They are cyborgs! A little bit about how the systems are arranged in HERE cartographic cars
Hi, Habr!
There is one fact in the modern history of the HERE map service, which is not widely known: according to its own plan of world domination, the company has created an army of robots with lasers.
And now, when we have attracted your attention, let us explain under the cut what we meant.
When the senior engineer Michael Prados came to HERE, his first task was to improve the system of mobile view mapping installations True View. These are the complexes that are installed on the roofs and in the salons of hundreds of special vehicles from our fleet, performing the most difficult tasks of creating HERE maps.
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True View is traditionally a combination of cameras, special lasers (or LIDARs , GPS units and several computers that are responsible for “intelligent” data collection for subsequent processing at HERE headquarters.
Getting started, Michael noted that thanks to this technical architecture, the software that is required to control this system is very similar to what is used to control robots.
That is what prompted him to turn to the Robot Operating System or ROS operating system developed by the Open Source Robotics Foundation .
It is not similar to modern operating systems like Windows or Linux and is a kind of framework providing functionality for distributed work. ROS provides standard operating system services, such as hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of frequently used functions, inter-process message transfer, and packet management.
ROS is based on graph architecture, where data processing takes place in nodes that can receive and transmit messages among themselves.
ROS has two main “sides”: the ros and ros-pkg operating system sides are the stacks responsible for implementing a particular function: SLAM, planning, perception, modeling, and others.
As part of the True View system, ROS connects the data received from all devices into one common array, and saves it in a convenient form for subsequent processing.
In general, the "computer" part of the system is more like a server: the main computer has neither a keyboard nor a screen. Therefore, such a system does not need a separate operator - the driver is responsible for its operation in the case of HERE vehicles. Thanks to the tablet installed on the central panel with a special administrator application, the driver can always get a report or carry out diagnostics.
As a result of operating the system under the control of ROC, Mike and the team opened a number of positive aspects of this open source system. In addition to the lack of licensing fees, developers appreciated the ability to "deep" system configuration, which was not available when the team used out-of-box solutions.
Another important, if not the most important advantage of ROC for HERE is high modularity. This means that developers can really quickly and easily inspect each of the components (“nodes”) and, in the event of problems being detected, simply isolate it without shutting down the entire system. Similarly, if a team decides to start using new equipment, say, another camera, then they will not have to start from scratch - it is enough to change, as a rule, only one node.
In addition, developers note the maturity of the product: the system has many different additions and extensions, even for rather unusual devices. So for a number of new sensors and cameras for HERE, there were already ready-made solutions and software from the developer community.
In the future, HERE plans to develop True View by increasing the number of computers with ROCs in each of the special vehicles. The standard TCP / IP protocol provides even more flexibility in setting up the system as a whole. And in the next generation of HERE cars (which have already seen the light), ROS nodes will be split into several devices at once, which will increase the throughput of the entire system several times.
There is one fact in the modern history of the HERE map service, which is not widely known: according to its own plan of world domination, the company has created an army of robots with lasers.
And now, when we have attracted your attention, let us explain under the cut what we meant.
When the senior engineer Michael Prados came to HERE, his first task was to improve the system of mobile view mapping installations True View. These are the complexes that are installed on the roofs and in the salons of hundreds of special vehicles from our fleet, performing the most difficult tasks of creating HERE maps.
')
True View is traditionally a combination of cameras, special lasers (or LIDARs , GPS units and several computers that are responsible for “intelligent” data collection for subsequent processing at HERE headquarters.
Getting started, Michael noted that thanks to this technical architecture, the software that is required to control this system is very similar to what is used to control robots.
That is what prompted him to turn to the Robot Operating System or ROS operating system developed by the Open Source Robotics Foundation .
It is not similar to modern operating systems like Windows or Linux and is a kind of framework providing functionality for distributed work. ROS provides standard operating system services, such as hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of frequently used functions, inter-process message transfer, and packet management.
ROS is based on graph architecture, where data processing takes place in nodes that can receive and transmit messages among themselves.
ROS has two main “sides”: the ros and ros-pkg operating system sides are the stacks responsible for implementing a particular function: SLAM, planning, perception, modeling, and others.
As part of the True View system, ROS connects the data received from all devices into one common array, and saves it in a convenient form for subsequent processing.
In general, the "computer" part of the system is more like a server: the main computer has neither a keyboard nor a screen. Therefore, such a system does not need a separate operator - the driver is responsible for its operation in the case of HERE vehicles. Thanks to the tablet installed on the central panel with a special administrator application, the driver can always get a report or carry out diagnostics.
As a result of operating the system under the control of ROC, Mike and the team opened a number of positive aspects of this open source system. In addition to the lack of licensing fees, developers appreciated the ability to "deep" system configuration, which was not available when the team used out-of-box solutions.
Another important, if not the most important advantage of ROC for HERE is high modularity. This means that developers can really quickly and easily inspect each of the components (“nodes”) and, in the event of problems being detected, simply isolate it without shutting down the entire system. Similarly, if a team decides to start using new equipment, say, another camera, then they will not have to start from scratch - it is enough to change, as a rule, only one node.
In addition, developers note the maturity of the product: the system has many different additions and extensions, even for rather unusual devices. So for a number of new sensors and cameras for HERE, there were already ready-made solutions and software from the developer community.
In the future, HERE plans to develop True View by increasing the number of computers with ROCs in each of the special vehicles. The standard TCP / IP protocol provides even more flexibility in setting up the system as a whole. And in the next generation of HERE cars (which have already seen the light), ROS nodes will be split into several devices at once, which will increase the throughput of the entire system several times.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/216811/
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