RoboSavvy integrated HTC Vive with ROS

[limor]

Small step for VR, big step for autonomous robots.
One of the key issues with autonomous robot applications is localization.
Vive has singlehandedly solved this age-long problem.

This 800$ system (will go down to 200$ in a few months once lighthouses and base stations are available without the headset in addition to minuscule lighthouse sensors) is comparable to a 150k$ Ir marker multi-camera system.
The Vive gives you 60fps, 0.3mm resolution, across any size internal volume (currently a 5m cube box but will be extendable)
So unless you are doing indoor 3D drones, you don't need more than 60Hz and a camera system will give ~cm resolution.
No other indoor localization system can get anywhere close to the Vive specs.

We managed to integrate it into ROS

We shall release the source code shortly

phpBB [media]

(Now if someone comes out with a mouldable plastic based harmonic-gears, we would reach the "singularity" within a couple of years).

[limor]

Here is the code
https://github.com/robosavvy/vive_ros

[limor]

Some explanation about how the Vive works and what other applications they envision for indoor localization

phpBB [media]