Noether

Tool path planning and surface segmenter

Build Status

Platform	CI Status
Linux (Focal)
Linux (Bionic)
Linux (Xenial)
Lint (Clang-Format)

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Prerequisites

• These packages run on Ubuntu 16.04 and ROS
• Uses the catkin tools build system

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Installation

This package depends on PCL 1.9.1+ and VTK 7.1+. If you are using a Ubuntu system version 20.04+ (ROS Noetic/Foxy), you should already have these and can skip to the build instructions. Otherwise proceed with installing the custom PCL and VTK versions.

Prerequisites

• checkinstall
  • sudo apt install checkinstall

Useful Information

• number of available threads / CPU cores
  • This is useful for accelerating building of the required libraries, but is not required. If you know this number, great! If not, you can use one of these commands:
  • htop - You can count the number of threads displayed at the top.
  • lscpu - Outputs a number of CPUs, or you can multiply Thread(s) per core: * Core(s) per socket: * Socket(s) to get the available threads

Dependencies Installation

1. VTK

1. Download VTK 7.1

2. Unzip or extract into a user accessible directory

3. CD into that directory and create a new build directory

4. Run cmake

   cd build
   cmake ..
   

5. Build the library

   make
   

   This will take a while ...

   If you know the number of threads available, you can specify to use more of them. Leaving one or two open should allow you to continue using your computer. For example, if you have 8 threads available, you could do the following to speed up build time:

   make --jobs=6
   

6. Install

   sudo checkinstall --pkgname=vtk-7.1
   

   The installation process will prompt you to accept/reject some options prior to building the debian, just follow the recommended prompts.

   NOTE: Using checkinstall instead of make install has the advantage that it builds a debian package which can be easily uninstalled with sudo dpkg -r [packagename].

2. PCL

1. Download PCL 1.9.1

2. Unzip or extract into a user accessible directory

3. cd into that directory and locate the CMakeLists.txt file.

4. Locate the find package(VTK) line (close to line 362) and edit it to find_package(VTK 7.1 REQUIRED)

5. Configure the build using the ccmake gui

   mkdir build
   cd build
   ccmake ..
   

   • Then locate the BUILD_surface_on_nurbs flag and set it to ON
   • Locate the PCL_ENABLE_SSE flag and set it to OFF or FALSE, this alters the alignment of class members when enabled, see here

6. Build

   make
   

   Wait until the build finishes, it may take a couple of hours ...

   If you know the number of threads available, you can specify to use more of them. Leaving one or two open should allow you to continue using your computer. For example, if you have 8 threads available, you could do the following to speed up build time:

   make --jobs=6
   

7. Install

   sudo checkinstall --pkgname=pcl-1.9.1
   

   The installation process will prompt you to accept/reject some options prior to building the debian, just follow the recommended prompts

   NOTE: Using checkinstall instead of make install has the advantage that it builds a debian package which can be easily uninstalled with sudo dpkg -r [packagename].

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Build

# if you already have a workspace, skip this step
mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src

# if you already cloned noether, skip this step
cd ~/catkin_ws/src && git clone https://github.com/ros-industrial/noether.git

# navigate to the root of your workspace
cd ~/catkin_ws

# pull down the dependencies
vcstool import src < src/noether/dependencies_ros1.rosinstall

# build the Noether packages
# note: if you want to build the entire workspace, just run 'catkin build' instead
catkin build noether

Run Unit Tests

• Run the unit tests for a package:

  catkin run_tests tool_path_planner --no-deps
  

• Run all unit test in the noether repository

  catkin run_tests noether --no-deps
  

  NOTE: Press 'q' to close the vtk window and proceed with the test program.

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Run Applications and Demos

Surface Raster Planner

The noether package has a surface raster planner executable which is able to take in a mesh file (.stl format), and generate raster paths on it, you can run it through the launch file with preconfigured parameters as follows:

roslaunch noether_examples plane_slicer_rastering_generator_demo.launch

or with your own mesh file

roslaunch noether_examples plane_slicer_rastering_generator_demo.launch mesh_file:=</absolute/path/to/my/mesh.stl>

Mesh Filtering Demo

The mesh filtering demo applies a bspline smoothing algorithm to a noisy mesh, run the following to see it in action:

roslaunch noether_examples mesh_filtering_demo.launch

• Filter your own ply mesh file

roslaunch noether_examples mesh_filtering_demo.launch mesh_file:=/path/to/my/mesh.ply

See here for more on the filter types available,
Custom mesh filter plugins can be added by inheriting from the noether_filtering::mesh::MeshBaseFilter class.

Generate Edge Paths Demo

Runs an algorithm that identifies all the half edges that constiture the boundary

• On a dummy ply mesh file

roslaunch noether_examples halfedge_finder_demo.launch

• On your own ply mesh file

roslaunch noether_examples halfedge_finder_demo.launch mesh_file:=</absolute/path/to/my/mesh.stl>