ROS2 Point Cloud

This is an example ROS2 (python) package which demonstrates how to utilize the sensor_msg.msg.PointCloud2. The various scripts show how to publish a point cloud represented by a numpy array as a PointCloud2 message, and vice versa. I also demonstrate how to visualize a point cloud in RViz2.

Note: This was initially posted on SebastianGrans.github.io, but this is the more recent version.

This is now updated to work on ROS2 Galactic

Installation

Move to your ROS workspace source folder, e.g:

cd ~/dev_ws/src

Clone this repo:

git clone https://github.com/SebastianGrans/ROS2-Point-Cloud-Demo.git

Compile:

cd ~/dev_ws/
source /opt/ros/galactic/setup.sh
colcon build --symlink-install --packages-select pcd_demo
source install/

Running

Source the installation:

cd ~/dev_ws/
source install/local_setup.sh # If you use bash
# _or_
source install/local_setup.zsh # If you use zsh

Publisher demo

Using a launch file (automatically starts RViz)

ros2 launch pcd_demo pcd_publisher_demo.launch.py

RViz should now show a spinning Utah teapot!

Manually

ros2 run pcd_demo pcd_publisher_node ~/dev_ws/src/ROS2-Point-Cloud-Demo/resource/teapot.ply    

In a new terminal:

ros2 run rviz2 rviz2

Make sure the Displays panel is visible Panels > [✔] Displays. Then, in the lower corner, press Add and select PointCloud2. In the list, expand PointCloud2 and specify pcd as the topic.

RViz should now show a spinning Utah teapot!

Subscriber demo

This demo is similar to the one above, but rather than relying on RViz, we instead use Open3D for visualization.

Note: This is not yet fully optimized. It needs to be threaded such that the Open3D interface is responsive.

Running from launch file

ros2 launch pcd_demo pcd_pubsub_demo.launch.py

Manually

In one terminal, run the publisher:

ros2 run pcd_demo pcd_publisher_node ~/dev_ws/src/pcd_publisher/resource/teapot.ply    

and in another terminal, run the subscriber node:

ros2 run pcd_demo pcd_subscriber_node