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In my experience, I find tf useful for real-time, single-estimation data; this breaks down when you want one to apply a correction to a geometric relationship in the past (like when a loop closure occurs during SLAM, and you want to use this new information to update the entire robot's path history), or when you have a couple things estimating the same transform (like odometry and laser scan matching, or two robots looking at the same thing). There are some ways to make tf do what you want in these cases, but they don't exhibit the same simplicity and elegance that tf shows for the real-time, single-estimation case.

Multi-robot tf over wifi, as others mentioned, won't work like you want it to out of the box. But a fairly lightweight fix is to use multiple /tf topics, say /robot_model_bandwidth_hog/tf and /i_wanna_communicate_these_few_transforms_to_other_robots/tf