The MSensor Library

This library serve as an experiment for writing generic LiDAR and IMU drivers based on a simple interface. It was inspired by ROS2, but with gRPC+Protobuf as message and service definition technologies and simplicity in mind.

By inheriting these common interfaces, the driver benefit from:

• Exposing your driver as an gRPC interface to be used remotely.
• Enabling your driver to serialize data to a file to be read back at a later time.

Development

Two devcontainers are included. The dev is a normal devcontainer for development. The envoy is a special devcontainer that pulls envoy proxy that proxies grpc-web HTTP request to gRPC of the container.

Usage

As an interface

• The interface at include/lidar/ILidar serves as a base for implementing new LiDAR drivers.
• The interface at include/imu/IImu serves as a base for implementing new IMU drivers.

Remote Driver

• Your driver can be programmed as a gRPC service. See src/*_publisher applications as example.
• A client (at another machine) application can instantiate a grpc/sensors_remote_client.hh class and subscribe to the IP of a driver server to get sensor data.

Client

A Python client is provided with the repository to facilitate testing the remote driver. See test/client folder.

Docker

A DockerfileRuntime is provided to offer small footprint images that allows one to run the publisher applications from inside a container. Make sure the hardware is correctly mapped to the container (--device /dev/ttyUSB* or --network=host)

Supported docker build targets are:

• rplidar
• mid360
• icm20948

Example with Mid360 LIDAR+IMU:

• build: docker build -f docker/DockerfileRuntime -t mid360 --target icm20948 .
• run: docker run --network host --rm mid360 <nr samples>

Example ICM20948 IMU:

• build: docker build -f docker/DockerfileRuntime -t icm20948 --target icm20948 .
• run: docker run --rm --init --device /dev/i2c-1 -p 50051:50051 icm20948