How to get kinect + gmapping on an erratic to generate 2D maps?

edit

I've picked up a used Videre erratic and mounted a kinect and a EEEPC 1215N on it for a poor man's turtlebot while I wait for mine to ship out. I'm a newbie to ROS, and I've only been using it for about a month.

I've been trying to follow this tutorial: http://www.ros.org/wiki/turtlebot_nav...

I initially tried to start with this tutorial and had serious problems once I found it was 2 years out of date. http://www.ros.org/wiki/2dnav_erratic...

I can't afford a real lidar unit myself, so I'm trying to use Kinect line-scans for now. I found another answer on how to modify the launch file for pointcloud_to_laserscan to publish a /scan topic:

<launch>
  <!-- kinect and frame ids -->
  <include file="$(find openni_camera)/launch/openni_node.launch"/>

  <!-- openni manager -->
  <node pkg="nodelet" type="nodelet" name="openni_manager" output="screen" respawn="true" args="manager"/>

  <!-- throttling -->
  <node pkg="nodelet" type="nodelet" name="pointcloud_throttle" args="load pointcloud_to_laserscan/CloudThrottle openni_manager">
    <param name="max_rate" value="2"/>
    <remap from="cloud_in" to="/camera/depth/points"/>
    <remap from="cloud_out" to="cloud_throttled"/>
  </node>

  <!-- fake laser -->
  <node pkg="nodelet" type="nodelet" name="kinect_laser" args="load pointcloud_to_laserscan/CloudToScan openni_manager">
    <param name="output_frame_id" value="/openni_depth_frame"/>
    <remap from="cloud" to="cloud_throttled"/>
  </node>
</launch>

I am navigating the robot around with erratic_keyboard_teleop and monitoring it with rviz with a map view that never receives a map, a point cloud view that works, a laser scan view that works, and two image viewers from the depth and rgb of the kinect.

I have map_saver running.

As far as I can tell, I have good /odom data, but the problem comes when I run

rosrun gmapping slam_gmapping scan:=scan

EDIT: At first I was trying to run gmapping as above, but now I'm using:

roscore
roslaunch erratic_player erratic_base.launch
roslaunch pointcloud_to_laserscan kinect_lidar.launch
roslaunch microstrain_3dmgx2_imu microstrain_3dmgx2.launch
roslaunch robot_pose_ekf robot_pose_ekf.launch
roslaunch erratic_navigation slam_gmapping.launch
roslaunch erratic_navigation move_base_slam.launch

(This seems to be the same thing as roslaunch turtlebot_navigation gmapping_demo.launch but for the erratic's parameters instead)

When it's running I get the same output, either way:

[ WARN] [1311627824.060790164]: MessageFilter [target=/odom ]: Dropped 100.00% of messages so far. Please turn the [ros.gmapping.message_notifier] rosconsole logger to DEBUG for more information.
[DEBUG] [1311627826.169033381]: MessageFilter [target=/odom ]: Removed oldest message because buffer is full, count now 5 (frame_id=/openni_depth_frame, stamp=1311627823.147122)
[DEBUG] [1311627826.169353004]: MessageFilter [target=/odom ]: Added message in frame /openni_depth_frame at time 1311627826.048, count now 5
[DEBUG] [1311627826.705492297]: MessageFilter [target=/odom ]: Removed oldest message because buffer is full, count now 5 (frame_id=/openni_depth_frame, stamp=1311627823.777645)
[DEBUG] [1311627826.705995564]: MessageFilter [target=/odom ]: Added message in frame /openni_depth_frame at time 1311627826.616, count now 5
[DEBUG] [1311627827.280777392]: MessageFilter [target=/odom ]: Removed oldest message because buffer is full, count now 5 (frame_id=/openni_depth_frame, stamp=1311627824.308159)
[DEBUG] [1311627827.281022133]: MessageFilter [target=/odom ]: Added message in frame /openni_depth_frame at time 1311627827.148, count now 5
[DEBUG ...