Flat Earth Geolocation

This node performs geolocation with a flat earth assumption. The geolocation algorithm uses line-of-sight vectors and folows the derivation from Chapter 13 of the UAV Book.

Note that all coordinate transformations are found using the ROS tf package.

Dependencies

$ sudo apt install ros-kinetic-geodesy

Helpful Hints

Truth Visualization

If you have GPS "truth" of ground targets, you can view them in Rviz alongside the geolocated tracks by running the fix_plotter.py node and hooking up the ground target GPS to it:

$ rosrun flat_earth_geolocation fix_plotter.py __name:=target_name gps_fix:=/htc_one_m9/fix

This will publish a visualization_msgs::Marker message that can be viewed in Rviz with the Marker type. It is expected that there is an appropriate UTM origin defined for the zone/band that both the UAV and the targets are in. This assumption should basically always hold true since everything is done locally.

Map Provider

The URL for Google Maps tiles is: http://mt.google.com/vt/lyrs=m&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}

(see here).