rtabmap/doxygen/tools.md

Command-line tools

Building RTAB-Map installs a set of executables next to the libraries. They are built on the same API these pages document, so each one is also a worked example of it -- and the quickest way to inspect, replay or convert a map without writing code.

All of them take the --Param Group/Name value arguments described in the @ref parameters "Parameter reference", and print their options with --help.

Working with a map

Command	What it does
@anchor tool_info rtabmap-info	Prints a database summary: version, sizes, parameters and per-node statistics. --diff shows only the parameters that differ from the defaults, or from another database.
@anchor tool_export rtabmap-export	Exports the map: assembled point cloud, mesh or textured mesh (.ply, .pcd, .obj), 2D occupancy grid, poses and camera images. Filtering, decimation, colour and texturing are all options.
@anchor tool_report rtabmap-report	Reports the statistics recorded in one or several databases: RMSE against ground truth, timings, loop closures. Plots them when built with Qt.
@anchor tool_recovery rtabmap-recovery	Repairs a database whose session was not closed properly (e.g. after a crash), by rebuilding it from the nodes and links that can still be read. The original is kept as *.backup.db unless -d is given.
@anchor tool_reprocess rtabmap-reprocess	Replays the data of a database through a fresh @ref rtabmap::Rtabmap "Rtabmap" instance, with different parameters, and writes a new database. Several databases can be merged in one run. The way to try a new configuration on recorded data.
@anchor tool_detectmoreloopclosures rtabmap-detectMoreLoopClosures	Looks for additional loop closures in an existing map, by clustering nodes that are close in the optimized graph, and re-optimizes it.
@anchor tool_globalba rtabmap-globalBundleAdjustment	Runs a global bundle adjustment over the whole graph and saves the refined poses.
@anchor tool_reducegraph rtabmap-reduceGraph	Merges nodes of the same location to shrink the graph, keeping the map usable for localization.
@anchor tool_cleanuplocalgrids rtabmap-cleanupLocalGrids	Clears from the local occupancy grids the space that the assembled global grid shows as empty, so that removed obstacles do not reappear when the map is regenerated.

Recording and datasets

Command	What it does
@anchor tool_console rtabmap-console	Runs loop closure detection without a GUI on a directory of images, a video or a database, and reports the loop closures found. Appearance-only: it forces @ref rtabmap::Parameters::kRGBDEnabled() "RGBD/Enabled" to false and feeds images without a pose, so there is no odometry, no graph optimization and no metric map -- unlike the dataset tools below, which run the whole SLAM pipeline.
@anchor tool_datarecorder rtabmap-dataRecorder	Records a live sensor into a database, using a configuration file exported from the GUI preferences.
@anchor tool_kitti rtabmap-kitti_dataset	Runs a KITTI odometry sequence (stereo, optionally Velodyne) and reports the KITTI errors against ground truth.
@anchor tool_rgbd rtabmap-rgbd_dataset	Same for a TUM RGB-D sequence.
@anchor tool_euroc rtabmap-euroc_dataset	Same for a EuRoC MAV sequence (stereo and IMU).
@anchor tool_cidsims rtabmap-cidsims_dataset	Same for a CID-SIMS sequence (RGB-D, IMU and wheel odometry).
@anchor tool_imagesjoiner rtabmap-imagesJoiner	Joins images of two directories side by side, to build a stereo sequence out of two monocular ones.

Sensors and calibration

These need the GUI library (Qt), so they are only built when it is available.

Command	What it does
@anchor tool_camera rtabmap-camera	Streams a USB camera, a video file or a directory of images, and shows what the driver delivers.
@anchor tool_rgbdcamera rtabmap-rgbd_camera	Same for the RGB-D and stereo drivers (OpenNI, Freenect, RealSense, Kinect for Azure, ZED...), to check a device before mapping with it.
@anchor tool_lidarviewer rtabmap-lidar_viewer	Shows the scans of a network lidar (VLP-16).
@anchor tool_calibration rtabmap-calibration	Calibrates a camera or a stereo pair from a chessboard, and saves the model RTAB-Map reads.
@anchor tool_odometryviewer rtabmap-odometryViewer	Runs @ref rtabmap::Odometry "Odometry" alone on a live sensor and shows the features, the local map and the estimated trajectory. Useful to tune the Odom/ and Vis/ parameters.
@anchor tool_databaseviewer rtabmap-databaseViewer	Inspects a database: browse the nodes and their data, the graph and its links, add or remove constraints, re-optimize, regenerate the grids and export.

Algorithm evaluation

Command	What it does
@anchor tool_matcher rtabmap-matcher	Registers two images with the @ref rtabmap::RegistrationVis "visual" or @ref rtabmap::RegistrationIcp "ICP" pipeline and draws the correspondences. The direct way to compare feature detectors and matching parameters on a hard pair.
@anchor tool_stereoeval rtabmap-stereoEval	Evaluates the stereo correspondence parameters against a ground truth disparity map (Middlebury format).
@anchor tool_epipolar rtabmap-epipolar_geometry	Shows the epipolar geometry between two images.
@anchor tool_extractobject rtabmap-extractObject	Extracts an object lying on a plane from a point cloud file.
@anchor tool_vocabulary rtabmap-vocabularyComparison	Compares the nearest-neighbour strategies of the visual dictionary on a saved vocabulary. Built only with the OpenCV non-free module.

The GUI application itself is rtabmap; everything the tools above do offline is also reachable from its menus.