the airflow its measuring. So I can see a later addition of adding more properties to the messages, however I have only experience with the 2D sensor, and these properties are the most relevant to them

[ahcorde]

Do you mind to sign the commit ?

[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 95.57%. Comparing base (29cfe33) to head (db9a31f).
Report is 1 commits behind head on gz-msgs9.

Additional details and impacted files

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  Coverage     95.57%   95.57%           
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  Files            10       10           
  Lines          1062     1062           
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[caguero]

There's an anemometer sensor for Gazebo here:

https://github.com/srmainwaring/asv_sim
https://github.com/srmainwaring/asv_sim/blob/main/asv_sim_gazebo_plugins/src/GazeboRosAnemometer.cc

In this piece of code, the sensor publishes the wind velocity in the sensor frame (apparent wind) as a 3D vector.

I wonder if we could follow the same approach, as it will work for 2D (if you ignore z) and it doesn't require a new message.

What do you think?

[caguero]

Friendly ping @henrykotze

[henrykotze]

Will be looking into this soon. 👍 Thanks for the ping, I was on an extended holiday.

[henrykotze]

@caguero Thanks for showing this to me.

I could definitely extend my code to account for the 3D vector, since the sensor would be more useful to other applications it seems. There does exist 3D airflow sensors (they are though much less than those of 2D, but it makes sense to account for future use-case)

I would also stick to my naming scheme since an anemometer measures the magnitude of a 2D wind velocity, so i think Airflow is a more applicable name for the sensor.

Let me know what you think and how I should proceed.

[henrykotze]

From what I can see, each sensor has its own message, since they include the SensorNoise type in it. Also I think there exist the possibility that the message would be extended, since these airflow sensor provides more information about environment such as temperature and humidity.

Let me know how I should proceed

[caguero]

I think a single 3D vector should capture your direction and speed (magnitude).

[henrykotze]

👍 , so for clarity:
Add the 3d vector and use the standard vector3d message?

[caguero]

👍 , so for clarity: Add the 3d vector and use the standard vector3d message?

👍