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How to convert a PointCloud via tf2

asked 2014-09-29 15:30:32 -0500

v4hn
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Hey there,

I tried to write some pretty simple code with tf2 and I'm stuck already.

How does one transform a pcl::PointCloud<...> when using tf2 (and, less importantly, how about transforming a sensor_msgs/PointCloud2)? With tf there is the pcl_ros package which can transform pcl-PointClouds with tf::Transform. There's also pcl's own transformation interface pcl::transformPointCloud which takes Transforms as Eigen matrices.

However, tf2_ros::Buffer::lookupTransform, which seems to be the right interface to use, only returns geometry_msgs::TransformStamped and I can't find a one-liner to convert these (or, well, more likely the wrapped geometry_msgs::Transform to Eigen::Matrix4f or similar.

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answered 2014-09-29 23:43:50 -0500

tfoote

58457 ●128 ●550 ●526 http://www.ros.org/

updated 2014-09-29 23:45:56 -0500

@vincent Rabaud recently opened a pull request to add support for exactly that. The pull-request is here. https://github.com/ros/geometry_exper... It will probably be merged and deployed after a review.

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Thanks, that answers one question.

What do we do about pcl::PointClouds? To use pcl::transformPointCloud we'd need a function to convert geometry_msgs::Transform to Eigen::Matrix4f. Could tf2::convert do that?

Otoh, pcl_ros is quite useful already, so how about extending its transforms.h?

v4hn ( 2014-09-30 06:54:54 -0500 )edit

Should the latter be done by adding pcl_ros::transformPointCloud functions for geometry_msgs::TransformStamped (which makes sense in the context of pcl_ros) or by adding tf2::doTransform functions there (which makes sense in the context of tf2)?

v4hn ( 2014-09-30 06:57:05 -0500 )edit

If you want to use the pcl transform function, just use eigen_conversions to convert the transform into the needed eigen matrix.

tfoote ( 2014-09-30 15:52:59 -0500 )edit

Thanks, I didn't know about that package!

v4hn ( 2014-10-01 07:19:10 -0500 )edit

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Asked: 2014-09-29 15:30:32 -0500

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