Understanding ORB-SLAM is essential for visual navigation tasks. For more details, refer to the provided resource.

The lab provided an Intel NUC with an i5 processor running Ubuntu 14.04, which is quite outdated. OpenCV version 2.4.9 is also old, indicating this machine has been in use for a while. The goal is to set up ROS, Kinect driver, and ORB-SLAM2 environment on this system.

After updating and upgrading the system, it was switched to the Tsinghua University mirror for faster package downloads.

ROS installation is straightforward since only ROS-Indigo is available for Ubuntu 14.04. Follow the provided guides for installation. After setup, testing with the turtle simulation is highly recommended.

Next, install the Kinect driver. The dataset was copied into the 'data' folder within the Downloads directory.

Install the Kinect2 driver by following the steps from the given resources. During the build processs, there were issues with CMake due to an outdated libusb version (1.0.0). A source-based installation of libusb 1.0.20 resolved the issue.

After successful compilation, the demmo started without errors, but the camera feed did not display. The error indicated a problem with VA-API installation.

Error message:

[Error]  [VaapiRgbPacketProcessorImpl] vaDisplayIsValid(display) failed

This issue proved difficult to resolve, as no reliable solutions were found online. Despite this, proceed with insatlling the ROS interface.

Another error occurred:

No module catkin_dkg.package

Solution:

conda install setuptools
pip install -U rosdep rosinstall_generator wstool rosinstall six vcstools

After installing iai-kinect2, run:

roslaunch kinect2_bridge kinect2_bridge.launch

If the launch file is not found, ensure that source devel/setup.bash is executed in the ~/catkin_ws directory. Also, remember to source the setup script before running any ROS nodes.

Despite these steps, the image window still does not appear, likely due to the earlier VA-API issue.

Now, focus on resolving the VA-API problem. This issue remains unresolved, as no relevant information was found online.

Finally, proceed with installing ORB-SLAM. Due to compatibility issues with higher versions of Pangolin, a lower version was used. During the build process, some undefined references to usleep were encountered. Including unistd.h resolved these errors.

Once completed, test the ORB-SLAM demo.