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Overview

As thermal camera simulation isn't supported natively by gazebo, this plugin takes the following approach: Objects of interest (OOIs) that have to appear hot in thermal vision are modelled using COLLADA and have their emissive and ambient material properties set to maximum red like this:

            <emission>
              <color sid="emission">1 0 0 1</color>
            </emission>
            <ambient>
              <color sid="ambient">1 0 0 1</color>
            </ambient>

The relevant OOI will then always have exactly red color, regardless of lighting conditions in gazebo. The gazebo_ros_thermal_camera plugin then colors only the portions of the MONO8 thermal image as white (for white hot) that have exactly this maximum red color. The rest of the visual image is written to the thermal image with much reduced intensity. The result looks like this:

Using this approach, methods for detection of objects by their heat signature can be tested in simulation. However, this might not be possible for methods fusing information from visual and thermal images, as the visuals of OOIs are limited to red color. Note that reconfiguration options for the color of interest and other convenience options are not currently implemented.

Example Use

The plugin is based on the gazebo_ros_camera plugin and thus has the same parameters and signature for use in a URDF model:

  <gazebo reference="thermal_frame">
      <sensor:camera name="thermal_camera_sensor">
        <imageSize>160 120</imageSize>
        <imageFormat>R8G8B8</imageFormat>
        <hfov>90</hfov>
        <nearClip>0.01</nearClip>
        <farClip>100</farClip>
        <updateRate>10</updateRate>
        <controller:gazebo_ros_thermal_camera name="thermal_camera_controller" plugin="libgazebo_ros_thermal_depth_camera.so">
          <alwaysOn>true</alwaysOn>
          <updateRate>10</updateRate>
          <imageTopicName>/thermal_camera/image_raw</imageTopicName>
          <cameraInfoTopicName>/thermal_camera/camera_info</cameraInfoTopicName>
          <frameName>thermal_optical_frame</frameName>
          <interface:camera name="thermal_camera_iface" />
        </controller:gazebo_ros_thermal_camera>
      </sensor:camera>
    </gazebo>