I'm working with a simulated robot in Gazebo that goes to a waypoint and then spins around until it sees a text message. I want to save this message to self.text so that I can access it outside of the class, namely in main as shown. What seems to happen is that when I call the class in main as pls = ClassName(), it gets instantiated properly, my subscriber runs which calls my callback function called "searchmsg" which in turn is supposed to change self.text if the robot sees a message.

The trouble is that it doesn't seem to keep the value when I try to access it in main. I have tried making print statements in various locations to see when it changes and when I try to print right after self.text = textdata within my searchmsg function, it will properly display the message, but when I attempt to print in my for loop it returns as an empty string again. A note here is that the robot isn't constantly moving, so the message is registered constantly, which I have also confirmed by echoing the topic to see the message.

• My system: Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic on a WSL on Windows 10
• ROS: ROS1 Melodic
• Python: 2.7.17

The below code will output an empty string on the first line and "Isn't working" from the else statement in the next. I have also tried putting the for loop into a while loop, but then it just repeats.

class Class_Name:
    def __init__(self):
        self.text = ''
        self.sub = rospy.Subscriber('/Topic_Name', String, self.search_msg)

    def search_msg(self, msg_data):
        p = rospy.Publisher('cmd_vel', Twist, queue_size=1000)
        r = rospy.Rate(2)
        t = Twist()

        if msg_data == '':
            t.angular.z = 0.5
            p.publish(t)
            rospy.sleep(0.5)
        else:
            t.angular.z = 0
            p.publish(t)
            self.text = msg_data
            # print(self.text)
            rospy.sleep(1)

waypoints = [  [(-3.95, 0.125, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, -0.16547, -0.986213798314)] ]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    rospy.init_node('Node_Name', anonymous=True)
    client = actionlib.SimpleActionClient('move_base', MoveBaseAction) 
    client.wait_for_server()

    for pose in waypoints: 
        goal = goal_pose(pose)
        client.send_goal(goal)
        client.wait_for_result()
        rospy.sleep(3)
        pls = Class_Name()
        print(pls.text)

        if pls.text != '':
            print(pls.text, "IF STATEMENT")
            Numb = pls.text[8]
            #I haven't defined the word list in this code, can disregard.
            word[Numb] = pls.text[-1]
            continue
        else:
            print("Isn't working")

I hope it's alright that I ask this too, but a general question I have about the subscriber is about whether or not I can call pls = ClassName().msgsearch() instead of instantiating the class only. My problem here is that I need to supply msg_search() with the callback data and I don't think I can simply input the subscriber.

I have obviously searched for fixes but there are none, or I simply don't understand them. Please let me know if you need any information about my system or any clarifications. Any help is greatly appreciated!